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| Examples of 1984 gaming classics that were ported to the Game Boy... However, none of these will be covered in this B-Side. |
On April 21, 1989 Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan, and while it was by no means the first handheld gaming console with swappable game cartridges it was arguably the first truly successful one. It was also more or less a success from the very start, selling around 720,000 units & 1.9 million games by that August, despite there only being seven games out by then in Japan, & only five in North America, where it had launched in July; Europe wouldn't get the Game Boy until September 1990. Simply put, game publishers wanted in on the Game Boy's instant success & that meant putting whatever they could on the handheld... including ports of iconic games of the past. And this is where the year 1984 would rear its head again, as over the course of the life of the Game Boy (& its initial successor, the Game Boy Color) there would be various ports of iconic classics from 1984 to Nintendo's handheld console, a number of which saw release internationally. Games like Yie Ar Kung Fu, 1942, Marble Madness, Boulder Dash, & Spy vs. Spy would all see Game Boy (Color) ports that saw release both in Japan & abroad (or, at least, Europe), while other games like Kung Fu Master at least saw unique entries on the hardware, allowing people to experience these influential classics in some way on the go; hell, Marble Madness got two different ports! However, there were also some Game Boy ports of 1984 icons that stayed exclusive to Japan, and for this entry of Obscusion B-Side I want to go over four of them, plus a fifth game that's technically its own unique entry but is related to one of said 1984 icons. Did these games transition over well to Game Boy, & did we miss out on something really good, or was Gunpei Yokoi's purposefully underpowered handheld unable to keep up with games released on hardware that (even for 1984) were well beyond its capabilities?
I'll be going in chronological order of their Game Boy release, even if it doesn't quite match the order of their original 1984 releases, so first up is actually the only game of this group with a purely American origin, despite its Japanese trappings. Developed by Jordan Mechner & initially released on the Apple II computer in December of 1984 by Brøderbund, Karateka wound up being one of the earliest examples of a video game using more cinematic-style storytelling, complete with the music matching the mood & tone of specific scenes. It was also one of the earliest video games to make use of rotoscoped animation, resulting in a fluidity to the character sprites that was unlike anything before it, & Mechner would improve on that for his next game, Prince of Persia. Karateka would get ported to other PCs of the time, including the Commodore 64, both Atari 8-bit & ST, Amstrad CPC, MS-DOS, & even ZX Spectrum, while over on console the Atari 7800 would eventually see a(n extremely awkward to play) port... but these were only the American & European releases.
Meanwhile, over in Japan there would be a number of ports of Karateka that were exclusive to that region, which in hindsight is kind of funny considering that the game was highly influenced by Japanese media (ukiyo-e, Kurosawa films, & even a little manga influence from Brøderbund) yet was developed by an American born to European Jewish immigrants; there just had to be a tiny bit of irony there from Japanese players. Anyway, first up was a port to the Famicom in 1985 by Soft Pro, followed then in 1988 by a port to the PC-98(01VX) by Masternet. Finally, on December 29, 1989 Japan would receive Master Karateka, the port to the Game Boy; there's no real indication as to why this port altered the name in any way. Developed by Tose, this Game Boy version would be the last game ever published by Bandai Shinsei, a partnership between Bandai & Shinsei Industry that the following month would result in Shinsei joining the Bandai Group & changing its name to Yutaka. Yutaka would then get rebranded under the revived Popy label in 2003, before eventually merging with Plex in 2007, which itself then merged with WiZ (creator of the Tamagotchi) in 2019. At first you'd think that maybe the Game Boy wouldn't really be a good fit for a game like Karateka, but it is worth considering that Prince of Persia would eventually get ported to the Game Boy (twice, in fact!) & the Apple II that Karateka was designed for initially only supported two buttons, so let's see how Master Karateka holds up.
