My favorite games of 2019 that aren't The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince or Lapis x Labyrinth

I may have declared Lapis x Labyrinth and The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince my favorite games of 2019, but that doesn't mean they're the only games I enjoyed this past year.

In fact, here are seven titles I also had a blast playing at some point in the past 12 months.

Dandy Dungeon (PC, Switch)--I named another Onion Games joint, the brilliantly bleak shmup, Black Bird, one of my favorite games of last year. I nearly did the same this year with the company's Dandy Dungeon. What stopped me? The main reason is that I failed to finish it--or, rather, that I walked away from it at one point and never returned to it.

Although I can tell you exactly why I dropped it (I went on vacation and didn't take my Switch), I can't tell you why I didn't pick it up again. Maybe it did the unthinkable and became too repetitive? I say that's unthinkable because I usually don't mind a bit of repetition in games. I mean, you're talking to a guy who happily spends hours grinding in pretty much every RPG he plays--even when it's not needed. But there's a forced grind to this one that perhaps wore on me a tad.

Still, I was full-on obsessed with Dandy Dungeon during the 22 hours I'd put into it before that point, as this post proves. Its gameplay loop, which adroitly combines dungeon-crawling and loot-gathering with time-sensitive puzzle-solving, is both exhilarating and amusing. Actually, amusing describes several other elements of Dandy Dungeon, too, including its graphics, soundtrack, and story. Wait, remind me why I'm not playing this brilliant game right this second?

Heroland (PC, PS4, Switch)--I'm still working my way through this one, an odd, mobile-game-esque RPG made by folks who previously worked on Fantasy Life, Magical Vacation, and Mother 3, but I've spent enough time with it (about 12 hours now) to know I like it a great deal.

My first impressions of Heroland weren't favorable, as the opening hour or two were filled with blather and early battles veered far too close to they-play-themselves territory for my liking. Both areas of complaint improved by leaps and bounds as I continued to plug away at the game, I'm happy to report. Especially the fights.

In case you haven't heard, you don't directly control your parties in Heroland. Instead, you guide them--by periodically giving orders either to the whole group or to an individual member. It's kind of a bummer at the start, but their tactical nature eventually makes itself obvious, and that's when my opinion of this FuRyu product turned toward the positive for good.

Helping matters along tremendously: the game's earworm-enducing soundtrack and appealingly unique look.

Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn (3DS)--I'm fully aware that both the original Kirby’s Epic Yarn and this barely enhanced 3DS port have their fair share of detractors. For me, though, they're the video game equivalent of comfort food. They're what I turn to when I want to relax, or when I'm longing for the "good old days."

The accessibly enjoyable gameplay of these titles is a big reason for that, of course, but their cozy graphics and whimsical soundtracks play major roles, too. I guess that's why I gobbled up Extra Epic Yarn when it came out this past spring, and it's also why I'm now naming it one of my favorite games of 2019.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (3DS, mobile, PS4, Switch)--I wish I could tell you why I waited until the release of Gyakuten Saiban 123: Naruhodo Selection (that's the Japanese title of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy) to finally play my first Ace Attorney game. Whatever the case may be, I'm glad I got my act together and went through the long-running series' opening entry earlier this year.

Its brilliantly crafted characters and story as well as its eclectic soundtrack were the clear standouts for me, but I liked pretty much every other component of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, too. OK, so Capcom could've done a better job on the revamped visuals. And the game stumped me on several occasions. Neither of those things dampened my enjoyment of this visual novel, though. Hopefully they also won't keep me from digging its follow-ups when I tackle them in 2020.

Romancing SaGa 3 (mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, Vita, Xbox One)--There was a time not so long ago that I thought Romancing SaGa 3 might squeeze its way into the running for full-on favorite game of 2019. In the end, I put it here instead.

