Nintendo has added three Game Boy games to Nintendo Switch Online, just in time for a special occasion.
Nintendo first released the Game Boy in Japan in April 21, 1989. For its 35th anniversary, the company decided to bring back the three games that they released to launch the console worldwide on Nintendo Switch Online. Of course, all three games are on the Game Boy app, but what may surprise is you is all three games released before Tetris, the game which would eventually become the console’s pack-in game, and became its system seller before the advent of Pokemon.
But let’s set Tetris and Pokemon aside and talk about these three launch Game Boy games. Super Mario Land is one of the strangest games in the Nintendo franchise, an off model version of Mario, that was made by Nintendo themselves.
This game was not made by the original Mario team, with Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Instead it was made by R&D1, the team led by Satoru Okada. R&D1 worked with Gunpei Yokoi to design the Game Boy, and so they seemed best suited to come up with games to show off its features.
R&D1 knew they had to make a Mario game, but also worked around constraints. For example, you couldn’t scroll back to the left like you could on the NES Mario games. Of course, we would see in later games that the Game Boy could allow you to go left and right, so R&D1’s real limitation was being pressed for time.
That’s the reason Super Mario Land is so short. But on top of that, R&D1 also took the opportunity to play with some design ideas that the main Mario team didn’t use on their games. For that reason, some levels had Mario board a ship, turning the game into a scrolling shooter, and fireballs were replaced by bouncing balls. As video game designer Anna Anthropy explained in this level design lesson, R&D1 demonstrated a playfulness uniquely their own in level 1-3, giving players different options to play if you were big or small Mario.
Baseball is essentially a port of the same baseball game that R&D1 themselves made for the NES in 1983. They innovated on this version with two player multiplayer, enabled decades before WiFi by the Game Boy Link Cable.
Alleyway is what is popularly referred to as a Breakout clone, but it really shows more inspiration from a contemporary Taito game, Arkanoid. While Atari’s Breakout set the template with a paddle swinging a ball around to hit and eliminate blocks in different formations, Arkanoid upped the ante with special items that modify how the paddle and ball behaves, and even includes level skips.
Alleyway could not be played with a paddle/dial controller, so R&D1 designed the game around this limitation. The ball has its own unique physics that makes it possible to finish the game. For example, the ball only travels in 15°, 30°, or 45° angles, and it is not possible to put the ball into an infinite loop.
Later releases of the game revealed that it’s actually Mario who enters the paddle in Alleyway and pilots it around. Sadly, we never got to see Mario fight D’Oh in an Alleyway / Arkanoid crossover, not even so much as a Smash Trophy. But it’s never too late.
In the meantime, dad gamers, and their kids who want to laugh at their dad’s games, can download and play these games on the Game Boy app if you have an active Nintendo Switch Online subscription now. You can also watch the trailer below.