Like the original game, Master Karateka is technically a rather short game that's made up of three stages where you control a nameless karate user (i.e. a karateka) as he infiltrates the fortress of the evil Akuma in order to rescue Princess Mariko. Each stage is a flat path to the right where you'll take on a number of Akuma's own karateka one at a time, with combat based around punches & kicks that each have three types (High, Medium, & Low), based on whether you hold Up, Down, & or nothing while attacking; this is how what's essentially a six-button fighter plays with only two, just as on the Apple II. You can also hold Up or Back when not attacking to block high/mid & low, and your health slowly regenerates over time, even while in combat. Another aspect of Karateka that's carried over to the Game Boy is the fact that you have two stances, with you switching between them by pressing Down, with one allowing the hero to run (but leaving him unable to defend himself, so you die in one hit) while the other is for combat but results in you moving very slowly. While only three stages sounds like one can easily breeze through Karateka, the obvious trick is that each opponent is meant to be taken as a serious battle, and while the first few enemies in Stage 1 can be dealt with rather easily it doesn't take long for the player to start fighting enemies who either attack more aggressively or are able to constantly block your attacks (& there is no chip damage here), so the game isn't meant to be treated as a simple button masher. Karateka's influential (if basic, by today's standards) cinematic storytelling is also carried over here, though Tose didn't really rely on the in-game visuals for the most part (unlike on PC), instead creating new visuals specifically for the short sequences. Also, the music composed by Francis Mechner (Jordan's father who'd later also compose Prince of Persia's score) has been completely replaced by some admittedly repetitive original ditties, though I think they're decent enough in small doses (as they were intended).
This Game Boy port tries to add in something extra by starting you off with a limited amount of points to assign to either Power, Life, or Speed, and there is a noticeable difference between stats with few points & stats with more points; beating a stage also gives you additional points to assign, based on your performance. However, in reality this port is rather flawed, and it mainly comes down to how busted the combat can be, both for & against you. For example, if you start off by getting your Power to at least halfway full right at the start you can easily take out pretty much every foe in Stage 1 with just two hits, and you can kind of cheese things by simply holding back while kicking straight forward, and the AI will fall for it pretty consistently. Stage 2, though, becomes a bit more random as while you can still defeat most foes with the same strategy, though the bird that appears doesn't seem to have the most consistent hit box, the final foe before the infamous gate at the end of the stage is insanely cheap. He'll literally just block everything you throw at him, will even cancel out an attack animation in order to block (something that you can't do), & can hit you multiple times in a second (also something that you can't do). You can also cheese the stages themselves a bit by literally mashing attacks while holding forward, & since enemies will tend to block in response you'll slowly move toward them... and once you're right up in their face they'll start walking backwards. If you get it just right you can then simply walk forward while in your attack stance & follow the enemy moving backward, and you'll make it all the way to the end of the stage without getting into another fight (which does mean that you won't get anywhere near as many points at the end, but still). While the killer gate in Stage 2 means that you can't finish it while pushing your foe back, you can 100% beat Stage 1 using this method, and your foe will simply just fall over & die upon the start of Stage 2.
Without a doubt, Master Karateka isn't the most ideal way to play Karateka, and if you really want to experience it in its best form then definitely play The Making of Karateka, Digital Eclipse's playable documentary about the creation of the game, as it includes multiple PC versions of the game (including some early prototypes), a new remaster, & even Mechner's unreleased arena shooter Deathbounce (which has an awesome reimagining of its own!). However, at the same time I can't help but kind of like Master Karateka, as while it's definitely a flawed port of the game I do find it admirable that Tose did seem to give it an earnest attempt, and if the more busted elements (like the wonky AI) were just ironed out before release I think it'd actually be really good for the hardware.
Up next we have a game that not only put Nihon Falcom on the map in Japan but launched a franchise that, technically, is still ongoing to this very day, Dragon Slayer. Initially released on September 10, 1984 for the PC-88, Dragon Slayer was the first game by Falcom to be considered a true "success" for the company, though it really wasn't until Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu the following year that Falcom actually started becoming legendary. Meanwhile, Dragon Slayer would go on to be considered one of the earliest examples of an "action RPG", alongside Hydlide, & Yoshio Kiya would decide to use the "Dragon Slayer" name for many future games he designed & directed, despite none of them having any actual connection to the 1984 original. The "sixth" entry in the series, 1989's Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, would be Falcom's first ever "traditional" RPG with turn-based combat, and after getting a sequel in 1992 (followed by Kiya leaving Falcom in 1993) all future Legend of Heroes games would drop the Dragon Slayer nomenclature, though the numbering would continue on all the way until The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky in 2004. Today, The Legend of Heroes has become Falcom's most iconic franchise, easily surpassing Ys, with the most recent entry being (Dragon Slayer VI:) The Legend of Heroes (XX): Trails Beyond the Horizon, which initially came out in Japan in late 2024 but just saw international release earlier this year.