As for what prompted me to consider it a GOTY contender, that would be its tastefully updated graphics, its appropriately epic soundtrack, and its open-ended, quest-focused design. I also had a blast with its battles--or at least I did at first. The different formations, the odd party members, and especially the "sparking" of new abilities thrilled me for a good while, but at some point Romancing SaGa 3's fights lost a bit of their luster. I think it's because they happen a smidge too frequently (despite not being random, technically) and because the aforementioned sparking doesn't happen frequently enough.

Don't worry, I'm not giving up on it despite that disappointing turn of events. I'll definitely return to my playthrough, currently at the 26-hour mark, sometime next year.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe (GameBoy Color)--I may have stubbornly avoided giving this homebrew GameBoy game a go until several months after its initial, non-deluxe release, but once I broke the seal in that regard I quickly made up for lost time.

If you haven't read any of my other write-ups or interviews related to this Tangram Games-developed title, it's a glorious mix of Nintendo's Balloon Kid and Ferry Halim’s Winterbells, if that makes any sense whatsoever. The same can be said of Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe, which came out in late October. It's basically a colorized and otherwise slightly tweaked version of the original, though it also tosses in a new infinite mode for good measure.

If I had my way, I'd be ably to play both iterations of Tobu Tobu Girl on my Switch (or even my trusty 3DS), but since that's unlikely to happen in an official capacity, I'll keep plugging away at it on my hacked Wii. It's not the optimal solution for me, but the alternative--not playing this classic-in-the-making at all--is just not an option.

World of Final Fantasy Maxima (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One)--I started through this enhanced version of World of Final Fantasy early in the year with fairly low expectations. Though I'd heard good things about the original release from folks whose opinions I respect, I couldn't help but think it wasn't going to be my cup of tea. Without mincing words, the non-chibi character designs horrified me and the battles--featuring party members with captured enemies stacked perilously on their noggins--baffled me.

Well, neither of those niggles bothered me at all after I spent a couple hours with the game. Which isn't to suggest World of Final Fantasy Maxima is without issues, mind you. In fact, I've found it strangely rough around the edges for a Square Enix product so far.

Still, Maxima's many charms--including the baffling battles I mentioned a few sentences ago, curiously enough--have outweighed its handful of blemishes to this point (my playthrough is hovering at 26 hours), so I'm hopeful that will continue when I circle back to it in the new year.

See also: 'My favorite games of 2018 that aren't Black Bird or Sushi Striker'

Five (more) questions with the makers of Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe

A little over a week ago, I published an interview with Simon Larsen and Lukas Erritsø Hansen, the two guys who, along with musical artist potato-tan, made the homebrew GameBoy gem known as Tobu Tobu Girl.

If you read through that interview, you know that I conducted it over a year ago. I conducted this one, which focuses on the GameBoy Color-compatible Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe, far more recently--just a couple of days ago, in fact.

Speaking of which, you can learn more about--and back a boxed release of--this colorized and otherwise enhanced version of Tangram Games' flagship title via the Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe Kickstarter that ends on May 4.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe title screen

The Gay Gamer: What prompted you to make a deluxe version of Tobu Tobu Girl? Also, when did you make the decision to go this route and when did you get started on it?

Simon: We had been toying around with this idea all the way back when the game was early in development but never went beyond some some colored mock-ups. Tobu Tobu Girl was our first GameBoy project, so we already had our hands full making it work on the DMG.

It wasn't until First Press Games approached us in late 2018 suggesting a "deluxe" version to go with the physical release that we actually started working on it. The (non-GameBoy) game we were working on at the time was not really working out, so this seemed like a nice distraction. As much as we like the original grayscale version, the DMG screen is not very suited for the fast gameplay of Tobu Tobu Girl, so we always felt like the game was best played on a GameBoy Color or Advance anyway. That seemed like a good reason to make a proper colored version.

Early Tobu Tobu Girl color mock-up

The Gay Gamer: Is Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe simply a colorized version of the original game, or is there more to this project than that?

Simon: Besides the obvious addition of colors, a lot of the in-game graphics have been overhauled, both in the grayscale and color versions.

We are also working on some larger additions to the game that we unfortunately can’t reveal too much about yet since some of it is tied to the Kickstarter stretch goals. But we promise there will be some really cool new features regardless of whether any of the stretch goals are met.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe "Clouds" stage

The Gay Gamer: Have you encountered any problems or issues while turning the original game into Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe? If so, can you talk about a few of them and how you overcame them?

Lukas: While at first glance it might have seemed pretty straightforward colorizing the four-shade graphics of the original game, it did come with its share of challenges. Since no (eight-by-eight-pixel) tile can consist of more than four different colors, and no more than eight unique four-color palettes can be present at any time, I had to rework a lot of the tile-based assets from the original.

Especially the score tally screen illustrations were heavily altered to fit the color restrictions, as you would have a tile consisting of the background color, outline, skin, skin shade, jacket, and the shading on the jacket. In the grayscale version, these are just four colors, whereas in the color version I would often end up having tiles like these with five or six different colors.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe "Space" stage

Another problem was the issue of choosing colors that would present well on the GameBoy Color screen. The RGB colors do not translate to the GameBoy Color screen like they would on a standard monitor and generally look more washed-out. Although most emulators have ways of emulating this effect, none of them really seemed to emulate it that closely, so this led to a lot of trial and error.

Simon: On the programming side, this process has mostly been fairly simple. Most of the effort went into writing and rewriting tools for getting the assets into the game. All the new assets increased the amount of data in the game quite a bit, so we had to restructure the ROM’s layout to make everything fit nicely. This hasn’t been a major issue though, since cartridges for the physical release--and any decent flash carts--have way more memory available than we’d ever need.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe "Dream" stage

The Gay Gamer: Tobu Tobu Girl was made to the original GameBoy's specifications. Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe is being made to the GameBoy Color's specifications. Surely this means your next project will be Tobu Tobu Girl Advance, made to the specifications of the GameBoy Advance? Seriously, though, do you ever see yourselves making a proper sequel to Tobu Tobu Girl?

Simon: For now, I doubt we will ever make a sequel. We have already put more time and energy into Tobu Tobu Girl than we ever planned to, and I think I speak for both of us when I say we’re ready to do something else. Overall, we are also pretty happy with the final design: each enemy serves a specific purpose and I think the game allows a decent amount of player expression with only a few core mechanics. If we would ever decide to make a sequel, it would be because we wanted to make a fundamentally different game.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe menu screen

The Gay Gamer: Can we ever expect to see Tobu Tobu Girl or Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe for sale on the Nintendo Switch (or even the 3DS) eShop? If so, when? And if not, why?

Simon: While that would be pretty cool, it is highly unlikely. I don’t think Nintendo would ever allow any emulated games on the eShop. And even if that was the case, I hear getting games certified for consoles is also huge pain. We are making games for fun, not for profit, so we would rather put that energy into making something new.

See also: the Tobu Tobu Girl review I wrote for Hardcore Gaming 101

Check out the Tobu Tobu Girl review I wrote for Hardcore Gaming 101

To those of you who are sick of me writing, tweeting, or otherwise chatting about Tangram Games' Tobu Tobu Girl, I'm sorry.

Don't worry, I'll return to blogging and blathering on about other games soon enough.

In the meantime, please consider reading the Tobu Tobu Girl review I wrote for Hardcore Gaming 101. I think it'll help you understand why I adore the game so much.

Speaking of which, one of the reasons I love Tobu Tobu Girl is that it reminds me of Nintendo's Balloon Kid. As I say in my HG101 review of the former, "both [games] star plucky girls. Both begin with loved ones--a brother in Balloon Kid, a cat in Tobu Tobu Girl--carried away by balloons. Both feature gameplay that regularly makes you feel like you’re a pinball ricocheting around the screen."

That's where the similarities end, though. Again, from my review: "Whereas Balloon Kid is a unique spin on the side-scrolling platformer genre, Tobu Tobu Girl is an arcadey, twitchy, high-score-chasing affair that’s akin to Ferry Halim’s Winterbells. Much like that 2006 effort, the main objective in Tobu Tobu Girl is to quickly climb the screen by bouncing off anything and everything in your path. In Winterbells, that means bells and birds; in Tangram Games’ title, it means birds, bats, ghosts, and even aliens."

On a related, note, Tangram Games recently teamed up with First Press Games to launch a Kickstarter for Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe, a GameBoy Color-enhanced reworking of the original.

Although a free, open-source ROM of Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe will be released in a few months, backers of this Kickstarter will receive physical (boxed) copies of the game.

See also: 'Ten questions with the guys behind the best GameBoy game you've probably never played, Tobu Tobu Girl'

Ten questions with the guys behind the best GameBoy game you've probably never played, Tobu Tobu Girl

Back in late 2017, a little two-man company called Tangram Games released a homebrew GameBoy title called Tobu Tobu Girl.

I became aware of Tobu Tobu Girl just before it hit the internet (digitally) and Tangram Games' shop page (physically), but ignored both iterations for some time after that because I assumed it wouldn't be very good.

In the immortal words of Vivian Ward, Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman, "Big mistake. Big. Huge!" You see, after I finally got around to trying Tobu Tobu Girl, I basically spent the next six or so months slapping myself silly for failing to nab a boxed copy of it.

If only I'd watched GameBoyle's BoyCurious Tobu Tobu Girl review earlier. In it, host Mat declares this to be one of the best titles he's played on Nintendo's first handheld game console. That sounds like a ridiculous claim, I know. But after putting more hours than I'd like to admit into it, I can say with some confidence that Tobu Tobu Girl actually is one of the finest GameBoy games around.

Tobu Tobu Girl both looks, feels, and sounds--this last bit is thanks to artist potato-tan--like something Nintendo or maybe HAL Laboratory would produce. Every single aspect of it is as clean and tight as can be. Even better, it's endlessly enjoyable and entertaining--quite a feat when you're talking about a title with just four stages, each of which can be finished in under a minute.

Now you know why I can't seem to shut up on Twitter about the recently launched Kickstarter for Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe, a GameBoy Color-enhanced reworking of the original.

In an effort to raise awareness about both Tobu Tobu Girl and the just-mentioned Kickstarter for its colorized follow-up, I'm finally publishing this interview I did with Tangram Games' Lukas Erritsø Hansen and Simon Larsen well over a year ago.

The Gay Gamer: You first started work on Tobu Tobu Girl back in 2014, as part of the third GBJAM game jam. Did you come up with the idea on the spot, specifically for that event? Or had you been thinking of it for a while beforehand?

Simon: The idea was something we came up with during the jam. We wanted to make a game with a musical element, where everything in the game would be synced up to the music and parts of the music would be produced by player’s actions. Sort of like a 2D platformer meets Rez. Though what we ended up submitting for the jam was nothing like that. In the end we didn’t even manage to put in any sound at all.

The Gay Gamer: The version of Tobu Tobu Girl you produced for GBJAM 3 was pretty different from the one you made available to the masses in late 2017. Why did you change it so drastically? Were you unhappy with how the GBJAM 3 version looked or played?

Simon: I think the main reason was simply that the initial idea wasn’t very fun. We initially wanted everything to sync up to the music, but that quickly proved too restrictive so we moved in a more puzzle-like direction. After the jam, we still weren’t very happy with how the game played and kept tweaking the design until we at some point decided that a more arcadey and twitchy gameplay style was simply more fun and closer to something we’d enjoy ourselves.

Lukas: Regarding the look of the game, we did intend to keep the style and assets from the jam version. However, during the time that we were working on the game I was at a point of rapidly improving my drawing and spriting skills. About two years into the project, I just couldn’t stand looking at the game, and as such redrew just about every sprite.

