Unique Games: Bubble Ghost

There are plenty of great games on the Game Boy. Zelda Link's Awaking, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Dr. Mario. The list goes on and on, but there's one little incredibly underrated game that hardly anyone has heard of. And that's Bubble Ghost!

Bubble Ghost is a maze game, but unlike most maze games where you're confined to the walls of a maze or labyrinth. In Bubble Ghost, you play as a ghost who can actually go through walls, however there's a bubble floating about, and the little ghost wants to leave this old house with his bubble in tact. Issue is, there's plenty of stuff there to burst your precious little bubble.

Be it spikes, flames, hard dryers, or even the heat emitted from candles can burst your little bubble. The idea is simple. You move from room to room, blowing your bubble away from any objects until you get to the final room whereby you can escape from the house with your bubble. The game has a total of 35 levels, and the GameBoy version has a great sound track. I had this game for quite some time and never thought about the game's roots. I always thought that as it was released by Pony Canyon, a Japanese Software and media company, I thought it came from the east. But I was amazed to find out that it was originally developed closer to home...

Surprisingly, it was originally released on the Commodore 64 in France and later ported to the Atari ST and DOS in the US and Canada. What's more interesting about this version is the fact that the ghost sprite looks different. Clearly the GameBoy version, had it's design of the sprite not just so it would appeal to the Japanese audience, but so that it could fit on the GameBoy screens lower screen resolution so that it wouldn't be too big on-screen.

The PC-DOS version of the game is now abandon-ware. Meaning that you can download the game without the fear of being accused of pirating. As Christophe Andrcani, the designer and programmer of the original game, doesn't own the rights to it any more. Nor do Accolade, they went bust in 1999, and didn't take the publishing rights of the game either.

Not only is the PC-DOS game abandon-ware, but there's a remake of the GameBoy version done by Vision Software and Brothers Soft. You can download this right here.

Before I go though, here's the music to the GameBoy game that brings back some good memories of gaming's past!

Remember those water games?

Yeah, I have no idea how this came to mind, but remember those water games back in the eighties...?

Yeah, for some odd reason, I reminded myself of these games. It's simply a tank of water, a pump, some plastic rings and a set of hooks. The game is really simple, it's a skill game where you press the button and depending on how hard you press the button the rings will get launched with an air bubble and you hope that you can get some rings on the hooks. Very similar to those ring toss games at fun fairs, except this is done with water, and made to look as if it's a faux video game.

Ring-Toss was the most common Tomy water game that I used to see in the eighties and early nineties.

 There were a few Tomy Water games based on actual video games.

There are plenty of Water Games that were not made by Tomy that took a lot of their ideas

I never owned any of the water games back as a kid, however in 1997, I received this GameBoy shaped water game, with shower gel inside, at Christmas; along with my copy of Lylat Wars on the N64, and a second controller. Made by Grosvenor, not Tomy, the game was pretty the classic ring toss game of old, except this time there were two pumps. These were on the A and B buttons on the GameBoy shaped water game (the d-pad is just decoration), the B button would control a pump on the left hand side of the screen, and the A button would control the pump on the right hand side of the screen. So yeah, Ring toss with two pumps! Well, at the time, with my N64 and all, a Water Game wasn't terribly exciting, and the most use that it ever got was to use it's generic smelling shower gel. But if I got this as a kid of 6 years old I would've loved the damn thing!

For some reason I wanted one as a kid, but never asked for it... Maybe there was just some toy I wanted over the Water game that I got instead, but I just look at these with rose tinted eyes and remember the late eighties and early nineties...


UPDATE: After talking to Focus from the GameGavel forums about water games, he told me that he has one on his iPhone, so after a bit of searching, low and beyhold, there's a water game app you can get on iOS and Android...  Crazy...  It's fortunate that it's free, I wouldn't pay for it! >:P

Water Bubble Ring Toss for Android...

Water Bubble Ring Toss of iOS...

Unique Games: Dot Stream

In the final days of the GameBoy Advance in 2006, a collection of contemporary games were released in Japan called the Bit Generations Series. It was a set of seven games sold individually at a budget price, are were packaged in a unique box that were smaller than the standard Japanese GBA game boxes. Out of the seven games, one really stands out, it's called Dotstream; if you're a retro game fan, you'll easily notice how it has a similarity to the likes of the Tron light cycles, or Intellivision's Snafu, but this game is different, it's actually a racing game!

So, how does a game like Tron and Snafu become a racing game? Well, I'll tell you. The idea of Dot Stream is that you play as a coloured dot that constantly moves forwards and can shift up and down to change lanes. You don't actually control the acceleration of your dot using the buttons, to get faster you have to get close to the colour line that's in first place to increase your dot's speed. No dot can have the same space, it's hard to describe, but there's lanes, you just don't see them in the pictures, but when you play the game you'll know what I mean by this. Unlike Tron or Snafu, Dots and lines can cross, but as mentioned before, a dot can't be in the same "lane" that's been occupied by another line, your dot just gets automatically moved to the next nearest "lane". As you climb your way up to first place, you have to take advantage of zippers, avoid obstacles and pay attention to any dots that are speeding up behind you from your trail. You have 3 lives in each race, or "Drawing" as it's called in this game, as your dot draws a line of course, if you lose all 3 lives in a track, you forfeit your chance to earn any points in the Grand Prix.

In later levels you can pick up items in similar vein to Super Mario Kart, you pick them up and can activate them using the A button. There are three items, a Star, a playback symbol, and a diamond. The Star when activated will darken the playfield that makes a higher chance of you opponent racers to crash into walls and obstacles. Activating the playback symbol causes the screen to go inverted and pauses your fellow racers as you continue to move for an extra 3 seconds to reach first place. The Diamond adds a booster shown in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, these boosters can then be used by pressing the R Button, they act just like the mushroom in Mario Kart.

