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NSO GB NSO May 2024 - Alleyway, Baseball, Super Mario Land, (Japan only) For the Frog the Bell Tolls out now!

Thunder84 said:
Absolutely nuts that it took this long to get Super Mario Land on the system. Should’ve been there day 1.

What’s left now? I’m not particularly familiar with the GB/GBC library, so the only big games I know of that aren’t on the system yet are the Wario Lands and DK94.
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For Gameboy, 1st party-wise I'd say we're already kinda getting close to tapped out on "exciting big names" and looking at mostly "interesting curiosities" tbh outside of the Wario Lands and DK94 and maybe a few others. Some of the more notable remaining "no major licensing hurdles or negotiations to deal with" games include:
  • Balloon Kid (basically Balloon Fight, but as a platformer)
  • Wave Race (that's right, it didn't start on the N64)
  • Kirby Pinball
  • X (a sort of proto-Star Fox kind of thing)
  • Mole Mania (this one I think would actually be exciting. It's a Miyamoto game most people don't even know exists, let alone have ever played)
  • Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters
  • the Donkey Kong Land games (basically handheld counterparts to the DKC trilogy)
  • the other Game&Watch Gallery games
  • Qix (mostly notable for being the origin of Mario Odyssey's sombrero/poncho outfit, but also Mario kinda does blackface in it so I could see this never getting rereleased)
  • Pinball Revenge of the 'Gator
  • Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (it's mostly just SMB1 but on GBC; there's some fun extras though that would be neat to have, like a mode where you race a Boo through a level)
There's also obviously Pokemon R/B/Y and G/S/C but I'm not getting my hopes up for those to just randomly drop (I'd settle for Pokemon Puzzle Challenge on GBC and Ruby&Sapphire Pinball on GBA tbh)
 
The only thing that's more bizarre than Mario Land is that it took so long to get it on NSO.

Anyway, cool game. I love that when you're in a submarine and get hit the submarine shrinks with you.
 
Not enough love is shown for Alleyway. For some it's a 5 minute throwaway title but for me as a kid I'd spend hours getting further and further into it, but with no save states eventually a momentary lapse of concentration would mean going back to level 1. I am considering challenging myself to beat it this year now it's out on NSO and I can "assist" myself with aforesaid save states. It starts out really slow but trust me it gets quite frantic in later levels and the designs of the stages do get more elaborate. The bonus stages featuring various Mario universe characters are cool too. I'm sure a lot of people don't realise Mario is the pilot in the spaceship.

Now is the time to add Super Game Boy support to NSO! Alleyway had a great special default colour palette when played on SGB. Enhancements to the emulators plus DK '94 on the roadmap would really grab my attention in the next Direct.
 
Given it’s all the original Game Boy launch titles (minus Tetris and Yakuman, which are already on there, and Tennis, which is still yet to be added), it feels like they’re being released now because it was the Game Boy’s 35th anniversary in Japan in April.

However, I feel like they held them back until now because they put out a load of GB/C Mario titles for MAR10, and they didn’t want to do two consecutive GB NSO updates, so we instead got a SNES update for April and a belated 35th anniversary update today (we’re also very definitely getting a GBA update in a couple of weeks)
 
Pineapple Pizza said:
Not enough love is shown for Alleyway. For some it's a 5 minute throwaway title but for me as a kid I'd spend hours getting further and further into it, but with no save states eventually a momentary lapse of concentration would mean going back to level 1. I am considering challenging myself to beat it this year now it's out on NSO and I can "assist" myself with aforesaid save states. It starts out really slow but trust me it gets quite frantic in later levels and the designs of the stages do get more elaborate. The bonus stages featuring various Mario universe characters are cool too. I'm sure a lot of people don't realise Mario is the pilot in the spaceship.

Now is the time to add Super Game Boy support to NSO! Alleyway had a great special default colour palette when played on SGB. Enhancements to the emulators plus DK '94 on the roadmap would really grab my attention in the next Direct.
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Keep thinking I should somehow email NERD to ask for Super GameBoy support and the Color filter options you got playing a classic GB game on a Color system.
 
