The Great GameStop Haul, Plus!

Did you know that GameStop still sells PSP games? I don't think they're supposed to, but the one in Nogales still does. They had dozens of titles just ripe for the pickin', and I managed to find some gems hidden amidst the rubble of extreme sports challenges and licensed dreck. Here's what I took home, in order of personal preference. As a bonus, I'll throw in a review of an exceptional import title that I obtained from, ahem, other sources.

HAMMERIN' HARRY HERO
Atlus/Irem

"Hey, now that you've gotten off the
Tilt-a-Hurl, maybe I can interest you
in a spicy tuna roll! Uh, where are
you going...?"

Hammerin' Harry is one of those games that sits on the hazy edge of my childhood nostalgia. I remember popping a couple quarters into the arcade version at a miniature golf course near Lansing. I was amused by the enthusiastic battle cry of "Let's Get BUSY!" at the start of the first stage... and frustrated that I couldn't reach any of the other stages. After ten minutes of Harry getting impaled by pick axes and crushed by construction equipment, I moved on to a different machine, and Hammerin' Harry was quickly forgotten.

Forgotten by me, but not so much by its developer Irem. It turns out the Hammerin' series is a popular franchise in Japan, with a handful of sequels on the NES, Game Boy, and Super NES. The latest entry in the series offers crisp polygonal backgrounds while abandoning Irem's past attempts at localization. The lead character, now named Gen, romps through a variety of Japanese locations, putting the hammer down on the thugs of a sleazy real estate tycoon. If his carpentry skills can't get the job done, Gen can adopt another blue collar profession, with its own unique abilities. Want to serve up some wasabi-flavored pain as a sushi chef? You've got that option.

Nothing about Hammerin' Hero will blow the drive door off your PSP, but it's a well designed and fairly distracting platformer with its heart firmly set in the arcades of the early 1990s. If you're looking to relive that experience (aggravating one hit deaths and all), Gen certainly delivers.

JEANNE D'ARC
Sony/Level 5

The most fun you'll have with a
schizophrenic martyr.

This strategy RPG retells the story of Joan of Arc, with just a few creative liberties. The English army are allied with demons, the duke of Bedford is a dark sorcerer rather than some nutter obsessed with parakeets, and Jeanne regularly transforms into a heavily armored warrior straight out of the cartoon Knights of the Zodiac, but beyond that, it's totally faithful to 15th century French history. Heh.

But seriously, ladies and germs. If you haven't already had your fill of turn-based strategy with Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Disgaea, I'd suggest giving this a spin. Not only does it look nice, with your heroes battling on detailed polygonal playfields, it adds a few new wrinkles to the genre. Densely packed clusters of heroes form a "unified front," strengthening their defense, and soldiers armed with spears can either safely strike from a distance or skewer two adjacent foes with a single stab. Your enemies hit hard and the objectives for each mission can be demanding, making it critically important to plan each move carefully and conserve resources, especially Jeanne's tide-turning transformations.

PRINNY 2: DAWN OF OPERATION PANTIES, DOOD!
NIS

Hey Etna, while we're looking for your panties,
you can always wear one of these!
(Gets punted into the next county)

I like this game, despite its best efforts to turn me away. It just bleeds passive aggression, from the maddening difficulty of the levels to the way it replaces your hit points with diapers if you dare ask for mercy to some of the most incredibly obnoxious characters you'll find on the PSP. You play as the Prinny, a legion of glassy-eyed, leet-speeking penguins, and it's up to you to recover the panties of the barely pubescent demon queen Etna. You'll scour six different stages for the missing unmentionables, slicing through monsters with your twin blades and bounding over pits with a handy double jump. When a Prinny dies, a new one is deposited at the last checkpoint you reached. Burn through all one thousand of them before your mission is complete and Etna will be very, very unhappy. (If you don't know your Disgaea, this is not a girl you want upset with you.)

Prinny 2 wears its love for 20th century platformers on its sleeve, taking much of its inspiration from classics like Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Castlevania. It also pushes the limits of 21st century handheld technology with silky smooth animation and eye-popping special effects. When Prinny leaps into the air to rain hot death on its enemies, the camera rotates slightly for a more dynamic view of the carnage. Prinny 2 is packed with these little details, making you eager to feed penguins into its hungry jaws even as it taunts you with abusive level designs and a sense of humor so warped, even the title characters seem mystified by it.