Moving back to the original Dragon Slayer, that game would see ports to a number of other Japanese PCs of the era, with Square even helping publish the MSX & PC-98 ports in 1985 (marking only the third ever release for that company), while in 1986 the game would see its first console port via Epoch for its Super Cassette Vision. After discontinuing the SCV in 1987 Epoch would transition over to being a third-party publisher for video games, alongside its usual toy business, quickly becoming known for its Barcode Battler devices & various games based on Doraemon, but it also managed to continue its relationship with Falcom by helping port & release the latter's PC games to various consoles, most notably Super Famicom versions of the first two Legend of Heroes games & Lord Monarch (the "seventh" Dragon Slayer game, despite it being an RTS). However, before any of those came Epoch's first port of a Falcom game to a non-Epoch console, Dragon Slayer I for the Game Boy. Released on August 12, 1990, Dragon Slayer I was very much a "what it says on the tin" game by being a port of the 1984 PC-88 original... warts & all. The port has since become more than a bit infamous, with the general word being that it's literally impossible to beat on an actual Game Boy, simply due to the fact that the game doesn't offer any way to save your progress & takes longer to beat than the average lifespan a fresh set of batteries can give the handheld. However, I feel as though that rumor might be going off of the battery life of the later Game Boy Pocket, which is ~10 hours on two AAA batteries, whereas the original Game Boy could do ~30 hours on four AA batteries; still, no one's going to play an OG Game Boy for 30 hours in a row... hopefully. Regardless, let's see how good of an idea it was to port one of the earliest action RPGs to the Game Boy really was, in the end.
Despite its status as one of the earliest "true" examples of an action RPG, the original Dragon Slayer is... different; in fact, it called itself a "real-time RPG", whereas Hydlide touted itself as an "active RPG". Much like the original game, the goal of DS1 is to recover four crowns that are strewn about a massive underground dungeon, but first you have to slay a powerful three-headed dragon in order for them to appear. To do all of this you naturally have to power up your character from a weakling to a proper warrior, but actually doing so goes against any sort of traditional logic you'd expect, most notably the "action" part of the genre name associated with it today. In fact, combat (which is done via a very rudimentary "bump combat" system that plays more akin to how a roguelike works) is honestly something you should actively avoid getting into initially, unless you absolutely have no other choice, and that's due to how enemies work in the game. In short, if you kill an enemy monster it will immediately be replaced by another monster via the gravestone it came from, but instead of simply spawning the same one you had killed it will instead spawn the next level strength monster on the list. Therefore, if you keep killing monsters you'll only wind up with a horde of super-powerful monsters that will inevitably kill you. Not just that, but killing monsters doesn't even power you up via level ups gained through experience, but rather gaining EXP simply gives you access to various magic spells, though they're all assistive in nature than offensive, i.e. "jumping" to a random location, bringing up a map to see where you are, destroying wall blocks, freezing monsters in place, etc. Getting to 30,000 EXP also gives you the ability to move & attack diagonally, which does provide a big advantage in combat, especially against the dragon (which can't attack diagonally); meanwhile, the last spell is unlocked at 50,000 EXP, so eventually combat becomes pointless. Still, it's a grind & a half, as even once I was able to get to 210,000 strength (compared to each dragon head having 600,000), & was able to attack diagonally... I was still only doing 10 HP of damage to a single dragon head every attack, & each head has 65,000 HP. Yeah, while I literally could do damage without worry of retaliation at that point I wasn't in the mood to attack the dragon a total of 19,500 times to kill all three heads.
How, then, do you power up? By collecting power stones that are strewn about the map & returning them to your home base (which is shaped like a house), which gives you a notable strength boost of 2,500 for each stone; however, you really need to find a sword first in order to actually do any real damage. You also recover/increase your HP by doing the same with coins, while collecting potions acts as your equivalent to MP for magic (one used for each spell); luckily, a single key is needed to open every treasure chest, of which there are a ton. The trick, though, is that (outside of coins, potions, & crowns) you're only allowed to carry one item at a time, and this also includes the ring that gives you the ability to move blocks to open new paths, as well as move your base around so as to make going back & forth with power stones & coins less of a hassle. Therefore, the general gameplay loop of DS1 is to make your way around the dungeon, finding a sword first before you then start to bring coins & power stones back to your base in order to power yourself up for the inevitable fight with the dragon, all while doing your best to avoid getting into combat with monsters unless necessary so as to delay the arrival of more powerful monsters, some of which will first try to steal coins, EXP, or even strength before doing physical damage; eventually, though, you'll need to force stronger monsters onto the field. There's also a ghost that randomly flies about the dungeon & moves items around, similar to the bat in Adventure for the Atari 2600, and while there are multiple rings there looks to only be one key in this version. While there is no saving on Game Boy you can immediately continue after dying, which starts you back at the same location as in a new game, but your EXP & strength carry over; however, this all goes away once the Game Boy turns off. Combined with a slow, step-by-step pace to the game (which, again, reminds one more of a roguelike, though monsters will still move if you aren't) it results in a very, very, VERY slow game that's not helped by a single music track that plays throughout the majority of the game; there is another song that plays after killing the dragon, but good luck getting to that point. It's honestly a rather good little song based on a Dvořák classic, & an improvement over the PC original having no music at all, but it can easily get tiring after a while.
