Game Boy Archive: m

1.15.2010

Mary-Kate and Ashley: Pocket Planner

BASIC INFO:
Title ....... Mary-Kate and Ashley: Pocket Planner (North America, Europe)
Players ..... 1 (with limited multiplayer functionality)
Genre ....... edutainment
Subgenre .... organizer
Platform .... Game Boy Color (2000)

STORY:
None.

GAMEPLAY:
Upon starting the software for the first time (or everytime after the battery dies), you are prompted to set the date and time. Then, you are asked for your first name, middle name, last name, street address, zip code, city, state, phone number, birthday, favorite color. You can skip all of these except entering your first name.

In the main menu, there are 6 options:

Calendar: Look at the calendar, add and edit events.
Friends: Reveals a submenu with 4 choices -
- G-mail: I'm taking a guess here, but I think this is something that lets you send messages to friends with a copy of the game.
- Friends: Maintain an address book.
- About You: You can edit your details here.
- Match Up: Have a friend type in the same stuff you did when you first booted up the game. You will then be told how much you have in common.
To Do: Stuff that is on the calendar for you to do today.
Fun Stuff: Reveals a submenu with 6 choices -
- Games: Reveals a submenu with 4 choices.
  - Drop to Shop: Help MK and Ashley shoplift! Catch the goods that one of them drops, while avoiding mops.
  - Fash Machine: Slots. You aren't actually betting anything, though.
  - Sliders: A 4x4 sliding puzzle.
  - Match 'em: Memory. 30 cards are turned, face down. You turn them over, 2 at a time, trying to make matches. Matches are removed, non-matches are flipped back onto their face.
- Crush: A "Crush Indicator". You are instructed to point the Game Boy and press A, with the implication that you will find out whether or not the person you are pointing at has a crush on you. Apparently, my laptop has a pretty big thing for me (I love you, too, Lappy).
- Ask Ashley: Magic 8 ball, essentially.
- Clue: A pet sim. Feed and play with a dog named Clue.
- Sun Sign: A horoscope...thing. No, it doesn't tell you how your day will be in vague terms. It tells you how compatible you are with people of other signs.
- Pic Gallery: View pictures you unlock. Gamefaqs indicates that a new picture is unlocked for every 10k points you win in games, and that 16 pictures can be unlocked in this manner.
Tools: Reveals a submenu with 6 options -
- Stopwatch: It's a stopwatch. Does not show time until you stop it.
- Phone Dialer: Apparently designed to dial phone numbers for you by screeching into a handset. Kind of neat, if not entirely practical.
- Beam: Appears to be some sort of multiplayer connectivity.
- Clock: It's a clock.
- About You: Like the one above, it allows you to reset (or set for the first time) information about yourself.
- Help: A small, in-game manual.
Options: The option menu lets you adjust music and sound. It also lets you change the date and time, and shows you how much memory is taken up by all the stuff you've typed into the software. There's also a mysterious "color" setting, which has "on" and "off" options, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

This software is compatible with the Game Boy Printer. On the vast majority of screens, there is a print button, allow you to...well, print stuff, I assume.

THOUGHTS:
This is one for the collectors. I particularly like the Phone Dialer (haven't used a landline since I was a kid) and the in-game manual (still waiting for this to become standard).

The games are terrible. If you just want a fun game, don't get this.

LEVEL STRUCTURE:
There are levels in the shoplifting game.

CONTROLS:
D-pad .... move cursor
select ... main menu
start .... start screen
A ........ confirm choice
B ........ cancel

OPTIONS:
You can turn music on or off. You can turn sound on or off.

Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise

BASIC INFO:
Title ....... Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise
Players ..... 1
Genre ....... platform
Subgenre .... n/a
Platform .... Game Boy (1990)

STORY:
"In this high skill action adventure game, Mr. Chin is in hot pusuit of his favorite treat. He has come all the way from China to eat as many luscious gourmet peaches as he can before anyone else discovers how to eat this unique treat. As Mr. Chin, you must pursue the mysterious Momos and zap them into peaches with your demoe beam. So hurry up and run, jump, zap and eat as many peaches as you can before they make dinner out of you!"

GAMEPLAY:
In Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise, your goal is to eat every enemy on the screen. By doing so, you advance to a new, more difficult stage, where you are once again tasked with eating all the enemies. And so on.

In order to eat an enemy, you must first make it safe to touch. To do so, you must trap it between two fryers*. You can set 1 fryer down with the B button; if you set a 2nd fryer down on the same horizontal plane as another, they will immediately zap anything that lays between them. If an enemy is zapped, it turns into a walking white peach. Touch it to eat it.

Only 4 enemies can appear on-screen at any given time, including edible enemies. However, a stage may require you to defeat more than 4 before moving onto the next stage. In such a case, when you eat an enemy, the next 1 spawns from the top of the screen.

Each stage is strongly reminiscent of a stage from the classic Mario Bros. arcade game, with a few Super Mario Bros. elements thrown in. Stages are composed of multiple, thin platforms upon which you and the enemies walk. These platforms are composed of bricks which you can destroy by jumping up repeatedly into them. Occasionally, power-ups are revealed within bricks. They are as follows:

bomb ... turns all on-screen enemies into edible peaches (most common)
flan ... grants Mr. Chin the ability to fly by repeatedly pressing the A button (2nd least common)
sushi ... grants Mr. Chin temporary invincibility (2nd most common)
Mr. Chin head ... extra life (least common)

Another similarity to the early Mario games is the pipe. At the center of the bottom of each stage is a pipe that Mr. Chin can use. It will drop Mr. Chin from the center of the top of the screen onto whatever platform is directly below. Enemies can also use this pipe.

For the first 8 stages, platforms have dashed holes which only Mr. Chin can drop through. After beating the 8th stage and being sent again to the 1st stage, enemies will begin dropping through these holes, as well.

There is a bonus round every 2 stages. These seem to serve no particular purpose other than giving you a chance to earn points (counted as KCAL). Points do not appear to do anything.

Game play appears to be endless. Each stage gets progressively harder for at least the first 16 stages (enemies start dropping through holes they couldn't before, and more enemies spawn). After a while it just repeats.

*The fryers actually look like half a head of lettuce, and act like bug zappers. The game doesn't give them a name. I'm calling them fryers, cuz why not?

THOUGHTS:
The game has an old, arcade-y kind of feel and simplicity to it. I played it for several hours in one go while hiding in my hotel room from the Nevada heat. I found it very relaxing and kind of interesting, in that 'window into the past' sort of way.

Objectively, I will say that this is not a very good game. The gameplay is far too repetitive, and I mean that as literally as possible. After a few minutes of play, the levels repeat themselves, over and over, without significant change. If you are looking for hidden gems of the era, you can pass this one by.

However, if you are interested in gaming history and curiosities of the era, keep an eye out for this one. Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise, with its blatant cosmetic and gameplay similarities to Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros., is a great example of the kind of highly derivative content found during that era.

LEVEL STRUCTURE:
There are 8 levels. Upon completing the 8th level, the levels repeat, with slightly increased difficulty. Levels appear to repeat indefinitely. After every 2 levels, there is a timed bonus stage.

CONTROLS:
D-pad .... move Mr. Chin
select ... (doesn't appear to do anything)
start .... pause/unpause
A ........ jump; press repeatedly to fly (with power-up)
B ........ place fryer

OPTIONS:
None.