Alleyway seemed really dated to me as a kid when the GB came out, but I think you provide a reasonable explanation for why it made Nintendo's shortlist for titles to put into production for launch. Another point I'd add is that it was a simple design to get the ball rolling on, they surely must have had time crunch concerns. And if I ever find myself in 1989 I'm staying there. With everything that happened in gaming, I think about that year a lot.
To me Alleyway existed as a way to get adults to take a second look at the Game Boy at it's launch with something familiar. My father was a big player of games like Alleyway for the first year or two of the Game Boy because it reminded him a break out from when he was a noticeably younger. Side scrollers like SML were never his jam but mostly single screen affairs with a puzzle element completely were. Sadly my father is now in a long term skilled nursing facility but I can still remember him sitting in his recliner playing the family Game Boy in the evening. Usually after he had finished his daily newspaper which at that time came in the afternoon. Good memories!
Tennis was a perfect portable game in the sense that you could squeeze in a quick game or two in a few minutes while waiting for a bus or train. I adore it.
I'm pretty sure the Super Game Boy released in 1994 everywhere. Between my mom stealing my Game Boy to play Tetris and my dad stealing it to play Alleyway, it's a wonder I ever got to play anything on it at all.
Played many Nintendo VS games in 1984. We had an Aladdin’s Castle arcade in town. I still play Alleyway at bedtime several times a month. It’s good to shut off the mind and get sleepy in about 20 minutes.
So what were your impressions of Vs System games in 1984? I played a few at the different pizza/arcade chains in town and never thought they seemed out of place as coin-ops-curious to hear if others felt the same.
@@JeremyParish The Aladdin’s Castle had the connected side by side upright one in like a V shape for head to head play or solo play on Tennis and Baseball only as options, as far as I can recall… so long ago now. It stood out due to the unique look. I played against my friend once in a while, but mostly against the CPU. There was a Red Tent VS at our Pizza Hut, but I never played it so I can’t recall the game selections. It just looked like it belonged there matching the Pizza Hut roof design.
Alleyway was the very first block-breaker game I had ever played. I didn't get it on launch, but by the early 90s it was already discounted to be cheap enough fro a child to buy with his allowance. It might seem quaint now, but I had a lot of fun with this game, and as Jeremy mentions it was forgiving enough for a kid to get into yet offered enough challenge in later levels that I didn't outgrow the game as I got older. I wouldn't consider it to be among the very best original GameBoy games, but it is a very enjoyable title well worth owning even here in 2024.
In typical Jeremy Parish prophetic vibes, Nintendo just released Super Mario Land, Baseball and Alleyway as part of the GameBoy NSO library, just about a week after this video dropped
Tennis was one of my most played GB games and IMO does actually hold up against most console tennis games of the 8 and 16 bit era. The hard to define challenge of a tennis game is making it feel right, and Tennis on GB does- whereas even most visually impressive renditions on console didn't. You really feel in control over where the ball goes, and so you can pursue that fun cat and mouse challenge of tennis trying to wrong foot your opponent and punish mistakes. It took until Hot Shots / Everybody's Tennis on the PSP for a portable tennis game to outplay it.
Played shitloads of Alleyway in the back of the car, road tripping through Europe as a kid. My brother playing Six Golden Coins next to me...great times!
Playing Tennis on my NES was great fun. My family and friends played it a lot. My Dad loved it. I played Vs. Tennis in the arcades, and it was a blast to have your own screen, when playing against a human opponent.
Dude I LOVED Tennis on gameboy, and i, too, have no idea why I had it, nor was i ANY kind of tennis fan. It was my first GB game that wasn't tetris, and it was like an nes in my hands. I was 9 or 10, and felt like I was dreaming. It was SICK
@@thecunninlynguist i have no effing idea why i even had it, but, i loved it all the same. it was in like 89 or whatever, for real: i think my mom just grabbed it, you know? :P it was just like "this is a LOT like an effing nes game, but portable! WTF?!" you know what i mean?
I think it might have been Namco's Gee Bee (and one or two other later arcade games) that introduced the Breakout/Pinball genre. My favorite example of it (and obviously inspired by Gee Bee) is HAL's Pinball Spectacular for the Commodore 64, which I had as a kid. It's really hard!