Still, despite its bizarre mechanics, slow pacing, repetitive music, & lack of any ability to save, I honestly do think that Dragon Slayer I on the Game Boy is still a really neat & interesting game, though I will concede that the Game Boy really wasn't the best piece of hardware to port it to. Even though I played using an actual DS1 cartridge I still had to rely on save states via my Analogue Pocket to get to where I stopped at, i.e. 10 HP/hit to a dragon head, & that still took around maybe 1.5-2 hours to reach. This is a game that requires real dedication & time to play, which kind of goes against the very nature of the Game Boy itself, i.e. something that was designed for (oftentimes) shorter play sessions due to it being a handheld device, so the lack of any saving really does make it feel as though it'd be impossible to beat DS1 in a single go. There are videos online showing that the game can indeed be beaten in a single go, but it looks to take around 2.5 hours, & that's only when you know exactly what to do & in the most ideal fashion, which is definitely more than what I think Gunpei Yokoi intended for when it came to a single Game Boy session; also, believe it or not... there's a second map layout to play via a code! Overall, Dragon Slayer I is a game you have to play on its own terms but if you can get used to its quirks it's actually not a bad game & is kind of addictive, so I can see why it did well for its time in 1984; it's just extremely ill-fitting for the Game Boy. If you want to play Dragon Slayer at its best then go with the 1997 remake released on Falcom Classics for the Sega Saturn, which also includes similar remakes of Xanadu & Ys I.
Our third example is the only arcade port we'll be covering, but that original game is a damn important one. Originally appearing in Japanese arcades in June of 1984, The Tower of Druaga by Namco was the brainchild of Masanobu Endo, creator of the smash hit (& highly influential, in its own right) shooter Xevious the year prior, who decided to combine his love of Wizardry with Dungeons & Dragons (which he found out about during a business trip to America) to create his own RPG, but after some tinkering focused more on the action elements than the RPG elements, creating what he would call "fantasy Pac-Man". The end result was an arcade game were players took the hero Gil up a 60-floor dungeon in order to rescue the maiden Ki (pronounced "Kai") from the monstrous Druaga, though simply making your way through all 60 floors wasn't enough. Instead, each floor had its own secret item (some good, some bad, & some absolutely essential to beating Druaga & finishing the game) that had its own unique & (oftentimes) obtuse means of obtaining, and while Endo later regretted making things as difficult as he did the end result was that arcade-goers in Japan actually worked together to solve The Tower of Druaga's secrets & reach the ending, with tons of stories of arcade cabinets having papers stuck to the sides so that players could jot down what each secret item was & how to get it, both for returning players to recall later on as well as help new players right away. Druaga would go on to be cited as a direct inspiration for the action RPG genre, influencing games like Dragon Slayer, Hydlide, Ys, & The Legend of Zelda. There would also be many sequels & spin-offs to this game, including a two-season TV anime, creating what it now known as the Babylonian Castle Saga.
To no surprise, ports to the home would happen, with the first one being the Famicom version that (likewise) became a smash hit & even included a bonus "Ura Druaga" mode that changed the conditions for the secret items. There were also ports to various computers of the time (MSX, FM-77, X1 Turbo, & even a fan-made X68000 port in 1989... though never a PC-88 or PC-98 port, oddly enough), while the PC-Engine version from 1992 was cited by Endo as featuring the square maze layouts that he had always intended the game to have, rather than the rectangular "tate" layouts that were a consequence of the Mappy-derived arcade hardware that was used. What we'll be focusing on, though, is the Game Boy port of The Tower of Druaga, which came out on December 31, 1990. This was the first port of Druaga to not be published by Namco (or Dempa Publications, for the PC ports), but instead was the first video game published by Angel, a division of Bandai that would eventually merge with both BI & Kagaku Giken to form MegaHouse, a toy & game division of Bandai Namco that's still around today. Back in the 90s, though, Angel was seemingly just another brand Bandai used for video game publishing, mostly for licensed IP like (primarily) Sailor Moon, similar to how Banpresto was used for games based on Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Gundam, & Super Robot Wars, though Angel also published games based on the first three, too. The Game Boy version, developed by Tose, made a number of changes to the gameplay to accommodate for handheld play, so let's see if that makes this a much easier experience than Druaga normally is in its original arcade incarnation.
On the surface, the Game Boy port of Tower of Druaga feels very much like the arcade original, with only some minor changes to befit the handheld, like for the visuals. In terms of gameplay it's almost exactly like its source where you control Gil & make your way through each floor of the titular tower, with the basic goal being to find & grab the key that will unlock the door to the next floor, taking out enemies that get in your way by simply holding A or B to draw your sword & walking into them. The first major difference for this port, though, comes in the way of Gil now having 50 HP to start with, & taking a hit from an enemy simply reduces some of that HP, rather than risking instant death like it does in the arcade. The other major differences happens at every 10th floor, as entering the door will instead take you to a new single-screen room where you fight a giant boss of some sort first, and defeating it will give you a password that you can continue with after turning off the Game Boy. Said password isn't a single fixed one for each 10th floor, either, as the password also takes into account what secret items you've accumulated so far.
Yes, it wouldn't be Tower of Druaga without those secret items, & while the first few (a pickaxe to break walls, boots to move faster with, etc.) simply require killing specific enemies a certain amount of times, so you'll likely unlock those treasure chests simply by playing the game, it doesn't take long for the secrets to start getting hidden behind more obtuse & exact means, like guarding a specific attack a certain number of times, moving to the top of a map before heading straight back down, killing only specific enemies while avoiding others (or only killing after you've first gotten the key), taking damage on purpose, avoiding a fake out treasure chest in order to reveal the real one, etc. For the most part these are items that simply make the game easier, like attack & defense upgrades, but there is the occasional item that is 100% essential to actually beating the game, and while bosses give you a guaranteed item no matter what you will still need to figure out some of the secrets (or use a guide) if you want any chance at actually beating the game... not to mention figure out which items are actually debuffs & should be avoided.
Beyond that, though, the Game Boy version of Tower of Druaga is honestly an excellent conversion, outside of maybe some of the multi-colored knights being tricky to immediately identify between each other due to hardware limitations, and the inclusion of bosses & password functionality is neat to see. I can absolutely see why it stayed exclusive to Japan, but today it's arguably one of the best versions of the game due to the various updates, namely the use of HP to allow for some combat-related mistakes & the new boss fights to help stave off repetition.
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| Honestly, I'm getting more "Final Fantasy" vibes from this title screen than "Dragon Slayer". |
Before we move on to our final 1984 icon that was ported to the Game Boy (but only released in Japan), let's take a detour for a "side story". As mentioned with our second entry, Epoch had a working relationship with Falcom that dated back to Dragon Slayer getting ported to the Super Cassette Vision, which is likely what allowed Epoch to then port the game to the Game Boy. Well, in the same year the Super Famicom ports of Legend of Heroes I & Lord Monarch saw release from this relationship Epoch decided to release another Dragon Slayer game for the Game Boy. However, in true (& sometimes confusing) fashion for the series, this was NOT simply a port of a currently existing game, but rather was its own thing entirely, a la Faxanadu for the NES or Xanadu Next for the N-Gage! Released on March 6, 1992, Dragon Slayer Gaiden: Nemuri no Oukan/The Sleeping Crown is a completely unique & original entry in Falcom's flagship series (& the second one to not be developed by Falcom itself, not counting ports), one that's mostly been forgotten with time... similar to how the original Dragon Slayer has mostly been forgotten with time, especially in comparison to the rest of the games that (at one point or another) carried its name. So while it's not exactly a proper fit for this specific overview, it is still related to one of them, both in name & even publisher, so I might as well include here as a bonus entry. Also, to be honest, if I didn't include it here I have no idea if I'd ever cover it at all in the future.
You play as the son of Dylan, a warrior of the kingdom who loses his life protecting his village from a monster attack, and after defeating the Poison Lizard that killed your father & saving your mother from said poison she was inflicted with the King sends you out on a mission to gather four magic stones that can save the land from the monsters that now plague the land, each of which is guarded by a powerful dragon. From a first impression standpoint Nemuri no Oukan very blatantly shows its influence right away, as it looks like a straight up Legend of Zelda clone, though (to be fair) this game does predate Link's Awakening by a year; still, Final Fantasy Adventure (the first Mana game) predates this by a year. Regardless, you move around in a screen-by-screen world & attack enemies by pressing A, which sees you slash your sword out quickly (eschewing the bump-esque system of the OG Dragon Slayer), and you enter various dungeons to defeat bosses in order to advance the story forward. This is more of a traditional action RPG, though, so there's also a focus on buying & equipping standard gear (sword, shield, armor), as well as a magic system where you buy spells to use via the menu you can access with B. You also choose your character class upon starting the game (Knight, Wizard, Hunter, & Tanker), with the standard fare for the first three (physical focused, magic focused, long-range focused), while the Tanker is apparently a unique class that plays like Pac-Man, i.e. you eat enemies, & it has an exclusive mechanic with a weight system that effects your stats. Notably, though, while there are "levels" for your character, they are only awarded by defeating bosses, and your strength & defense are only really increased by buying & equipping better gear than what you previously had; levels do increase strength & defense, but only slightly.
So how do you increase your HP & MP then? That's where Nemuri no Oukan tosses in a neat bone from its original namesake. Just as with Dragon Slayer, monsters in this game spawn from gravestones that are found on the field & in dungeons, though there's no worry of monsters being replaced with stronger ones as you kill them. Instead, each gravestone has a set group of monsters it will summon, and for every 100 kills your character will receive a boost to their max HP or MP, usually around five to eight points. However, in just the first dungeon you can easily game the gravestone system, as said dungeon has a single gravestone in which up to four monsters can spawn out of simultaneously. As long as you have the strength (the Long Sword for the Knight is literally the second weapon available & is easily purchasable right away) you can kill any of the monsters that can spawn instantly, so if you get it just right you can have all four killed the moment they spawn, and by mashing the attack button while standing right next the the gravestone you can literally get 100 kills in a matter of seconds. Stand there for only a few minutes while continually mashing & you'll quickly max out your HP to 255 (plus your MP, if you spend the extra time) either before or after only the first boss. Now, to be fair, this only applies to your HP & MP, so it's not as though you've totally broken the game's mechanics (& 255 is admittedly not the highest max health out there, no doubt due to an 8-bit integer limit), but I do wonder if Epoch actually intended for players to cheese the gravestone system right away like this; this really feels more like an honor system thing, i.e. "We trust our players to play fair".
Well, as you continue playing you kind of start to realize that maybe Epoch really did intend on players maxing out their HP immediately, because while you can technically fight bosses carefully you can also just go whole ham & spam attacking while up in their face (or, at least, you can as the Knight), only stopping to heal on occasion when necessary. Really, Nemuri no Oukan is a game where your stat increases are dictated by constantly finding new gear, mostly via treasure chests found in specific places on maps (sometimes hidden behind a key, but mostly awarded after certain fights) but also in the occasional shop. While you don't get any money from killing monsters the game is very much about selling consumable items & gear in order to help pay for new gear you come across in shops, which tend to give you just enough at each shop, so even with max HP and MP you're still powering up as you play, which is nice. The general plot progression sees you go from one town to another, dealing with whatever is situation is at hand, and occasionally needing to either talk to someone specific in order to get an essential item or using an item to help save the day. For example, you'll speak to a pirate in one village who'll give you access to another town that normally keeps outsiders away, and on the way to said village you'll take on a sub-boss who runs away after defeating it. Then while exploring the village you'll find its castle, but instead of the usual King you find the sub-boss again, and defeating it for good will give you a key to get past a door in the dungeon you first fought the sub-boss in that was previously inaccessible. After leaving the village you'll see a massive fire nearby preventing progress, but simply go back to that prior dungeon & solve a puzzle in order to fight the real boss of the area, which will give you an item that summons a rain cloud that clears away the fire & allows you to continue on; sequences like that. While there is a decent amount of Japanese text in this game (all in either hiragana or katakana) you can technically fumble your way through this game, though as you get closer things get a little trickier, like one late boss being a literal three-part quiz about the game.
Overall, Dragon Slayer: Nemuri no Oukan is a really cool & fun little Zelda-like for the Game Boy, and while it's really only similar to its namesake in small ways Epoch made sure that the game itself could stand tall on its own; hell, even the music in this game is outstanding. Sure, you can absolutely game the system early on as the Knight & max out your HP & MP, something that the designers could have even intended players to do(?), but it's not as though the game becomes utterly brain dead after doing so, and I would imagine that playing with some of the other classes might make that kind of exploitation not quite as easy. Replay value is even rather strong as each class has some unique elements, like exclusive areas for their campaigns. It's easily the better Dragon Slayer game on the Game Boy of the two, and I really hope that one day it gets an English fan translation so that other people can be willing to give it a real go; I'd easily give this a full replay with another class in English.
