Do you, like me, love hopping into the way-back-when machine that is the Internet? Do you enjoy discovering new rabbit holes to obsess over? Take retro gaming, for instance. You don’t need to be a gamer to guess that fans of old-school gaming still put time and money toward their beloved pixels and chip tunes. I found it surprising companies like Crunchyroll and Atari are directing development resources toward games for old systems. Systems I’d thought had been dead for years.
Retro gaming, it turns out, isn’t about resurrecting defunct consoles and four-color sprites. It’s a thriving corner of the gaming industry as new games launch even today.
Crunchyroll Released a Game Boy Color Game!
Nope, it’s not April 1st. In 2022, Crunchyroll released a Game Boy Color game featuring their mascot, Hime. Hime’s Quest is a fully realized game with great music, many quests, combat, puzzles, and anime in-jokes. All in an 8-bit package!
Considering that the highly successful Game Boy Color was released almost 25 years ago, in October 1998, it’s worth asking who’ll play the game on the system it was intended for. Have no fear if you have sold, lost, or broken your Game Boy Color (GBC). You have options. The GBC is still available on second-hand markets, and brainy YouTubers can help you build an emulator with a Raspberry Pi. The GBC community is genuinely alive and well. That’s not surprising, considering that the Game Boy Color’s most notable game was Pokémon Gold and Silver. It established the popularity of the system by shipping 23 million units worldwide.
Try Hime’s Quest for yourself right now in your browser. You can also download the ROM or buy the game, which is still available on Crunchyroll’s store. I downloaded the ROM and played it on an emulator through my janky old phone without any issues.
PokeTsume Drama Tells Tales with a Game Boy
PokeTsume: Cram Adventures Into a Pocket (PokeTsume or ポケつめ) is a new Japanese TV drama coming to TV Tokyo on October 19th. It’s the first live-action series in the Pokémon franchise! This isn’t a story about Pokémon, though. Don’t expect any CGI pocket monsters roaming around. Instead, the series uses the nostalgic feelings we have about the Game Boy to tell a story of being an adult. It’s dangerous to go alone, so take this Game Boy!
https://youtu.be/gdg7BLQh8C4?si=lbOFXx43nDn3KnOK
Nanase Nishino (Alba in One Piece Film: Gold) plays Madoka, a small-town girl who moved to the big city to work in advertising. It’s her dream job, but things aren’t going well. Then, her boss burdens her with presenting a campaign that could decide the company’s future. Luckily, hope arrives in the form of a package from her mother. What’s inside? Her old Game Boy Pocket and Pocket Monsters Red cartridge. What lessons will she learn from the little yellow guide in her pocket?
PokeTsume has an X/Twitter account where you can see pictures of the actors posing with your favorite pocket monsters. I wonder if they’ll release a Game Boy Color game of PokeTsume so we can play a game about a series based on a video game. Self-referential fun!
https://twitter.com/poketsume/status/1709840853026640376
Unfortunately, there’s no word yet if we’ll get English subtitles or an international release of this series. A quick Google search will give you options for streaming Japanese drama legally. Time will tell if PokeTsume appears on any of those sites. Hopefully, the format proves popular enough to bring us other shows that include gaming systems without being isekai adventures. It’s a breath of fresh air.
Source: PocketMonster.net
Speaking of Time Travel…
If you like time travel or merely want to keep track of the days, the next few months are your chance to snatch up an anime-themed calendar for 2024. They don’t hang around long (ha, calendar pun!), so order now. I’m a big fan of this Kiki’s Delivery Service calendar with monthly inserts. It’s highly collectible and a work of art.
What’s your fondest memory of the Game Boy? Do you still own a Game Boy? Are you into retro gaming? Tell us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook. Also, you can hang out with us on Discord.
