Game Boy Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Pokémon Puzzle Challenge (Nintendo, 2000)

If it ain't broke, put Pokémon in it anyway.

Given that I've officially hit the point where I can play a game of Tetris DX for one million years, I've started looking at what other Game Boy puzzle games I can sink too much time into. Imagine me booting into Pokémon Puzzle Challenge only to discover I already played this a lot as a minigame in Animal Crossing: New Leaf! Both are actually descendents of a SNES block-swapping game called Panel de Pon, or Tetris Attack internationally, because Nintendo is good at having an idea and then just reusing it twenty times.

All Panel games involve swapping blocks horizontally, trying to make a row or column of three or more of the same color of block. My brain doesn't see matches as easily as it does openings in Tetris boards, so I suck at it, but it's still a good time. Puzzle Challenge's Pokémon theming is effectively (absolutely adorable) set dressing, as your party of the Johto starters and Pikachu mostly count as lives in the "story" mode where you "battle" gym leaders and the Elite Four, or as Professor Oak explains the game modes to you.

I feel like Puzzle Challenge is rather easy unless you intentionally crank the speed up (or force more rows on-screen with B) to make it more difficult. Like I said, I'm dog ass at this game, so maybe that's alright. While being a Pokémaniac isn't necessary to enjoy Puzzle Challenge, the visuals and music are lovely and carry that warm, wistful Johto charm on them. With lots of mode variety, score and progress saving, and good vibes all around, maybe it's best Nintendo didn't tamper with a good thing after all.

[#] Tetris (Nintendo, 1989)

Sure is Tetris!

Surely I don't have to explain to you what Tetris is, right? If I do—Grandma, how did you get on my site? And can you please stop telling me about your constipation issue? I know "it's a part of life", but there's a time and a place—maybe not ever for that, but y'know, you get my point. Anyway. Groupings of four blocks fall from the sky. Align them in rows. You get more points for the more simultaneous rows you knock out. Survive as long as you can.

I do love me a bit or even a lot of Tetris. This Game Boy one is certainly iconic, and time has been nothing but glowing to it, but I find it pretty hard to get excited about. The big thing for me: your tetrominoes are "dead" the moment they hit the bottom of the playfield—you can't move them, even briefly. This is okay at the start of the game, where it's easy to correct mistakes while in the air, but as things speed up, a single mistake can cost you a game very quickly. Maybe people are of the mindset that this makes for quicker and more unpredictable games, but I want to settle into a groove here!

It's also just not a particularly featureful version. It doesn't save scores, you can't hold blocks like some more recent versions of the game, there's no other modes. There is a two-player option, if you happen to have two consoles, a link cable, and a buddy with shit else to do. None of this is to say Game Boy Tetris is bad—if you like Tetris, this is fun at least for a little bit—it's just that it's 2026, and we have far better options for portable polyform placement games, don't we?

[#] Tetris DX (Nintendo, 1998)

It's all about the little details.

Now this is more like it! The original Game Boy Tetris might be a classic, but it's also kinda blah, with a fairly unforgiving engine to make long marathon games untenable. DX fixes all those issues in spades. More forgiving, more customizable, more modes, more colorful (unless you're running it on an original Game Boy, of course), high score saving, this is such a massive leap forward that it doesn't just make the original Tetris obsolete—this might be my favorite retro version of Tetris period, and it's certainly my idle go-to 3DS time-waster.

The single change that makes DX infinitely nicer to play is that blocks are not immediately dead once they hit the phalanx. You can spin and rotate blocks along the sides of the playfield or along the phalanx as needed, giving you serious breathing room up into the double digit speeds, and making trickier completes possible. Seriously, I can play this for a half hour straight, maybe longer. Pair that with the fact that it saves high scores, and it means you can play DX as more of a marathon puzzler, not just a quick sprint that dies the moment you make a mistake.

DX adds some additional complete variations, like a time attack mode, a timed 40 line clear, and a surprisingly tricky against-the-computer mode, for variety and replay value. While nowhere near as fancy visually as the Tengen NES Tetris, DX is easy on the eyes and has some cute little space shuttle animations to celebrate a particularly high score. It's hard to say much else! It's Tetris, no fluff, but everything you want. Maybe the lack of holding a block will keep some people from embracing Tetris DX. Spoiled fucking children.

[#] The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack (Conspiracy Entertainment, 2001)

Where do you want to go with your GBC today?

The fact that there is not one, but two very real Microsoft-branded Game Boy Color games is frankly more fascinating than anything about the carts themselves. To Windows users of a certain vintage, the Entertainment Packs are casual gaming royalty, and even if you've never played one, you've certainly played Minesweeper or FreeCell in Windows itself, both of which came from the Entertainment Packs. Best of nicely rebuilds a handful of them for the GBC, though it'd held back by its oddball and kinda lackluster game selection (should've added JezzBall). Where it's good, though, it's at least as entertaining as Clubhouse Games.

FreeCell is the best game on here, a mind-bending twist on solitaire where all cards are visible at once and you get four open cells for temporarily holding cards, but you can only move one card at a time. While theoretically all games are winnable, I find it a hell of a lot more difficult than normal solitaire, but plenty satisfying to fidget with nonetheless. Tut's Tomb is a version of pyramid solitaire that I didn't find as engaging, given the weird mechanic where only the three draw variant can reuse the draw pile (you thus choose between using the pile only once or having draw cards locked off from you), and TriPeaks is a weird scoring-focused actiony variant of solitaire that itched my brain.

You'd think SkiFree would be a slam dunk on the GBC, but I found it difficult to control, easy to cheese by spamming the jump button, and not very satisfying at all. Minesweeper is always fun, even if the d-pad is a poor substitute for a mouse. Life Genesis is a whole Game of Life simulator, mesmerizing if an absolutely bizarre fit for the GBC, and TicTactics is, well, 3D tic-tac-toe with predictably lame results. There's enough fun to be had and care put into these versions that I can't truly knock it, though, even if I have zero idea who it was aimed at or who would like it other than vintage Microsoft spergs like me. And, again—the main menu looks like Windows 95. That's fascinating.