Game Boy Works

Nintendo’s take on Battleship, this one livened up by a fast-paced multiplayer submarine warfare mode.

A pleasantly playable top-down racer that almost makes up for Monster Truck.

A mostly good, if a bit shaky, conversion of the beloved NES platformer.

A decent attempt at pocket pool.

A sort of precursor to Fire ProWrestling, by Human Entertainment themselves… but definitely not as good.

Take your family to the stadium in this rebranded entry from Namco’s long-running Famista series. (It’s baseball.)

The x-treme skating series gets weird for Game Boy with a… 2D skateboard-based platformer?

Long before the concept of coherent branding existed, Bomberman made a Game Boy appearance… under a different name.

Before Ogre Battle, there was… Battle Ping Pong? Sure, why not.

Another mediocre Game Boy release based on an anime. It’s a shame; Patlabor was great, and deserved a much nicer interactive adaptation.

Is it “Power Mission” or “Power Missiøn”? This forgotten release provided a pretty decent portable war gaming experience. It would be eclipsed by better-known games within a matter of months.

A seminal action RPG comes to Game Boy, despite some original design choices making it terribly ill-suited for the platform.

Another game of matching mahjong tiles. It has a twist, but the only interesting thing about it is its backstory.

A clumsy, primitive, first-person maze shooter. It’s not very fun. But man, that box art is something else, huh?

A charming little puzzler that stands out from the system’s glut of puzzlers thanks to its fast-paced, addictive gameplay.

Based on a thoroughly Japanese manga, this thoroughly mediocre fighting game remained stranded in its homeland.

The inevitable arrival of the juggernaut Ninja Turtles franchise didn’t quite live up to Konami’s usual standards, with repetitive play and cheap enemies.

An adaptation of a Macintosh board game involving matching tiles, slightly compromised by Game Boy’s lack of color and overabundance of puzzlers.

Oh. It’s another puzzle game. This version is distinct from the NES adaptation, and also from the soft-porn arcade versions.

A tolerable action-puzzle adaptation of Ranma 1/2, seemingly built on the skeleton of SD Lupin III.

Nintendo had huge success with Tetris, so rather than wait for another hit to come across their desk they rolled their own. It’s OK… but it’s no Tetris.

Based on a Japan-only movie, with gameplay adapted from a Japan-only MSX game, this clunky and primitive creation is tough to love.

A loose adaptation of the NES game, which in turn loosely adapted the arcade original. Nearly a brilliant rendition but for one critical flaw: Its absolutely wretched difficulty…