I could be dead wrong on this but I think that there might have been more enthusiasm for golf games in Japan in the 80s because, of all the sports games, that one feels the most RPG-adjacent. There is a bit of twitch timing involved but the majority of the game is best-tool-for-the-job stats management.
I think I've streamed more hours of Alleyway than anyone else. Also I love gum. Plain flavored gum. Only the first part of this statement is true. Also, i dig the "avoid missing ball for high score" grace note.
@@JeremyParish The only one I ever encountered was medical in nature. It contained a pre-numbing agent before the dentist administers the actual pain relief needle, I think its unflavored so the patient is okay spitting it out fast such as that the dentist can begin work. I could go into further detail, but at some point all the dental staff transformed into Bluey characters, so I don't think my account beyond that point may be accurate aside from the fact that I went home with one fewer tooth and a large bill.
Regarding color in 1st Party Gameboy games on Super Gameboy. There was an issue of EGM that stated as an insider leak (I forget who used to write that section of the magazine) that Gameboy games already had code in them to support color. This was years before the Super Gameboy was even conceived and during the speculation period that Nintendo would release a color version of the Gameboy. When I brought my Super Gameboy back in the day I noticed that 1st party games selected the correct color palette and remembered that EGM issue to me confirming that what was written was actually true. So my take on this according to this video isn't that Nintendo went back and manually coded color pallet information for all 1st party games for the super Gameboy, rather they just enabled a function of those games that already existed.
Though I really enjoy your videos, I am just a bit confused on why you’re making videos again on games you already reviewed. What is the reason on doing a Game Boy Works II instead of picking up after 1990?
@@JeremyParish they are still a great viewing experience, I will continue to watch them and support your channel. I was just curious on why did you feel the need to go over these titles again. Edit: nevermind, I just noticed the description on the first video. These are now focusing on the US launch instead of the Japanese one.
While I've been loving your revisiting the Game Boy library in Game Boy Works Vol. 2 so far, I really do think that these new retrospectives work best when paired with the original videos. It's interesting that you always have entirely new things to say in your Vol. 2 videos instead of simply retreading old ground again but with higher-fidelity video and audio, but I think that watching the original video retrospectives on these games combined with these "enhanced" reworked videos featuring Nintendo Power snippets and Game & Watch footage (massive fan of the frequent Game & Watch detours in this new series, by the way) provides a more comprehensive overview of these games and their place in history. I don't know, perhaps I just like hearing what you have to say about these old games. On that note, I'm super excited to hear what your thoughts on Castlevania: The Adventure are ten years later. I recently played through it for the first time on original hardware, and while I agree with many of your criticisms of it, I felt that a lot of the game seemed to be well-designed to accommodate Christopher's (admittedly very shoddy) physics, and the game, though extremely difficult, never really felt unfair to me (aside from that blasted whip getting downgraded when taking damage). Anyway, top-tier stuff. I look forward to the return of Game Boy Works Vol. II.
12:55 Wow, Tennis on Game Boy has music from prog rock band Yes?! Man, I wonder what other music options are on the main menu for that game... maybe some Rush?
I loved Snoopy Tennis! I got too good at it at some point, though, maxing out the difficulty. I don't think I ever actually maxed out the score, as that would take quite a while. My father did, though. I have neither of these games, but would be mainly interested in Alleyway. I have two Tennis games already (Mario Tennis on N64 and Droopy Tennis Open on GBA) and don't play either much. Edit: Ah, right. I shouldn't get Alleyway. The game's too long for me to comfortably beat without a password system, probably.
Great take on what Nintendo Power said. Of the original launch titles, I had Super Mario Land and Alleyway. I largely missed out on the 2600 in its heyday. Even if I did have a 7800 and access to yard sale 2600 carts. But I always liked Breakout games. And Alleyway was no exception. I thought Alleyway controlled well on a d-pad. Although, I never got that good at re-angling the ball. That really was only an issue for the static block stages, though. I remember getting to the stages shown in the video, but I certainly didn't come anywhere close to finishing Alleyway. I'm looking forward to the Game Boy Works featuring Castlevania: The Adventure. I played that game more than any other on Game Boy. And I remember it not being that far behind when the Game Boy was available in the U.S.