Gingerbread Man said:
That one is supported, though?
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Is it? I didn't think it was. You can swap between greyscale and green screen.

What I mean is the button shortcuts you could press when loading a GB game on a GBC system. Different combinations gave you a different coloured filter, including a negative filter that was pretty trippy.
 
MisterSpo said:
Is it? I didn't think it was. You can swap between greyscale and green screen.

What I mean is the button shortcuts you could press when loading a GB game on a GBC system. Different combinations gave you a different coloured filter, including a negative filter that was pretty trippy.
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Ah yeah, the button shortcuts are not supported. I was talking about the default palettes GBC had for some GB games.
 
Thunder84 said:
Absolutely nuts that it took this long to get Super Mario Land on the system. Should’ve been there day 1.

What’s left now? I’m not particularly familiar with the GB/GBC library, so the only big games I know of that aren’t on the system yet are the Wario Lands and DK94.
Click to expand...
If we include 3rd party games that Nintendo published, we have 115 games still left to come to the service. So we have quite a lot.

EDIT: Thinking on it, there's a chunk of those that probably won't come due to licensing reasons. So it's more like 97 games left.
 
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The timing is certainly curious. I wonder if someone at Nintendo is a fan of Jeremy Parish’s video series which just relaunched its Game Boy coverage and posted videos over the last two weeks covering these three games:



 
shoptroll said:
The timing is certainly curious. I wonder if someone at Nintendo is a fan of Jeremy Parish’s video series which just relaunched its Game Boy coverage and posted videos over the last two weeks covering these three games:



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It's to mark the 35th anniversary of the GameBoy's launch. Tetris, Super Mario Land, Alleyway and Baseball were the first party launch games. It doesn't specify as such in the tweet, but it does say so on Facebook.
 
The really exciting thing that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet— the fact that cult classic Yakuman was not included with this update despite being a launch title (even in Japan) strongly hints that Yakuman Remake is one of the tentpole first party launch titles for the Switch 2. And it’s about time!
 
Brock Reiher said:
The really exciting thing that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet— the fact that cult classic Yakuman was not included with this update despite being a launch title (even in Japan) strongly hints that Yakuman Remake is one of the tentpole first party launch titles for the Switch 2. And it’s about time!
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Yakuman's been on the Japan NSO since Gameboy games launched
 
Brock Reiher said:
This would be cool but it would almost certainly be Japan only due to the heavy text elements imo
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It was found in the gigaleak fully localised as Lunar Chase so Nintendo do have a version they could put up on the NSO in the West if they wanted to
 
This is making me wonder why no one has released a Game Boy themed (brick, pocket, color, whatever) left joycon yet.

I mean, Hori released this cutie
hori-dpad-joycon-photo-3.jpg


At the start of the console's life and since then, they've released several variants (all ugly as sin, by the way), but now they have a literal Game Boy NSO emulator and there's not themed left DMG joycon in sight?

I'm sure there must be a Game Boy themed case somewhere, but... i don't wanna. I want a mushy, rubber contact D-Pad to use with my VC games, and i want it to be GAME BOY THEMED

That said, i'm SOOOO playing Alleyway tonight. It was my literal first game boy game, playing at a relative's house. I'm very fond of that one.
 
Alleyway has always been one of my two fav games on the OG Gameboy (not counting the GBC games, I consider those a whole different thing). The other one is Kirby Pinball, hope we'll get it soon enough.
 
Glad they're finally here, but I'm not sure why a random date in May is when they suddenly decided to drop 3 GB launch titles. Rather than launch of the NSO GB service, or even at GB's 35th anniversary last month.
Lugia667 said:
you can tell if there is a "Big game" by the amount of dislikes the video gets
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Isn't that hidden now?
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Glad they're finally here, but I'm not sure why a random date in May is when they suddenly decided to drop 3 GB launch titles. Rather than launch of the NSO GB service, or even at GB's 35th anniversary last month.

Isn't that hidden now?
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Return YouTube Dislike

An extension that returns dislike statistics to YouTube using a combination of scraped dislike stats and estimates extrapolated from extension user data.
www.returnyoutubedislike.com www.returnyoutubedislike.com
 
MisterSpo said:
It's to mark the 35th anniversary of the GameBoy's launch. Tetris, Super Mario Land, Alleyway and Baseball were the first party launch games. It doesn't specify as such in the tweet, but it does say so on Facebook.
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ahh i wish they released a Gameboy classic system (mini) for the 35th anniversary, that would be a dream come true
 


Finished my playthrough of it and man do I still love this game. Yea the physics are a bit wonky at times, but its easy enough and has a lot of charm to it. But man do I forget how short this game was. 4 worlds is insane.

Mer.Saloon said:


Have some reviews from the era. Hot damn were those critics harsh to Alleyway.
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Yea I was quite shocked by that. Like I get it's not the most in depth game out there, and the lack of power ups do make this breakout game kinda bare, but to give it a 27% or lower is insane to me. I usually save those kind of scores for games that are near unplayable/a broken mess. I think its still pretty fun, and its always nice to have fun time wasters on the NSO service.
 
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Played some SML after work today. Still holds a special charm. Ran out of lives and died in 3-1. A little rusty, lol…

Never played Alleyway until today. Fun little game and surprisingly addictive.

Baseball is…. meh. Controlling baserunners is confusing and a pain the ass.
 
BlackthornOrion said:
For Gameboy, 1st party-wise I'd say we're already kinda getting close to tapped out on "exciting big names" and looking at mostly "interesting curiosities" tbh outside of the Wario Lands and DK94 and maybe a few others. Some of the more notable remaining "no major licensing hurdles or negotiations to deal with" games include:
  • Balloon Kid (basically Balloon Fight, but as a platformer)
  • Wave Race (that's right, it didn't start on the N64)
  • Kirby Pinball
  • X (a sort of proto-Star Fox kind of thing)
  • Mole Mania (this one I think would actually be exciting. It's a Miyamoto game most people don't even know exists, let alone have ever played)
  • Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters
  • the Donkey Kong Land games (basically handheld counterparts to the DKC trilogy)
  • the other Game&Watch Gallery games
  • Qix (mostly notable for being the origin of Mario Odyssey's sombrero/poncho outfit, but also Mario kinda does blackface in it so I could see this never getting rereleased)
  • Pinball Revenge of the 'Gator
  • Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (it's mostly just SMB1 but on GBC; there's some fun extras though that would be neat to have, like a mode where you race a Boo through a level)
There's also obviously Pokemon R/B/Y and G/S/C but I'm not getting my hopes up for those to just randomly drop (I'd settle for Pokemon Puzzle Challenge on GBC and Ruby&Sapphire Pinball on GBA tbh)
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Balloon Kid and Mole Mania are two of the very best games on the system, and in this humble poster's opinion, two of the finest games Nintendo has put out.
 
GPKs3 said:
Played some SML after work today. Still holds a special charm. Ran out of lives and died in 3-1. A little rusty, lol…

Never played Alleyway until today. Fun little game and surprisingly addictive.

Baseball is…. meh. Controlling baserunners is confusing and a pain the ass.
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Was watching a friend stream it. She was having no trouble until 3-1. Seems like quite a difficulty spike.
 
bixente said:
Was watching a friend stream it. She was having no trouble until 3-1. Seems like quite a difficulty spike.
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Yeah it’s definitely a spike. Worlds 3 and 4 could be swapped for a smoother difficulty curve imo. The theme, enemies, and music of 4 are my favorite in the game though, so it serves as a high point to end the game on.
 
bixente said:
Was watching a friend stream it. She was having no trouble until 3-1. Seems like quite a difficulty spike.
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As a kid, World 3 was always my lives gobbler. When I'd make it to world 4 I'd always be lean on lives and ultimately die to small occasional things which cost me the whole game.
 
So if I want to download the Japanese NSO apps, could I just set my kid’s account to Japan region, download the apps and then set it back?
 
julian said:
So if I want to download the Japanese NSO apps, could I just set my kid’s account to Japan region, download the apps and then set it back?
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Yes. NSO apps are free to download even if you don't have the subscription.
 
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