Bionic Commando: Elite Forces - Forget how to jump! Swing into enemies with your mighty claw!

The gameboy color was my system of choice during my time spent abroad in Germany. That was a rather turbulent era of my life so the games I played during that time are the ones I have the fondest memories of. While this particular game might not be familiar to you, as Bionic Command Rearmed 2 has been released less than a year ago. This game had some impressive features as it pulled off things I didn't think were possible on the little handheld at all. The question remains though if this game is worth your time? Read on.

Bionic Commando:  Elite Forces was released in 1999 and surprisingly enough it was developed by Nintendo Software Technology aka the Nintendo's American development team, are you aware that they even had one?!  Well they do and it turns out that they're not half bad!  This game is part of the long running "Bionic Commando" franchise that actually belongs to Capcom.  It borrows elements from the NES title so it almost feels like a remake but is actually quite different from it's predecessors in levels later on.  The premise is also different, as it takes place in a land called Karinia that is under constant attack by the Avars lead by evil mastermind:  Arturus.  Bionic commando Super Joe is deep within enemy lines having found the top secret plans of the Avars but ends up being captured, so it's up to the elite forces (THAT'S YOU!) to rescue Super Joe and stop Arturus once and for all!

You choose from either a male or female bionic commando but they both play the same and the one you don't end up picking becomes a side character that gives tips to you while you're inside a communication tower.  As an action-adventure title, you should know that there isn't a jump button anywhere in this little game.  In order to get around you have to rely on your bionic claw to take you where you need to go by swinging from point A to point B.  Stages start off simple enough as you clear simple gaps, but soon you'll be swinging above spike pits and climbing on ceilings but the difficult scales nicely so things won't get too hard too quickly!  You're also armed with an assault rifle but as you clear stages you'll be finding new weapons and equipment to take into levels with you.  There's also mini-games you can play like a "sniper" mode where you pick off soldiers from a distance and it features some surprisingly detailed blood for a game that has an "E for Everyone" rating.  Another gameplay feature is the top-down mode where the game plays something like Commando or Ikari Warriors as it's just straight-up run-and-gun gameplay which is always pretty fun.

For an Gameboy color game, the sprites are surprisingly well animated, particularly talking about the running and swinging animations.  Portrait sprites are goofy looking, mainly for the male commando, so the overall art style isn't so great.  Music is upbeat but nothing really amazing, it's just enough to get you pumped to do some shooting.  Amusingly enough, they managed to fit in digitized voice acting in this game, you hear the words "Sniper" or "choose your weapon", it's all pretty sporadic though, and you can barely understand it if you're not listening closely but it's all still pretty impressive given it's technology though.

All-in-all, this game was actually really good and it stayed true to the roots of the original Bionic Commando for the NES.  Whether it's as good as the titles before it is up for some heated debate though.  Don't get me wrong this game did a lot of things right, but it's just missing that special charm that made Bionic Commando so cool.  Still, this is a great Gameboy color game in it's own right so check it out.

Pocket Bomberman - The game where Bomberman learns how to jump.

When the Gameboy Color first came out, this was the first game I ever bought for it. Why? Well, just look at the box art! It features Bomberman in battle armor (with flowing cape!) about to fight a skull dragon near a waterfall. I don't care who you are, it left a cool impression on me when I first ran across it. But the game itself was actually pretty cool too, it tried to do something different with the classic Bomberman formula.  While I wouldn't call it a resounding success that forever changed the way Bomberman games were made, it was still a very interesting experiment for sure.

Pocket Bomberman was released in 1998 for the original Gameboy, but had a "Color" version come out a few months later. As usual, Hudson was behind the development of this little handheld game. Normally, bomerbman games are multiplayer experiences, but this game joins the select few titles where such a mode isn't available as this is purely a solitary experience. Starting up the game, you're treated to brief well-made cinematic intro telling a story about a land shrouded in darkness. In order to restore the light to the world, it's up to our hero, Bomberman, to find the 5 power stones and save us all, from darkness, yeah this isn't too exciting. Bomberman brandishing his sword was pretty cool though.  Too bad that sword is a huge lie as your only means of attack are nothing but bombs!  A bit more on this a little bit later.

This game has 25 levels, each split into 5 areas: jungle, wind, ocean, cloud, and evil. Instead of the over-top-camera view that most Bomberman games use, this one is 2D-sidescroller where you can jump! All the levels are pretty self-contained, as your objective is to kill everyone before you can enter the "exit" door. You pick up traditional Bomberman powerups like "bomb up" or "fire up" to upgrade your firepower, but be careful not to blow yourself up first! Really, the game itself is pretty easy, the biggest threat in the game is YOURSELF! There will be plenty of times where you try to be clever by using bombs as a jumping platform only to miss the timing and end up trapped in a hole with a bomb ready to go off right above you. On the 5 level of an area, you fight a boss who can pretty much move anywhere it wants to. You need to rely on pattern recognition and trap the boss in your bombastic fury.