It'll be a long time before we get a rereview for Castlevania the Adventure. There's a review from around a decade ago up on the channel though if you want to hear his thoughts on the game
Oh, yeah, the Super Game Boy's auto-palettes. The Game Boy Color had a similar thing going on, too, and some of the GBC auto-palettes are strikingly similar to the SGB's, as you demonstrated in that Tennis clip.
I love Spitball Sparky. Have you played the Game & Watch Pinball? It's weird, because the G&W spin on Breakout works extremely well, while the G&W spin on Pinball is the only bad G&W game lol
They had a Vs. Super Mario Bros. cabinet at our local amusement park years after NES was out. I remember my uncle scoffing at it, having beaten SMB dozens of times already, but he putt a quarter in and quickly realized this was different and harder. We didn't see him again for the rest of the day.
The "Pinball Deluxe Reloaded" mobile game by Made of Bits has a pinball table called BRIX that is Breakout inspired. Some of the levels are absolutely infuriating.
Apparently Atari sued over Arkanoid for its similarities to Breakout, as a result Taito redid many stages that looked too much like a rectangle. With that background it's odd that Alleyway gets away with having a rectangle as its first stage.
There were SO MANY Breakout clones in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Pretty bizarre that Arkanoid was the one they decided to go after, especially since it added so much to the formula compared to pure knockoffs like all the ones mentioned in this episode.
Iirc he said that the old series was just about 10 years old and he wanted to redo the series looking at the american library and launch rather than the japanese one. I'm a relatively new viewer so I never really saw the old one.
I.think Tennis was my first.GB game that wasn't. Tetris,. and.like @thecunninglynguist , i.have no idea why. Idgaf about tennis. BUT, i.was utterly obsessed with it: it was a fun NES.style.game, in MY HANDS. Now that I think about it, Tennis is big part of the reason I keep buying Retroids and Ambernics at 44 years old. :p
Neither entry was published by Nintendo, but given 12:36 just golf is the only sport that had more than 1 game published on the NES by Nintendo, wouldn’t American football with it’s externally developed but Nintendo published 10 Yard Fight & NES Play Action Football count within this criteria? Understandable omission given NES Play Action football is remembered by absolutely nobody
At this point I can't imagine anyone who got transported back to 1989 trying to return to the present.😄
Fair
May 1990, sits on toilet playing this game
May 2024, sits on toilet watching review of this game
It's toilets all the way down
One thing i love about alleyway is that the different blocks make sounds in a different pitch when you hit them. It adds so much
Alleyway seemed really dated to me as a kid when the GB came out, but I think you provide a reasonable explanation for why it made Nintendo's shortlist for titles to put into production for launch. Another point I'd add is that it was a simple design to get the ball rolling on, they surely must have had time crunch concerns. And if I ever find myself in 1989 I'm staying there. With everything that happened in gaming, I think about that year a lot.
i won't lie, gb works vol. 2 is probably the best video game "remake" of 2024
the cut to the single paragraph for what nintendo power said was hilarious. Took me a bit to even find the games.
Got my first real Game Boy, bought it at the five and dime. Played it 'til my fingers bled, was the summer of '89.
lol
To me Alleyway existed as a way to get adults to take a second look at the Game Boy at it's launch with something familiar. My father was a big player of games like Alleyway for the first year or two of the Game Boy because it reminded him a break out from when he was a noticeably younger. Side scrollers like SML were never his jam but mostly single screen affairs with a puzzle element completely were.
Sadly my father is now in a long term skilled nursing facility but I can still remember him sitting in his recliner playing the family Game Boy in the evening. Usually after he had finished his daily newspaper which at that time came in the afternoon. Good memories!
Tennis was a perfect portable game in the sense that you could squeeze in a quick game or two in a few minutes while waiting for a bus or train. I adore it.
I'm pretty sure the Super Game Boy released in 1994 everywhere.
Between my mom stealing my Game Boy to play Tetris and my dad stealing it to play Alleyway, it's a wonder I ever got to play anything on it at all.
Played many Nintendo VS games in 1984. We had an Aladdin’s Castle arcade in town. I still play Alleyway at bedtime several times a month. It’s good to shut off the mind and get sleepy in about 20 minutes.
So what were your impressions of Vs System games in 1984? I played a few at the different pizza/arcade chains in town and never thought they seemed out of place as coin-ops-curious to hear if others felt the same.
@@JeremyParish The Aladdin’s Castle had the connected side by side upright one in like a V shape for head to head play or solo play on Tennis and Baseball only as options, as far as I can recall… so long ago now. It stood out due to the unique look. I played against my friend once in a while, but mostly against the CPU. There was a Red Tent VS at our Pizza Hut, but I never played it so I can’t recall the game selections. It just looked like it belonged there matching the Pizza Hut roof design.
Alleyway was the very first block-breaker game I had ever played. I didn't get it on launch, but by the early 90s it was already discounted to be cheap enough fro a child to buy with his allowance. It might seem quaint now, but I had a lot of fun with this game, and as Jeremy mentions it was forgiving enough for a kid to get into yet offered enough challenge in later levels that I didn't outgrow the game as I got older. I wouldn't consider it to be among the very best original GameBoy games, but it is a very enjoyable title well worth owning even here in 2024.
Did you end up completing it?
In typical Jeremy Parish prophetic vibes, Nintendo just released Super Mario Land, Baseball and Alleyway as part of the GameBoy NSO library, just about a week after this video dropped
Tennis was one of my most played GB games and IMO does actually hold up against most console tennis games of the 8 and 16 bit era. The hard to define challenge of a tennis game is making it feel right, and Tennis on GB does- whereas even most visually impressive renditions on console didn't. You really feel in control over where the ball goes, and so you can pursue that fun cat and mouse challenge of tennis trying to wrong foot your opponent and punish mistakes. It took until Hot Shots / Everybody's Tennis on the PSP for a portable tennis game to outplay it.
Major props on capturing these games’ connections to Game & Watch and Vs. System!
You’re truly leaving no stone unturned this time around!
Thanks, I've learned a LOT in the past decade and am trying to bring that awareness into my writing for these episodes.
Jeremy looks like he should be selling top shelf whiskey in a Japanese commercial. I saw that as a long time fan of his.
Played shitloads of Alleyway in the back of the car, road tripping through Europe as a kid. My brother playing Six Golden Coins next to me...great times!
Playing Tennis on my NES was great fun. My family and friends played it a lot. My Dad loved it.
I played Vs. Tennis in the arcades, and it was a blast to have your own screen, when playing against a human opponent.
i had both of these growing up. I don't know why I had tennis, when I'm not remotely a fan of the sport. I think a relative bought it. Alleyway's fun!
Dude I LOVED Tennis on gameboy, and i, too, have no idea why I had it, nor was i ANY kind of tennis fan. It was my first GB game that wasn't tetris, and it was like an nes in my hands. I was 9 or 10, and felt like I was dreaming. It was SICK
I bet you had fun playing it though.
@MaidenHell1977 tennis? Eh it was OK. I did like GB golf. My uncle had it and let me borrow it
@@thecunninlynguist i have no effing idea why i even had it, but, i loved it all the same. it was in like 89 or whatever, for real: i think my mom just grabbed it, you know? :P it was just like "this is a LOT like an effing nes game, but portable! WTF?!" you know what i mean?
I had to stop rewatching NES Works 88 to be here. And that's OK.
tennis has a serving glitch in which you'd score a point without even hitting the ball to the other court. good times
I think it might have been Namco's Gee Bee (and one or two other later arcade games) that introduced the Breakout/Pinball genre. My favorite example of it (and obviously inspired by Gee Bee) is HAL's Pinball Spectacular for the Commodore 64, which I had as a kid. It's really hard!
0:39 What happened there? It looked like it noclipped through two blocks and removed one of them without changing direction.
It was definitely nice to revisit Game Boy's launch. Looking forward to Eurasia next week!
Alleyway is a bit tedious these days, but I am sure I would have loved it as a kid.
I could be dead wrong on this but I think that there might have been more enthusiasm for golf games in Japan in the 80s because, of all the sports games, that one feels the most RPG-adjacent. There is a bit of twitch timing involved but the majority of the game is best-tool-for-the-job stats management.
I never thought of it that way, but you are correct.
I guess it’s more to do with the fact of golf being ridiculously popular in Japan, especially in the 80s and 90s.
I think I've streamed more hours of Alleyway than anyone else. Also I love gum. Plain flavored gum. Only the first part of this statement is true.
Also, i dig the "avoid missing ball for high score" grace note.
What is "plain flavored gum" tho?
@@JeremyParish The only one I ever encountered was medical in nature. It contained a pre-numbing agent before the dentist administers the actual pain relief needle, I think its unflavored so the patient is okay spitting it out fast such as that the dentist can begin work. I could go into further detail, but at some point all the dental staff transformed into Bluey characters, so I don't think my account beyond that point may be accurate aside from the fact that I went home with one fewer tooth and a large bill.
If I get trapped in the past of summer 1989 there's no way I'm finding a way to come back.
My cousin had pinball and to this day it's still a great game to play.
Regarding color in 1st Party Gameboy games on Super Gameboy. There was an issue of EGM that stated as an insider leak (I forget who used to write that section of the magazine) that Gameboy games already had code in them to support color. This was years before the Super Gameboy was even conceived and during the speculation period that Nintendo would release a color version of the Gameboy. When I brought my Super Gameboy back in the day I noticed that 1st party games selected the correct color palette and remembered that EGM issue to me confirming that what was written was actually true. So my take on this according to this video isn't that Nintendo went back and manually coded color pallet information for all 1st party games for the super Gameboy, rather they just enabled a function of those games that already existed.
Though I really enjoy your videos, I am just a bit confused on why you’re making videos again on games you already reviewed. What is the reason on doing a Game Boy Works II instead of picking up after 1990?
Ok. Feel free to skip these.
@@JeremyParish they are still a great viewing experience, I will continue to watch them and support your channel. I was just curious on why did you feel the need to go over these titles again.
Edit: nevermind, I just noticed the description on the first video. These are now focusing on the US launch instead of the Japanese one.
While I've been loving your revisiting the Game Boy library in Game Boy Works Vol. 2 so far, I really do think that these new retrospectives work best when paired with the original videos. It's interesting that you always have entirely new things to say in your Vol. 2 videos instead of simply retreading old ground again but with higher-fidelity video and audio, but I think that watching the original video retrospectives on these games combined with these "enhanced" reworked videos featuring Nintendo Power snippets and Game & Watch footage (massive fan of the frequent Game & Watch detours in this new series, by the way) provides a more comprehensive overview of these games and their place in history. I don't know, perhaps I just like hearing what you have to say about these old games.
On that note, I'm super excited to hear what your thoughts on Castlevania: The Adventure are ten years later. I recently played through it for the first time on original hardware, and while I agree with many of your criticisms of it, I felt that a lot of the game seemed to be well-designed to accommodate Christopher's (admittedly very shoddy) physics, and the game, though extremely difficult, never really felt unfair to me (aside from that blasted whip getting downgraded when taking damage).
Anyway, top-tier stuff. I look forward to the return of Game Boy Works Vol. II.
12:55 Wow, Tennis on Game Boy has music from prog rock band Yes?! Man, I wonder what other music options are on the main menu for that game... maybe some Rush?
I loved Snoopy Tennis! I got too good at it at some point, though, maxing out the difficulty. I don't think I ever actually maxed out the score, as that would take quite a while. My father did, though.
I have neither of these games, but would be mainly interested in Alleyway. I have two Tennis games already (Mario Tennis on N64 and Droopy Tennis Open on GBA) and don't play either much.
Edit: Ah, right. I shouldn't get Alleyway. The game's too long for me to comfortably beat without a password system, probably.
Alleyway is an underrated game boy classic. Sure, it's Breakout, but it's a really fun version!
Great take on what Nintendo Power said.