The Gay Gamer: Can you explain some of the biggest changes you made to the game from its 2014 build to its 2017 one? For instance, the early version was kind of like a single-screen puzzler, while the latest version is more of a twitchy score-attack game. Also, the early version didn't have an HUD, while the latest one does--and you moved it from the bottom of the screen to the side during development. How did you settle on those alterations?

Lukas: We early on decided to change the core concept to something more akin to Winterbells. I think having some kind of scrolling was important to us at the time. In the early version you navigated the screen by simply bouncing on enemies, like in the jam version essentially. At some point we decided to add power-ups to the game, an include that on one hand added a lot of variation to the game but also muddied the concept a bit. In the end we took the power-ups we found added most to the game and incorporated them into the set of core mechanics, the dashes and “boosting.”

Simon: The HUD was added when we introduced power-ups. The player would collect orbs scattered throughout the level, and once they had gathered enough, they would be rewarded with a random power-up. The HUD was added in order to show the player how many orbs they had collected, as well as their progress through the stage. Problem was, the HUD covered more than 10 percent of the screen vertically, which made the game significantly harder, so we had to move it to the side instead. Luckily, this also made the progress tracker much better, as it would now move up vertically along with the player.

The Gay Gamer: Did you look to any existing games for inspiration while creating the first version of Tobu Tobu Girl? If so, which ones?

Simon: I think I’d been playing a lot of Rez and Electroplankton at the time and was in love with this idea of the gameplay influencing or possibly even creating the music as you play. However, in terms of the actual gameplay I don’t think we were really inspired by anything in particular.

The Gay Gamer: And how about the current version of Tobu Tobu Girl--did your sources of inspiration change at all when went to alter its gameplay?

Lukas: I was playing a lot of Ultra Street Fighter 4 at the time. There’s a character in that game that relies heavily on these sort of teleport-like dashes. I really wanted to try to imitate the snappiness that I felt playing that character. As strange as it may sound that ended up being a defining point in the design process. When it came to the actual implementation of that core mechanic, that took quite a few tries and approaches before arriving at what ended up in the game.

The Gay Gamer: The first thing that struck me when I saw footage of Tobu Tobu Girl was how much it reminded me of Nintendo's Balloon Kid. Specifically, your game almost seems like a sideways take on that GameBoy classic. Is that connection intentional or accidental?

Simon: Completely accidental. Neither of us actually knew about Balloon Kid when making the game, but I can definitely see where the comparison is coming from. I think Upwell--as in, Downwell but upwards--is more fitting, though that wasn’t something we were really aiming for either.

The Gay Gamer: What does the "tobu tobu" part of this game's name mean? A quick check of Jisho.org says "tobu" usually means to fly, soar, or jump. Did you have any particular translation or localization in mind when you came up with the title Tobu Tobu Girl?

Simon: We don't really have an “official” translation but it is supposed to mean something like “Jump Jump Girl.” The title is an homage to Japanese titles like Noby Noby Boy, Doki Doki Panic, ChuChu Rocket! We are obviously very inspired by Japanese games in general and we wanted the title to reflect that. Same goes for the box art--both for the jam version and the final release.

The Gay Gamer: Did you encounter any particular problems or issues while making either version of Tobu Tobu Girl? If so, what were they--or what were the worst--and how did you overcome them?

Lukas: Graphics-wise the main challenge came partly from the limited sprite and tile count, and partly from the limited color palette. Making sure the sprites are easily readable from the background was a problem and something I don’t think we entirely succeeded at. In regards to the sprite count, I don’t think there’s any animation used in the actual game that has more than two frames. Due to the limited tile count, I probably spent more time reducing and keeping each background to the allowed amount of tiles than I spent drawing them.

Simon: Perhaps the biggest challenge was getting the physical edition ready. You obviously can’t just call some company and have GameBoy cartridges made in 2017, so figuring out how to do that in a feasible and affordable way was quite difficult, and at some point we were convinced it would never happen. Even something as simple as getting high-quality manuals and cardboard boxes manufactured in such a small quantity was not trivial. These challenges are ultimately the reason why the game was so long in the making. In the end it was definitely worth it, though.