This game's graphics are pretty colorful, but they look just as well on the regular gameboy as they do in color. It's a shame that the Bomberman sprite doesn't have the cool armor that he uses in the cinematics and the box art, that loses major points with me! The enemies and bosses are based off of monsters from previous games, so there's nothing terribly special going on here. True to the franchise, however, is the great music. As expected, this game is chock-full of classic bomberman tunes. In fact, I guarantee you'll be remember the first area's theme pretty well if you're bomberman fan!

It's a cute little game that is a bit on the short side with only 25 levels. To extend longevity, there's a special mode called "Jump Mode" where Bomberman is jumping forever and you need to plant bombs, avoid attacks, and climb upwards as far as possible before blowing yourself up. Beware, though, because this even on "Easy" this mode is pretty tricky! My biggest gripe with this game however, is that there is no swordplay in this game. Bomberman has a sword in the box art and cinematics, but NEVER USES IT! What the hell, man? That's like false-advertising or something but if Bomberman used a sword instead of bombs then he'd be known as Swordsman, right?!  Oh god. Other than that, this game is pretty cool with me. Of course, this isn't the only game to feature a jumping Bomberman, there's actually a few of them!  We'll talk about the N64 game sometime down the road.  In the meantime, check out some gameplay footage.

Power Quest - A.K.A "Spam AXE's low kick to win the game" game!

Fighting games on portable handhelds were something of an oddity back then. On the Gameboy, you only had 2 buttons and the D-pad to do all of your actions, and for most fighting games back then it simply wasn't enough. How can you keep a fighting game interesting if you could only use two buttons? It's a legitimate technological limitation, but Power Quest stood rose to the challenge, and gave us handheld fanatics a fighting game worth talking about today.

You can't hear it, but "1995" is playing right now.

Power Quest was released in the U.S in 1998 by Sunsoft for the Gameboy Color. Looking at the box art and super generic (but awesome sounding) title gives you the impression that this is an action game rather than something that belongs in the fighting genre. In fact, in Japan it went by the much more unique name "Gekitō Power Modeler" and it was published by Capcom! I decided to talk about this game today after talking about Gotcha Force as this game features a similar premise. The entire setting is that there's a new craze in town where every kid had miniature remote control robots that would battle with one another. As a kid in town, you win a contest for a free power model which you then use to fight your way to the top of social ladder and become world champion. Along the way, you take out a gang of cheating punks, put a misandrist girl in her place, and tragically part ways with a life-long friend. Not nearly as dramatic as I like to put it, but the game's story mode definitely tried to make things interesting for people who crave a single player experience.

There are only 6 playable characters that you get to choose from in this game. MAX is great for his punching power, GONG is the brutal-but-slow power house, LON is the Chinese martial artist, AXE is an alien-type who is also known as one of the cheapest characters in the game, SPEED is your speedy quick girl who specializes in kicks, and BOROT is just laughably useless as he only has one punch and can't block or jump. The names aren't the most creative, but they're just remote control models and don't really have personalities of their own. In the story mode, you buy parts to upgrade the attack power of your model and help enable it to pull off super combos. There's a surprisingly amount of variety in the moves for only two buttons, you'll find the fighting system to be very fun with it if you can find a friend who also has the cartridge, but that was impossible for me as a kid back then. The story mode has some cheap A.I but if you stick with Axe and use his low sliding kick, you'll be breezing right through it. AXE would probably be banned from tournaments because he is totally broken.

AXE's low kick is devastating.

Graphics are nicely animated for a Gameboy color game, which is great because each character has a surprising amount of moves they can use. AXE has a particularly notable victory animation where he lashes out his alien tongue which is pretty cool. Most of the story is carried out by goofy looking portraits of the kids and various adults you run across during the events of the game. A lot of them look like borderline Asian stereotypes, which I find a bit surprising as this game was made in Japan. They changed Louis's sprite to look more "American" in the international version, but he still looks like a jackass in both, so nothing to rage about here. The music is actually pretty great though, filled with many upbeat chip-tunes. The best song, according to many, happens to be "1995". Why the song is called "1995" is anyone's guess, but it's a great thing that they let you listen to the game's tunes at anytime via the sound test!

I never met a single human being who has played this game, as a I kid I would ask everyone if they had this, and they would assume I'm talking about something else like Quest 64. I know I'm not the only one who enjoyed this game though, as someone even went through the trouble of ripping the game's soundtrack which is a very noble endeavor indeed!  Even if you factor in the fact that AXE is overpowered, this game is still a lot of fun and it's one of the better fighting games you can find on the Gameboy Color.  Be sure to check out the video as "1995" plays right through it!