Finally, we jump ahead nearly an entire decade after Dragon Slayer Gaiden's release, all the way to the new millennium & the Game Boy Color for our last port of a 1984 icon (in Japan, at least)! Prior to 1984 the concept of a "role-playing game" in Japan was very limited, as stuff like Wizardry, Ultima, Rouge, & even Dungeons & Dragons all didn't see release in Japan until 1985, at the earliest, so the only way the country had anything truly resembling those works was either via someone from Japan visiting America (a la Masanobu Endo) or someone from abroad importing the concept to Japan... which is what Henk Rogers did. Born in Amsterdam but raised in the US, Henk Rogers eventually enrolled in the University of Hawaii where he'd meet a girl named Akemi. He fell in love with Akemi & followed her back to Japan, marrying her in 1977. Being a fan of RPGs back home, Rogers saw a relative lack of them in Japan & since he had a degree in computer science (& could program a bit) he decided to make a computer RPG for Japan, resulting in the creation of The Black Onyx. While Rogers initially was in talks to have Koei publish the game, Rogers was actually encouraged by Koei's president to form his own company, resulting in the founding of Bullet-Proof Software; the exact date of release for The Black Onyx isn't 100% known, but it's believed to either be the very end of 1983 or January 1984.
While the game initially sold poorly, BPS was able to get The Black Onyx promoted via gaming mags at the time, and the positive press resulted in very good sales (~150,000 copies sold) & the game becoming an influence on many future Japanese RPG developers, including Hydlide's Tokihiro Naito, Etrian Odyssey's Kazuya Niinou, Vanillaware founder George Kamitani, & the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto; even the original Dragon Quest team took some influence from it. Originally released for the PC-88, the game would then get ported to most other Japanese PCs of the era (Eiji Wu, who later founded Kure Software Koubou, was the man who programmed the game for the Sharp X1 port), and it also saw two console ports in the 80s for the SG-1000 in 1988 (where it was the final game for the console released via the Sega My Card format) & for the Famicom in 1989 (where it was titled Super Black Onyx & radically altered), but beyond those ports & a sequel (The Fire Crystal) that's all that came about from The Black Onyx. There was the rare pre-production work done for another game, especially since Rogers had two more expansions planned, but once BPS got involved with Tetris that became the company's primary focus, with only the rare exception, most notably publishing the early precursors to Genki's Tokyo Xteme Racer series. That all changed, though, on March 2, 2001 when Taito published The Black Onyx for Game Boy Color, with development coming from Atelier Double. Working with Tetsuya Matsukata, who had first drawn the illustrations seen in the original PC manual before later writing the new scenario made for Super Black Onyx, the GBC port of The Black Onyx would be the final time Henk Rogers' influential JRPG would ever see a new release. Apparently this port was a poor seller, while Rogers himself has stated that though he helped popularize the RPG in Japan with The Black Onyx it was quickly outpaced & outdated by later RPGs made by actual Japanese people; in other words, Henk Rogers sees no reason to ever revive his original gaming IP.
Still, how does the final version of The Black Onyx hold up?
The Black Onyx for GBC tells the same basic story as the original game where your party of warriors travels down into the dungeon beneath the town of Utsuro to find the titular Black Onyx, which can free Utsuro from the eternal night it's been suffering from. Upon starting a new game on GBC, though, you get two options: Legend & Legacy. The main difference between the two really comes down to the visuals, as Legacy aims to recreate the original PC-88 visuals as closely as possible (within the screen space of the GBC, at least), while Legend completely redraws the entire game so that the environments become instantly recognizable & easy to parse, as the original game had a very minimalist look to it that could get quickly confusing if you weren't careful, if not simply drawing out maps for yourself; at least this port does offer an automap to check out with Start. However, make no mistake, this is The Black Onyx as Henk Rogers originally designed it to be, which means that this is a ruthless, unforgiving, hard as balls, & somewhat obtuse dungeon crawler that aims to do nothing more than kill you off ASAP; I mean, Legacy mode literally starts your adventure with the line "Prepare to Die!". While in Legacy mode you can create a full party of four characters right away (down one from the original five), Legend mode seemingly forces you to start with only one, requiring you to roam about Utsuro for random encounters (yes, you can get random encounters in the town) so that you can attempt to recruit fellow nobodies to your party with the "Talk" command (instead of either fighting or running). Hell, if you don't pass muster for certain recruited party members they could very well just leave your party after an encounter!
