Let's Play Every GameBoy Color Game, Part 2
Updated: Feb 22, 2021
The one with all the strange spinoffs of established franchises.
Boku no Campjou (My Campsite) (Naxat Soft/D-1000 Project, 2002)
Harvest Moon is known as Bokujou Monogatari (Farm Story) in Japan, and while I don't know for sure that this game was meant to be a legally distinct reference to that, it does seem a bit suspect. At any rate, you're some kid running an empty campground for your dad. It actually seems like it could be kinda fun, but the intro was too long and slow for me to really see much.
You're probably wondering about why the screenshot shows me at a gun store. That's because you can go buy weapons within five seconds of getting control of your character. This campsite has rules, dammit.
Bomberman Max: Blue Champion (Vatical Entertainment, Hudson Soft, 1999)
It sure is Bomberman. Apparently there's monster battling later, but all I saw was wandering around pointlessly large levels and slowly blowing up enemies who barely fought back. The music is also terrible.
Bomberman Max: Red Challenger (Vatical Entertainment, Hudson Soft, 1999)
Speaking of pointless things, this is the same game with a different character sprite. There was also Bomberman Max: Ain Version, a Japan-exclusive version of this game that 2,000 people won in a sponsored contest. As far as I can tell, it is Blue Champion with a slightly different main menu.
Bomberman Quest (Electro Brain/Hudson Soft, 1998)
Bomberman draws inspiration from the Oracle games and turns purple for some reason. He also talks in this game and starts without any bombs equipped. It's pretty boring.
Bomberman Selection (Jupiter Corp/Hudson Soft, 2003)
A Korea-only compilation of the first two Bomberman games for the original GameBoy. Eagle-eyed readers might notice that the above screenshot is entirely in English despite this being a Korean game, and that's consistent with most of the rest of the game. It's possible that someone involved in this confused Korea with Kansas. Even more eagle-eyed readers might notice that 2003 is after the GBA released, or that Japan got a the same rerelease as Bomberman Collection with an additional game for the GB seven years earlier. All of this probably has something to do with Korean laws on importing Japanese media at the time, but you still have to wonder why *this* would be one of the few games to make it there.
Bouken! Dondoko-tou (Adventure! Dondoko Island) (Global-A Entertainment/D-1000 Project, 2002)
MC is a boy who dreams of the ocean, so he jumps on a boat by himself one day and sets sail. He falls asleep from playing too much and then wakes up in the middle of a storm that sinks his boat. MC is a terrible sailor. Some little bird thing finds him on Dondoko island and he meets some weird dog thing fighting a dinosaur. Then you get control and are free to move about a bunch of completely empty maps. I could not find the game.
Brava Saga Shinsou Astaria (Takara, 2001)
Everyone was playing baseball like they always do when your idiot robot friend hit a home run and broke the protection orb, which freed an evil genie. That amazing premise leads to seven billion lines of boring exposition and ultimately a bog-standard dungeon crawling RPG. I assume this is based on some anime, because despite all the exposition it is really not interested in explaining anything about why there are robot people everywhere.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (THQ/Game Brains, 2002)
In which Buffy walks down the street and gets into brawls with the Blue Man Group. It's mostly unremarkable other than some surprisingly good character art in the cutscenes and some surprisingly ill-considered attempts at voicing Buffy's kicks and punches. That sound is far more demonic than any vampire.
Bugs Bunny: Crazy Castle 3 (Nintendo/Kemco, 1999)
Bugs reads a book for too long and learns there's treasure in a castle. For some reason, getting that treasure means collecting tons of keys from a giant mountain of doors and also repeatedly murdering every other Loony Toons character. I killed Daffy Duck twice in the first two stages, and it looks like Tweety Bird was next.
Bugs Bunny in Crazy Castle 4 (Kemco, 2000)
Kemco made the fourth game in the series alone. It sees Bugs find a map of "C Castle" and decide it stands for "Carrot" even though this is the 4th time we've seen Crazy Castle. Bugs is a moron. The game is largely the same.