MEGA MAN: POWERED UP
CAPCOM

How does he manage to stand
with such a huge head?

Reunited and it feels so good! I had Mega Man: Powered Up back when it was first released, and I'm thrilled to have it in my collection once again. This game takes the very first installment in the Mega Man series and gives it a Playskool makeover, replacing its gritty metallic graphics with bright colors and comical characters. Adding to the toy box feel is a construction mode that lets you create your own stages, provided you find items hidden in the standard ones.

But wait, there's more! There are two new stages, one hundred optional challenges, a dozen playable characters (including all the bosses!), and three difficulty levels which make profound changes to the layout of each level. The take home is that there's a whole lot of content packed into this disc. Curiously, there's also a lot of slowdown, but even the occasional frame rate drop can't tarnish the appeal of this abundantly generous remake.

GRAND KNIGHTS HISTORY
MARVELOUS/VANILLAWARE

Watch out boy, she'll chew you up.

Don't you just hate it when some jerk starts raving about a Japanese game you're never going to play, acting like it's the grand sum of human achievement in electronic entertainment? 

Well, today I am that jerk. And the game I'll be praising to the heavens is Grand Knights History, a role-playing title developed near the end of the PSP's life. This game was almost, almost brought to the United States, but the publisher got cold feet when Sony announced the PSP's successor, the Vita. Luckily, some talented hackers knew a good thing when they saw it, and translated the game to English themselves.

Hey Greenie, catch!

Whoever you folks are, THANK YOU. Without you, I would have missed out on this gorgeously drawn and enormously addictive fantasy game. Grand Knights History borrows from a lot of other Japanese hits- you'll notice everything from Culdcept to Etrian Odyssey in its DNA- but ultimately finds its own unique identity. The combat system deserves special notice... it's crammed with strategic possibilities and moves at an exhilarating pace, with turns ending in a matter of seconds. Vanillaware's exquisite artwork adds to the thrill... your band of knights walks on a slightly curved trail in their search for adventure, and monsters directly confront the heroes, crushing them in a death grip and even swallowing them whole. A majestic soundtrack by Basiscape adds authenticity to the medieval setting, and is the last ingredient Grand Knights History needs to elevate it from merely great to a masterpiece.

Look, I've played my share of RPGs and adventure games on the PSP, because heaven knows it's got plenty of them. Most are very good, but I don't think any of them can top this. There have been some concerns expressed about the game's online component, but I've played Grand Knights History for hours and haven't found it necessary. Don't let it stop you from experiencing one of the high points in the PSP library.

Weatherworn

We wish you a merry Life Day.
(Now try getting one.)

Happy Geek-O De Mayo*, folks! I hope Jabba Claus brought you what you wanted. I mean, aside from Princess Leia in a metal bikini.

WARNING: This product may
be hazardous to your retinas.

Off that subject, I just wanted to mention that I finally got my hands on that backlit Game Boy Advance SP I always wanted. Actually, I've got two of them now, counting the one I purchased at a Goodwill in Tucson and the one I received in the mail from a member of CheapAssGamer. I'll be talking about this system in greater detail after I've spent more time with it, but for the moment I can say that it's already threatening to put my Game Boy Micro into permanent retirement. The screen is larger, it's more comfortable to hold, and the backlight is just incredible. The standard brightness setting is already better than anything the AGS-100's milky display can dish out, but hit a button under the hinge and the screen shifts into overdrive, drowning every detail in dazzling reds, greens, and blues. The colors, Duke, the colors! 

This brightness setting probably takes a toll on the SP's battery life, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice when it makes every game look this good. As an added bonus, the SP plays games the Micro and DS won't, including titles from the Game Boy and Game Boy Color library. Several months ago, I called the PSP-3000 the ultimate evolution of that handheld. Even at this early stage of testing, I think I can safely say the same thing about the AGS-101.

Somewhere under all those scratches is a
Game Boy Advance SP.

There was just one downside, however. I was warned by the seller that the SP was "pretty scratched up," but that hardly does its condition justice. This thing is WRECKED, man. It looks like it was owned by Wolverine before he fed it to his pet wolverine. Not only is the front and back of the unit covered with scratches, the L button seems like it had an unfortunate encounter with the business end of a cigarette. I wasn't terribly concerned because it came with an AC adapter and the SP I found at Goodwill didn't, but this system will need a new case before I'm comfortable taking it out in public.

Oh, but it gets better! I went to another Goodwill (that scuzzy one in Nogales) and found a GameCube for a quite reasonable five bucks. I already have two of them back in Michigan, but what the hell, for the price of a Big Mac I could always use another. However, popping open the case revealed a nasty surprise, which I'll share with you now...

I'm not sure what all those brown spots are, honestly. I desperately hope that they're coffee stains, because I'd rather not consider the alternative. What I can say is that they were a little slice of hell to remove, dried into every nook and cranny of the machine. It took a handful of cotton swabs, a generous amount of alcohol, and a whole lot of scrubbing to get this thing even close to clean, and I still feel like I've got work left to do on it. 

How do people even let their consoles get in this condition, anyway? Okay, the Game Boy Advance SP has always been a little scratch-prone, but it's frustrating that someone did a spit-take inside this GameCube (possibly after discovering the price of Smash Bros Melee on eBay) and just left it that way. Come on, people, this stuff is history. Show it a little respect!



* Yes, this is coming from a bitter Trekkie who doesn't have his own holiday.

And Now, a Comic.

Dreaming in Black and White, Part I

The original Game Boy was never my cup of tea, but I've decided to give the system another chance after all these years. I've discovered that it has the peculiar power to entertain in spite of its many handicaps... possibly because its limited hardware encouraged developers to think outside the front-loading grey box and try new ideas, rather than lean on the scroll/boss formula that was so common on the NES. Here now are four such games, along with a sequel to an early Nintendo release that goes a long way toward improving the original.

By the way, these reviews are a little more... spirited than usual. If you were wondering about the change in tone, you can thank Mike and his hard lemonade for that.

FISH DUDE
Sofel

That thing on the top of the screen
is a seagull. I think.

I was looking forward to this one when it was first announced in GamePro, and frankly, I'm convinced that I was the only teenager who was. The initial descriptions made it sound like a revival of the clever Intellivision game Shark! Shark!, where you were a tiny guppy that gobbled up smaller fish to grow in size, eventually gaining the girth to take on more threatening prey. It was kind of like Katamari Damacy, except underwater and more pixelated. 

Anyway, Fish Dude is NOT the Shark! Shark! revival it appeared to be in those advertisements, but a lame aquatic take on Pac-Man, where you have to chase tiny fish and hammer the fire button to chew them. While you're hunting for dinner, larger, balloon-shaped fish will be hunting for you, and have a disconcerting habit of catching you while you're attempting to digest minnows. Forget about turning the tables on these apex predators, because you won't grow in size no matter how many fish you eat. You will get bored in a hurry, and you will want to throw your GameBoy into a river when you hear the tiresome jingle that plays each time you're given a new life, or start a new stage, or the game catches you scratching your nose. To quote Alex Winter in Freaked, "Boo, dude!"

EDIT: I learned (from a VGJunk review I hadn't even realized I read!) that your fish dude DOES grow in size after about three stages. You have to eat 45 fish to get that far, while in Shark! Shark!, your fish started growing after munching three or four of them. It will take the patience of Job and the willpower of mighty Hercules to stay interested in Fish Dude long enough for the lead character to get any larger.

BUBBLE GHOST
FCI/Pony Canyon

Nothing can kill the ghost.
EVERYTHING can kill the bubble.

I'd heard positive things about this game, but refused to believe them, because it was released by Pony Canyon. You know, the same company that published NES games which were somehow more primitive than their Atari 2600 counterparts. Unbelievably, Bubble Ghost actually IS pretty good, calling my whole perception of reality into question. Black is white! Right is left! Dogs and cats, living together! Bill Murray playing Garfield in a movie after complaining that his character in the Ghostbusters cartoon sounded too much like Garfield! A Diet Dr. Pepper that really does taste like regular Dr. Pepper!

Well, life no longer makes sense, but at least I can take solace in Bubble Ghost, a fun puzzle game that's like nothing else on the Game Boy. You're a small spirit who's acquired Patrick Swayze powers, and can move corporeal objects around with sheer force of will. Usually that means blowing a bubble through tight corridors filled with sharp objects, but you can also blow out candles and scare serpents into submission by blowing into trumpets. The take home is that if Kirby sucks, the star of Bubble Ghost blows. The physics in the game are a little suspect- blowing on the bubble immediately changes its direction, which is not how things would work in real life- but the game is perfectly playable despite this. Also, be warned... that ridiculously catchy theme music is gonna bore its way into your brain and never leave. Tell Rick Astley to make some room.