Of the original launch titles, I had Super Mario Land and Alleyway. I largely missed out on the 2600 in its heyday. Even if I did have a 7800 and access to yard sale 2600 carts. But I always liked Breakout games. And Alleyway was no exception.
I thought Alleyway controlled well on a d-pad. Although, I never got that good at re-angling the ball. That really was only an issue for the static block stages, though. I remember getting to the stages shown in the video, but I certainly didn't come anywhere close to finishing Alleyway.
I'm looking forward to the Game Boy Works featuring Castlevania: The Adventure. I played that game more than any other on Game Boy. And I remember it not being that far behind when the Game Boy was available in the U.S.
It'll be a long time before we get a rereview for Castlevania the Adventure. There's a review from around a decade ago up on the channel though if you want to hear his thoughts on the game
Halloween isn't THAT far away
Micheaaaaal Laaaaaaaandon 🎶
Let's see if Mr Parish gets that reference lol
seeing tennis this week makes me think about the challengers movie i saw on monday
trent reznor music over gameboy tennis... that would own
Oh, yeah, the Super Game Boy's auto-palettes. The Game Boy Color had a similar thing going on, too, and some of the GBC auto-palettes are strikingly similar to the SGB's, as you demonstrated in that Tennis clip.
I love Spitball Sparky. Have you played the Game & Watch Pinball? It's weird, because the G&W spin on Breakout works extremely well, while the G&W spin on Pinball is the only bad G&W game lol
Thank you for always starting my Wednesday off with informative content that I enjoy, your efforts are incredibly appreciated.
They had a Vs. Super Mario Bros. cabinet at our local amusement park years after NES was out. I remember my uncle scoffing at it, having beaten SMB dozens of times already, but he putt a quarter in and quickly realized this was different and harder. We didn't see him again for the rest of the day.
Always the highlight of my week. Thanks Jeremy.
The "Pinball Deluxe Reloaded" mobile game by Made of Bits has a pinball table called BRIX that is Breakout inspired. Some of the levels are absolutely infuriating.
We need a “platonic idea” counter to go alongside the one for Tower of Duraga 😉
Apparently Atari sued over Arkanoid for its similarities to Breakout, as a result Taito redid many stages that looked too much like a rectangle. With that background it's odd that Alleyway gets away with having a rectangle as its first stage.
There were SO MANY Breakout clones in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Pretty bizarre that Arkanoid was the one they decided to go after, especially since it added so much to the formula compared to pure knockoffs like all the ones mentioned in this episode.
Alleyway, or "Breakout (there's no stopping us now)"
Did Jeremy ever say why he reset gb works, and if he's gonna be redoing everything or going back to where he was at some point?
Iirc he said that the old series was just about 10 years old and he wanted to redo the series looking at the american library and launch rather than the japanese one. I'm a relatively new viewer so I never really saw the old one.
The Alleyway deadlock in the background at 9:12. I share in the frustration.
Alleyway was a logical thing to put on GB so I wish it wasn't so vanilla apart from the handful of gimmicks
that’s mario in there. working the shaft.
The relaunch of this series coinciding with Delta on the iPhone has been terrible for me doing anything useful with my time
12:06 Starting off by revealing "LOSER" had to be intentional.
I.think Tennis was my first.GB game that wasn't. Tetris,. and.like @thecunninglynguist , i.have no idea why. Idgaf about tennis. BUT, i.was utterly obsessed with it: it was a fun NES.style.game, in MY HANDS. Now that I think about it, Tennis is big part of the reason I keep buying Retroids and Ambernics at 44 years old. :p
I like Alleyway it's fun to play. 😀👍🎮
i think what Nintendo power had to say sums it up!
Neither entry was published by Nintendo, but given 12:36 just golf is the only sport that had more than 1 game published on the NES by Nintendo, wouldn’t American football with it’s externally developed but Nintendo published 10 Yard Fight & NES Play Action Football count within this criteria? Understandable omission given NES Play Action football is remembered by absolutely nobody
15:00, why should i want to get back? I would rather use my knowledge of retro gamedev and get rich. :D
The paddle in Alleyway is totally a Vaus. You see it. I know you see it. (Also, is Vaus a proper noun? Is it supposed to be capitalized?)