Let's Play Every GameBoy Color Game, Part 6
Updated: Feb 22, 2021
Previous part: https://www.vgfamily.com/post/let-s-play-every-gameboy-color-game-part-5
Today's batch is maybe the best so far:
Conker's Pocket Tales (Rare, 1999)
The forgotten first game in the Conker series, this was originally meant to be a gothic Zelda-like. Apparently after seeing an early version of Bad Fur Day, the team on this decided to make Conker the player character and pivot to a fantasy theme. Evil Acorn kidnaps Conker's girlfriend and steals his birthday presents, which he has to get back or "his birthday will be ruined." The game is as bad as Conker's relationship apparently is, with annoying music, blurry graphics, and boring gameplay. Hard pass.
Cool Bricks (Sales Curve/Freestylez, 1999)
Literally just Breakout.
Croc (THQ/Virtucraft, 2000)
Sure, it looks like just another GBC mascot platformer, but this one is actually pretty good for the simple reason that you move absurdly fast. Croc just absolutely flies across the screen and has a pretty big health pool, so it felt like I was doing a speedrun even though I've never played this game before. I may come back to it, and it really should be in a GDQ someday if it hasn't already.
Croc 2 (THQ/Natsume, 2001)
This truly has nothing to do with the previous game, but it's also pretty fun. It's a top down action game now, but there's some platforming and puzzle elements in there as well. And Croc's design is pretty great.
Cross Hunter: Monster Hunter, Treasure Hunter, and X Hunter versions (Game Village, 2001)
Three versions of the same game, but all starring different protagonists and with different starting locations and starting locations. MH follows three brothers who want to be great warriors, TH a guy who wants to be the greatest treasure hunter, and X a guy who came from space. I didn't play enough to know where it goes from there, but it's a neat concept and I'd give it a go if it were ever modernized. The Japanese text in the original versions is not good to look at, unfortunately.
Cruis'n Exotica (Midway/Crawfish Interactive, 2000)
A port of the arcade game. It gets surprisingly close to the gameplay, but the other cars are just yellow blobs and the backgrounds have lost all their character. It does have two new modes that weren't in the arcade (Freestyle and Circuit), although they take place on the same tracks and don't see to add much. I guess you could do worse.
Crystalis (Nintendo/Nintendo Software Technology, 2000)
A port of an NES game that was decently well-received. You're a wizard in the post apocalypse who needs to stop a techno-wizard that took over the world, and you do that by collecting four elemental swords. Gameplay was very Zelda from what I saw, although with a much more involved story alongside. Another one I'd like to see on a modern system.
Cubix: Robots for Everyone - Race 'N Robots (3DO/Blitz Games, 2001)
Probably the longest English title so far. It's just a top-down racer with nothing particularly notable other than that the AI really, truly sucks on Easy. Can't recommend it over some of the other racers I've seen so far.