The Dotted area shown here will slow you down if you touch it

You must avoid these obstacles, or you will lose a life

There are a total of 5 Grand Prix's. When you come first in any of the Grand Prix's, you unlock a "Formation" game. This isn't so much of a racing game, but more of an "Avoid-em-up". The first Formation game you unlock is where you collect pink orbs to increase a power bar at the bottom of the screen and avoid any in coming obstacles. The power bar is made up of squares, and filling up a square will earn you a new dot and line. This is where it gets tricky because you'll be game over if the new dot hits an obstacle. You can control the new line by holding the A button and pressing up and down on the Dpad, however the first dot will move too. So it turns into a a juggling act as you try to manage to pick up more orbs to collect new dots, but try not to hit anything at the same time either. It gets very tough once you get 4 dots on the screen at once!

Dot Stream on the GBA didn't get a Western release, nor did the other Bit Generation games, although there was a trademark made by Nintendo of America called "Digiluxe" that was rumoured to be the Western version of the Bit Generations games. However with the demise of the GBA, the Bit Generation series did get it's way onto the DSi and the Wii with the "Art Style" name. In-fact Dot Stream got it's own "Art Style" game called "Light Trax" on WiiWare. Light Trax pretty much is the sequel to the GBA Dot Stream game, and incorporates different directions, 3D camera angles, and a "Cruise" mode whereby you "drive" your dot on a highway, and drive through exits to unlock new Grand Prix's.

That's not all though, there are clones of Dot Stream on Xbox Indie games, there's Stream Line (Above) and Bit Stream (Below). These two games play A LOT like Dot Stream and Light Trax.

Nintendo Power-esque TIP!

There's a pit stop in each level of the game, stop at one and you'll receive 9 boosts! Just be aware that you'll be stopped until you fill up with all 9 boosts.

Review for Motocross Maniacs on the GameBoy

One game I freaking loved on the GameBoy as a kid was a motocross racing game called Motocross Maniacs, developed by Konami and published by Ultra. I originally had this game on a pirated cart that my Grandparents got for me on holiday to Lanzarotti. It came with four games on one cartridge, with a label on it that says “Game Carpridge”! The four games were Doctor Mario, Klax, Battle City and Motocross Maniacs. When I was younger I had played Excite Bike as it was in a collection of video games at my local Youth Club, the same place where I got to play an NES and Super Mario Bros for the first time, and I wasn't good at Excite Bike at all. But what's interesting with the Motocross Maniacs was that it was a clone of Excite bike, but made it more exciting as you would pull off insane tricks and go through loop the loops with turbo nitros. I sold the four in one cart to a pawn shop when I was a Teen, as I wanted to get a copy of Wetrix on the N64, what a crazy decision that was! Later on I bought a copy on eBay and relived an awesome unloved GameBoy Classic!

You could treat this game as a plagiarisation of Excite Bike, it feels very much like the game, to a certain extent it even copies game play mechanics in the Commodore 64 game, Kik-Start. The game is side scrolling, and you accelerate to the right, and you press left and right on the Dpad to lean back and forth. Oh yes! Even Trials have taken this concept, but where this game is at least a little to Excite Bike, Kik-Start and Trials is as I said above, there's Nitro! Now OK there's a Turbo boost in Excite Bike, but the nitro in this game is different. Rather than a constant thrust, it's a sudden burst of speed, and you'll use this on ramps (almost) all the time, and unlike Excite Bike, the Nitros are limited in Motocross Maniacs. 

Unlike Excite Bike, but more like Trials and Kik-Start, the game doesn't have lanes, rather it's a strictly side view on a single lane. There are three game play modes, Solo, Vs Computer and Vs 2-Player. Solo is simply a single player affair whereby you need to finish 2 laps of a track within a qualifying time, Vs Computer is a race between you a computer controlled racer, in order to win each track you need to beat the computer. And Vs 2-Player is simply the two player mode where you would use a link cable between you and a buddy and race each other.

As I said above, what makes this different to Excite Bike are the crazy loops and platforms you have to go through and over. If you want to get through those loops you'll need nitro, but again you'll need to keep an eye on your nitro counter on the bottom right of the screen in case you start to run out, but most loops will have power ups to extend your nitro and time, so they're still worth doing. Later on in the game, you'll have much more complicated loops and platforms, many of these have been used in Trails, most of these you might have to use your nitro two or three times to get around. So you'll really have to economise on those nitros in later levels.

What makes this game different to the other games are power ups. There are six power ups that you can collect in this game, each power up is simply a letter. N For Nitro, pick this up to earn an extra nitro boost, S for Speed, this will allow you to push up your gears to get extra speed, but if you fall over you'll lose it. R for Radius Tires, this allows you to handle ramps better, and again if you lose it if you crash. T for Time, earn extra time in the game, I forgot to mention that not only do you have a qualifying time, but there's a timer where if it hits zero it's game over, grabbing "T"'s will increase the time you have in the level. J for Jet, this allows you to use nitros to keep yourself air born, but you'll still have to keep an eye on the nitros that you are using up. And finally there's a power up with no letter as it's invisible, but there are 3 "Mini Maniacs" that you can collect in each stage, and they're achieved by performing flips off certain ramps with good timing.

The music in the game might sound a little off for a stunt racing game, but it's really catchy. It's hard to describe how good the music is without actually playing it, so here's a Youtube video!

The game itself is a bit of an unloved classic in my book, for a GameBoy game it's one of the better early GameBoy games that should be in everyone's collection. If you enjoyed Excite Bike, Kik-Start and/or Trials, this is a game you should hunt for and play it. It's well worth finding a copy!