KID ICARUS: OF MYTHS AND MONSTERS
NINTENDO

Still not sure what that black stuff
is supposed to be.

I'll be honest with you folks... I don't like Kid Icarus much. Never have, really. I didn't even like Kid Icarus: Uprising, because after an initial honeymoon, it tied my fingers into knots with its ridiculous touchscreen-dependent control scheme. (If you're wondering, I'm typing this review with my nose right now.) Would it really have been too much to ask to build the 3DS with a second analog thumbstick, Nintendo? Oh wait, you needed to add that to a later model, so you could make more money off your own shortsightedness. All righty, then!

You could knock me over with a wax-coated feather when I played Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters and DIDN'T hate the experience. It's similar to the old NES game, but more merciful, thanks to a more handheld-friendly design but also because the developers learned some important lessons from the extremely flawed original. The action is a bit slower this time, and enemies aren't quite as numerous or aggressive, letting you power through each stage with a minimum of profanity and torn out clumps of hair. The game still strikes me as weirdly cryptic (what on earth are those hammers for, anyway?), but I'd rather play this than the NES game, with or without color.

OUT OF GAS
FCI/REALTIME ASSOCIATES

Out of Gas bears a weird resemblance to another
unappreciated game, Fun House for the NES.

Miracle of miracles, it's another FCI game that doesn't suck! But to be fair, this was developed by Realtime Associates, a team of experienced developers that used to make games for the ancient Intellivision. (Shame they weren't hired to work on Fish Dude.) As you might have guessed, Out of Gas is full of old-school flavor, playing a lot like Atari's Asteroids. You use your thrusters to zip across each maze-like stage, bouncing off walls and blasting fuel icons. Some of these icons are numbered and must be shot in sequence, which means a lot of backtracking and careful navigation through deadly obstacles.

This game would have been easy to miss back in the day, but it's surprisingly entertaining in 2015, with smooth animation and surefooted control. There's even a bit of humor in the opener, with a futuristic cartoon character trying to score with his girlfriend... and failing miserably. Sorry, George Jetson... your rocket is going to have to stay in the launch bay.

ASTRO RABBY
IGS

I don't know how cacti can live that close
to ice, but okay!

I thought for sure Ochalla was gonna get around to reviewing this! Oh well... more for me!

Anyway, Astro Rabby is best described as an overhead view Super Mario Bros, or a caveman ancestor of the underrated Playstation launch title Jumping Flash. You're a robot rabbit, and it's your mission to recover the ten power-up parts stolen by the Dortoise Army. (Yeah, they've got a tortoise and hare thing going on in this game. Whatever greases the wheels of the plot, I guess!) You'll find the parts by stomping on question blocks scattered through a series of vertically scrolling levels. As a bunny, Rabby's got one hell of a jump, but falling into pits or colliding with Dortoise soldiers instantly spells his doom. You've also got a time limit, so if you don't find the part before time runs out, you can kiss your cotton tail goodbye.

Astro Rabby is a pretty decent game... nothing memorable, but competently designed and plenty original. What stands out the most is the bonus game, where Rabby must match pairs of blocks by stomping on them and listening to their audio cues. Expect to lose this one a lot unless you're fast and musically inclined.

More to come!

Ticket to Paradise

"From bikes to trains to video games..."
If you were wondering, yep, that's Urkel.

Recently, I found a fantastic post by Nadia Oxford on her Tiny Girl, Tiny Games blog, which takes a fond look back at the golden age of Toys 'R Us. These days, members of Generation X don't have much reason to step foot into the store except to pick up Huggies and Barbie dolls for their tykes. However, in the 20th century, when we were youngsters ourselves, the place was a wonderland, filled with every toy on our overly optimistic Christmas lists and even a few we somehow missed.

Toys 'R Us was also the place to go for video games, back in the days when adults didn't take them too seriously. Most retailers were reluctant to carry game software in the mid 1980s thanks to the industry crash of 1983, but I can't think of a time when they didn't have a major presence in Toys 'R Us. I recall visiting my aunt in Milwaukee back in 1986 and finding a wall of black tags with curiously pixelated artwork mixed in with old-school titles like Scooby-Doo's Maze Chase for the Intellivision. Those black tags were games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, a scrappy newcomer which would go on to dominate the game industry years later. I didn't know at the time that I was staring at history in the making, but significant moments like these tend to slip past you when you're a tightly-wound twelve year old.