Regardless of how many people in your party you start off with, the general gist of The Black Onyx is to find an entrance into the dungeon, find your way through the six floors while combating various monsters so that you can earn money & EXP, hopefully being able to get back to Utsuro every now & then so as to recover your health, buy items to help you survive for longer in the depths, & (ideally) buy new equipment so that you can take on tougher foes (& more easily kill weaker enemies). This is a dungeon crawler at its most basic, there isn't even a magic system to be found here (that was only seen in The Fire Crystal & Super Black Onyx), but at the same time the game very much requires knowledge of Japanese in order to really make any progress at all. As simple & straightforward as the general gameplay loop is, you will not make it anywhere without being able to know what each shop is (& remember their locations, as the automap only shows the layout), and it's still old-school in style that you may not realize if something you're buying is automatically the next best gear to change to. Also, it's very easy to simply make your way down the "wrong" hole into the dungeon before eventually coming across the fight with the Kraken, which is designed specifically to simply kill you until you're finally powerful enough to best it, which in turn opens up a shortcut near the end. Unfortunately, the only versions of The Black Onyx that have English fan translations are the PC-88/98 original & the SG-1000 port (which was then ported to the ColecoVision, due to similar hardware specs), so while the GBC port may, in many ways, be the overall "best" & easiest version to actually get into it's also a very overwhelming game to jump right into without knowing how to truly get started.
Overall, I'm not exactly surprised that The Black Onyx for Game Boy Color wasn't a seller in Japan, as Atelier Double & Taito seemingly really wanted to carry over that original 1984 experience as intact as possible, with only an added veneer of "modern" visuals as an option to make it look nicer. However, similar to Dragon Slayer I's release 11 years prior, The Black Onyx isn't really a game that's meant to be played on a Game Boy (Color), especially when the only real updates are truly just on the visual front. I don't think it's a bad game by any means, and if it had an English translation then maybe it could even get a re-assessment in some way, but it's a very user unfriendly game by design that simply doesn't convert over well as a handheld game for the early 00s.
Being the first (major) video game handheld console, there was definitely a bit of experimentation from developers when it came to what kinds of experiences would work best on the Game Boy. Some developers kept it simple & went with concepts that worked well as on-the-go experiences, but some others wanted to be a bit more ambitious, and that also included porting over some of their favorites gaming experiences of the past to something that was (at the time) "modern". I just find it interesting that a number of iconic games from 1984 all managed to find their way to the Game Boy over time, and while a good number of them saw international release, these specific games that I covered wound up staying in Japan. Master Karateka definitely isn't an ideal port but I think it still would have been considered a decent enough release had it come out internationally back then. As for Dragon Slayer I... yeah, I have no idea what Epoch was thinking when the decision was made to port that game over to the Game Boy. It's definitely a unique experience, and actually manages to work well on the hardware, but without any ability to save your progress it truly feels like a game that was never intended to be finished, despite there being a second quest that back in the day was impossible to actually play without seeing the button code for it, which requires you to beat the first quest.
Meanwhile, The Tower of Druaga is absolutely stellar on the Game Boy, as even without knowing all of its secrets the general gameplay itself remains a lot of fun, and the inclusion of passwords allows one to truly dig in & figure things out, if they want to. Then there's the bonus game I included for this overview, Dragon Slayer: Nemuri no Oukan, which is technically an unique game in its own right but carries the name of Dragon Slayer, so I decided "might as well". Quite honestly, this was probably my favorite game of the lot, delivering a fun Zelda-like experience with just enough of its own quirks & charm to make it memorable, and I'd be more than glad to experience it all over again (with a different class) if it was to ever get an English translation. Finally, there's The Black Onyx for Game Boy Color... which is literally just The Black Onyx (with an optional visual facelift) in all of its 1984 glory, for better or worse. I commend Taito & Atelier Double for attempting to give Henk Rogers' genre-establishing (for Japan, at least) game a second life, & I'm honestly surprised that he approved the pitch, but it was an idea that fared about as well as Epoch's with Dragon Slayer I.
Still, in the year 2026 it's experiences like these that make going back to the Game Boy's catalog fun, because it shows that there's always something new & exciting to try out, even if the game itself dates even farther back than the Game Boy itself.
Master Karateka © 1984 Jordan Mechner © 1989 Bandai Shinsei (now Bandai Namco)
Dragon Slayer I © Nihon Falcom © 1990 Epoch
The Tower of Druaga (Game Boy) © 1984 Namco (now Bandai Namco)
Dragon Slayer Gaiden: Nemuri no Oukan © Nihon Falcom © 1992 Epoch
The Black Onyx (Game Boy Color) © Taito Corporation 2001 © 2000 Bullet-Proof Software (now The Tetris Company)
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