Let's Play Every Game Boy Color Game, Part 33
Konchuu Hakase 3 (J-Wing, 2001)
It's not quite as unfinished as you might expect a 2001 J-Wing game to be, but they did cut the Pokemon-style towns for a dull overworld map that you navigate with a pointer, and the main character's "house" consists entirely of the dialogue screen above. I couldn't figure out how to actually catch any bugs, but I may have missed something in the many lines of text your dad spits out whenever you return home, which is the only point on the map at the start.
Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito (AlphaDream/Alphastar, 2001)
This was the debut game of the devs who'd go on to make the Mario & Luigi games, among others. It's a game that could never be localized to any other language because the whole battle system is built around kanji. You pick 20 of your available words (koto) at the start of battle, and then every turn you pick one from four randomly chosen words to play. It can go out as a monster, item, or spell, and it's gone for the rest of the battle once used. Your last four words go into the history, where you can combine them and get a special effect if the combination creates a third real kanji. Battles feature up to three monsters in front of the trainers, and you win by reducing trainer HP to 0. It's a very cool system with beautiful overworld graphics, but it's let down somewhat by an overly long tutorial and surprisingly terrible music.
Koushien Pocket (Magical Company, 1999)
A second game in the surprising genre of "play as any Japanese high school baseball team." This one is more of an arcade game than a management sim, although you still have a decent amount of team customization to work with. The main thing I noticed is that it's bizarrely difficult to actually hit the ball for a game as simple as it is, and the AI also seems to have trouble making decent contact.
The Land Before Time (Eclipse Entertainment/Conspiracy Entertainment, 2001)
This one makes me a bit sad because the music is amazing, but the platforming just isn't quite there. It's hard to tell what point on your triceratops marks when you start to fall, and jumps often require more precise movement than the game really allows for. Plus, you need to collect all of the stars to finish a level, and many of them are in places that are frustrating to reach.
Las Vegas Cool Hand (Tarantula Studios/Take 2 Interactive, 1998)
There sure were a lot of crappy gambling sims on GBC.
Laura (Planet Interactive/Ubisoft, 2000)
A Playmobil-licensed game where you play a young girl who has to go around helping people to awaken an old medallion and save the fairies. It seems like it's a long chain of fetch quests, but the graphics and music are decent, so I guess you could do worse. I'll remember it as the only game that's ever asked me to confirm I'm at least six years old.
Legend of the River King GBC (TOSE/Natsume, 1999)
Oddly, this was released as Legend of the River King GB in Europe even though it came out later. European games seem to not distinguish between GB and GBC most of the time. At any rate, it's a fishing game that combines an arcade-y system with the "usually nothing happens" tedium of reality, and also makes you go into the menu to re-bait your rod every time a fish gets away. I'm not sure who this is for.
Legend of the River King 2 (Victor Interactive Software, 2001)
The sequel had the same title in the US and Europe, but sadly they're both wrong this time because it's actually the fourth game in the series. There doesn't seem to be much new about it other than some better ambient sound effects and fish that are much harder to see in the water.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (Nintendo, 1998)
LA was the first game I ever played, but I didn't finish any version of it until 2019's Switch remake. I'd actually never played DX at all before today, and it's going to mostly stay that way for a while because I stopped after setting up the secret menu music. This is obviously going on the list, and it I might as well go from start to finish when I come back.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (Flagship/Nintendo, 2001)
I'm less sure of my history with OoA. I've made a few attempts at playing the Oracle games without ever getting very far, but I think it was always with Seasons. At any rate, this one is getting the same treatment as LA above - I checked to see if there's secret menu music (there isn't) and then quit. The list grows.
The list:
Golf Ou: The King of Golf
John Romero's Daikatana
Kakurenbou Battle Monster Tactics
Keitai Denju Telefang
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages