Second Playthrough | Birthday 1994 - Game Boy Starts gettin' good

The Game Boy eventually had one of the best libraries of any system ever, and in mid-1994 I started to really explore it.

I was highly anticipating my birthday in 1994, I was turning 5 and my mother had promised that it would be a big one. I was about to start school and my parents had told me that doing well in school was my responsibility, but that I would be rewarded - and I was with three new Game Boy games. More importantly (yes even than new games) was that I would start to receive a weekly allowance - contingent on doing all of my chores and doing well in school. Thus began my era of saving money to buy video games (an era that is currently still going on!)

1. Donkey Kong

I talked previously about the fact that we had Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600. That game was incredibly limited, had bad graphics and was just not nearly as fun as other games I had access to even then. However, it was a name my parents knew and the first game I got for my Birthday that year was Donkey Kong for the Game Boy.

This version of Donkey Kong had actually only came out a few months before my August 30th Birthday in 1994 and quickly became my favorite game for the system. It's first level plays very similar to the original Donkey Kong game but then so much more starts happening, there is an overworld with levels bound together by themes, enemies and sub-bosses, different puzzle types and features and great level design.

I put countless hours into Donkey Kong and loved the saving feature (first game I had with one). I don't know if I ever actually beat the game, I replayed it recently to about half-way and had great fun doing so. 

Of the Donkey Kong Games before the venerable Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong for the Game Boy is without a doubt the best in my opinion.

2. Dr. Mario

I am fairly certain my parents went to a store like Best Buy, asked one of the people there 'is there a game like Tetris' and that person pointed them to Dr. Mario - and I am grateful for it! Dr. Mario can be described as like tetris in that it is a puzzle game with pieces falling from the top that need to be arranged, but it is also different in that your goal is not simply to survive by clearing enough of the puzzle to keep making room for more pieces, but to also clear the bottle of viruses and advance to the next stage.

I of course didn't put as much time into Dr. Mario as I had Tetris (I had many other games to play!) but I did love it and it was a great time waster on car trips (or other times when my parents just needed me to be quiet!).

3. Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters

The final game my parents got me in 1994 was Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters. Yet another Nintendo franchise that I began with the Gameboy version before playing the original on the NES (Super Mario and later Metroid and Zelda, and of course Donkey Kong as the 2600 version pales in comparison to the NES version).

Truthfully I don't recall much of this game. I remember liking it and comparing it to Kirby's Dreamland but being much more interested in Donkey Kong (and Metroid and Zelda I got later that year). I have since lost this game and couldn't play it for this blog post - I hope to pick it up again soon as I'm trying to add to my older NES, GB, SNES and Genesis collections so hopefully I can replay it soon.