A rare glimpse of the Toys 'R Us
game wall, circa 1991. Who was buying
all those copies of Budokan, anyway?

Nadia talked at length about the way you bought games at Toys 'R Us, and I'd like to touch upon this too. Most items you could just purchase at the register, but for games (which are a lot easier to slip under your jacket than, say, Malibu Stacy's Beach House), you'd need to take a few extra steps. Games were displayed on the wall as a series of plastic tags with images from the box on both sides. If you wanted to read the description on the back of the game's box, you'd flip the tag up. If you decided you wanted that game, you'd grab a ticket from a pouch under the tag. If the pouch was empty, that game was out of stock, and you'd have to pick something else.

When you were done, you'd bring your ticket to the register and purchase the game of your choice. You'd then take the receipt to an imposing concrete partition near the store exit. This was the electronics stockroom, a veritable Fort Knox of gaming goodness. After you slipped your receipt under the glass window set in the wall, then and only then were you given your game. 

A grown-up would probably find this arrangement needlessly complicated and time-consuming. However, to a child, it brought a sense of gravity to the game purchasing experience, something Nadia describes as a "solemn event." That game was going to be just as fun no matter where you bought it, but retrieving it from the grey brick fortress in the front of the Toys 'R Us made the purchase more significant. The fact that this was only necessary for games heightened that significance. You weren't buying some silly toy. You were buying a video game.

Well, they tried.

The power of that experience escaped me until Nadia's article made the memories come flooding back. I bought so many games with Toys 'R Us tickets, and they're always the ones I remember best. The charmingly hopeful Atari 2600 port of Kung Fu Master, a game that had no business being anywhere near that system. 1942 for the NES, which I'd played to the bitter end despite its shortcomings. Sagaia, a colorful Taito shooter that was one of the highlights in the early Genesis library. My last ticket was Panzer Dragoon Saga, claimed at a Toys 'R Us in Tucson and clearance priced at twenty dollars. (Wired editor Chris Kohler, still in his teens at the time, was pissed that I was able to get a copy for thirty dollars less than he did. Fifteen years later, with the game selling for hundreds of dollars on auction sites, I'd say he still did pretty well for himself.)

The new R-Zone. Boo, hiss!

Shortly afterward, I moved back to Michigan, and visited the Lansing Toys 'R Us with a friend. That location had been something of an old friend itself, but it had drastically changed from when I visited it as a child and a teenager. The walls of tags, the blue and yellow tickets, and the towering concrete stockroom were all gone, replaced with a new section called the R-Zone. (Not that R-Zone.) Games could now be taken directly to the cash register, with a lone security gate standing between them and the store exit. I didn't think much of the change at the time, but fifteen years later, a realization has hit me like a ton of those massive grey bricks. I left my Toys 'R Us kid in the 1990s, and I don't think I'll ever get him back.

(Special thanks to Nadia Oxford for inspiring me to write this, and to YouTube, Flickr's FourStarCashierNathan, and AtariAge for the images.)

Mental Grab Bag

You ever have a bunch of random thoughts that aren't necessarily related, but you wanted to share them anyway? I sure did, so let's get right to it!

It's not just an adventure, it's a job!
(Image from Giant Bomb)

• Donkey Kong 64 was just released for the Wii U, some fifteen years after its debut on the Nintendo 64. Normally this wouldn't matter much to me, as it's a tedious collectathon starring a cast of obnoxious mascots, the sort of thing that became RARE's calling card in the late 1990s. However, it also includes a conversion of the Donkey Kong arcade game that's more faithful than any previous attempt on a Nintendo game system. That's probably worth the ten dollars Nintendo is charging... but is it worth combing through dozens of levels for the teetering pile of Jiggies, Wiggies, Lennies, and Squiggies you'll need to unlock this bonus? Er, probably not.

• Speaking of Donkey Kong, did you know there's a grey market version of the game called Crazy Kong? The game was licensed only for markets outside America, but you can bet your sweet bippy it came here anyway thanks to Donkey Kong's massive popularity. As the name suggests, Crazy Kong was designed to run on the cheaper, less capable Crazy Climber hardware, which is like trying to toast bread with a cigarette lighter. You might get the desired results, but you're bound to be disappointed. One YouTube viewer described Crazy Kong's off colors and misplaced digitized sound as "terrifying," and after you've played a few levels you'd find it hard to argue the point. See for yourself!