The Gay Gamer: What are the main challenges of making a GameBoy game that plays on actual hardware? 

Simon: The main challenge was definitely to make sure the game ran at a nice and stable frame rate. Tobu Tobu Girl game is fairly fast-paced and even the slightest slowdown is very noticeable and is likely to throw you off and kill you. Often we would add some new feature only to have the game suddenly slow down. Then we would have to either optimize it, remove it, or get rid of something else. This can of course be quite frustrating, but it also helps you prioritize which elements are really necessary.

Another big challenge was the music and sound effects. The GameBoy does not really have any functionality for this--you can only tell it to play a certain frequency with a certain wave form at a certain volume. In order to add music, we had to implement a sequencer, which is basically a small program responsible for playing the right notes at the right time. potato-tan, the game’s composer, would write all the music in some weird music notation language we based on MML (Music Macro Language) that we could then convert into something the sequencer understands.

The Gay Gamer: Are you two GameBoy fans yourselves, or did something else spur you to develop a GameBoy game in 2017?

Simon: I used to be a pretty big GameBoy fan. I rarely play on it anymore, but I still adore it quite a lot. It was the first console I owned, so there is obviously a fair amount of nostalgia involved as well. However, I think the main reason is simply that it seemed like a fun challenge. I had played around with making GameBoy homebrew all the way back in 2010. Later in 2013, we wanted to participate in the second GBJAM game jam and decided it would be more fun to make an actual GameBoy game. We ended up making an (also unfinished) prototype of a GameBoy game called Super Catacombs. About a year later, we once again participated in GBJAM, this time working on what would become Tobu Tobu Girl.

Lukas: I’ve only very recently acquired a GameBoy, though I did own one as a kid. In that regard I’m not much of an actual GameBoy or even retro fan. The main draw was the challenge of making the game run decently on actual hardware. That meant seriously limiting frame count on animations and very laboriously reducing the count of unique tiles on each background.

See also: previous 'ten questions with...' posts featuring auntie pixelante, Peter Bartholow (of Indivisible fame), Dudedle Studio, the guys who created Wizorb, the guy chiefly responsible for the English fan translation of Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love, and the makers of THE 'DENPA' MEN 2

Don't miss your chance to own one of the best GameBoy games around: Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe

I haven’t said much (if anything?) about it here, on Twitter, or on Facebook, but I absolutely love Tobu Tobu Girl.

If this is the first you’re hearing of it, Tobu Tobu Girl a homebrew GameBoy title that was made by Tangram Games--though potato-tan produced its brilliant soundtrack--and released back in late 2017.

In a nutshell, Tobu Tobu Girl is an old-school arcade-action game. I like to think of it as Nintendo’s Balloon Kid turned on its side, although that description isn’t entirely accurate. Still, hopefully it puts a pleasant picture in your head.

Why am I bringing up all of this now? Because the guys at Tangram just launched, with the help of with First Press Games, a Kickstarter for Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe. Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe basically is a GameBoy Color-esque reworking of the original title--though like any GBC game, it’ll play on original GB hardware, too.



Anyway, between now and May 4, people can pledge money toward physical copies of Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe via the Kickstarter in question.

For $55 or more, you can secure a “Regular Edition” copy of the game, which includes a cartridge, a cartridge case, an outer box, an inlay that holds the cartridge and case, an instruction manual, and a collector’s coin.

For $70 or more, you can secure a “Limited Edition” copy of Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe. This version includes all of the above plus a double-sided poster and potato-tan’s marvelous soundtrack pressed onto a pair of mini-CDs.

Not quite ready to drop that kind of cash on a game you’ve yet to play? Go try the original release of Tobu Tobu Girl. The ROM is free and should be playable on any GameBoy emulator.