"Hi honey, I'm... what the hell are you
people doing to my house?!"

• I've been itching to get my hands on a copy of Dead or Alive 5+ for the Vita, and after nearly a year of owning the system it's finally happened. I'm happy to say that it's a strong conversion of the game I originally played on the Xbox 360. There's probably a slight dip in the quality of the visuals, but you'd have to compare screenshots to notice the differences. More importantly, the game is a hell of a lot more fun than Tekken 6, with fluid combat and "danger zones" that let you launch your opponents off icy cliffs and the roofs of buildings. There's even a level set inside a ramshackle house, with fighters breaking the surrounding furniture and even the walls as they trade blows. It's not as epic as flinging people off mesas in the exceptional Dead or Alive 3, but it's unlikely the series will ever reach those, ahem, plateaus again.

Check, please.

• Mortal Kombat X recently made its debut on next generation consoles and PCs, and... I think I'm gonna sit this one out. There are plenty of reasons for fans to pick up a copy, but just as many reasons for less dedicated players to save their money, as Ben Kuchara points out in an editorial published on Polygon. It's not just the opportunistic DLC that leaves me cold (want easy fatalities? It'll cost 'ya!), but the violence, which bordered on excessive in the previous game and races a marathon over that line in the sequel. It was like series creator Ed Boon watched his nephew torture frogs in the backyard and started taking notes.

• I just spent some quality time with Kirby: Return to Dreamland on the Wii... or more accurately, the Dolphin emulator. One wonders why Nintendo released this game in such limited quantities, because it's arguably the best entry in an already ambitious series. It shares a lot in common with Kirby: Triple Deluxe for the 3DS, except the Miracle Fruit has been replaced with supercharged versions of Kirby's copy abilities and the graphics are even more incredible. I read on Wikipedia that Return to Dreamland was delayed for over a decade (three previous versions of the game were abandoned because the developers weren't satisfied with them, a testament to HAL Laboratory's dedication to excellence), but Nintendo probably should have held onto this one for just a little longer, so it could have been a launch title on the HD-enhanced Wii U. (And so people could actually play it.)

Here, have some pictures of Return to Dreamland. That ought to wash the taste of that Mortal Kombat fatality out of your mouth. (I can't guarantee it'll stop you from having nightmares about Crazy Kong, though.)

See what I mean? Absolutely gorgeous!

You may recognize this as Kirby's final smash
in the latest Smash Bros. game. I preferred the
one where he sucks all his opponents into
a stewpot, but whatever!

Hey, wasn't she from Bubble Bobble?

Kirby sweats profusely when he's low
on health. It's a nice touch!

Oh yeah, straight to the top, baby!

Building a Better GameBoy

The Gay Gamer's Bryan Ochalla declared this the year of the GameBoy (for the second year in a row! Wait, you can do that?) and invited me to try Catrap, a puzzle game for the old white brick that he recently featured on his web site. Okay, I'll bite... after all, I could use a break from all those bleary eyed nights with Super Smash Bros. There's just one problem, though... how? All the systems I've got that can play classic GameBoy games are in Michigan, while I'm currently stuck on the other side of the country. Looks like I'll have to improvise.

I made a fascinating discovery while looking for a solution to my predicament. Turns out that the best GameBoy model of all isn't a GameBoy at all. It's not even made by Nintendo! It's a PSP-3000, running the latest version of the emulator RIN. RIN does a lot of things that just aren't possible with Virtual Console games on the 3DS... for instance, both the sprite layer and background layer can be assigned separate color palettes, giving you improved contrast and better looking games. GameBoy games on the 3DS give you a single save state... RIN offers up to ten. There's just a small handful of GameBoy games for the 3DS... RIN can run nearly the whole library, including homebrews and licensed titles which aren't likely to make a comeback on modern hardware. Itching to kick shell with Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy? You've got the option here, but don't expect to see that kind of action on Nintendo's latest handheld.

Admittedly, RIN isn't flawless. Although you can customize the controls to your liking, the emulator has a tendency to forget your entries, forcing you to re-enter them each time you start a different game. You can choose your own background for the file browser, but the default is some barely dressed anime girl, and switching to something else is way more confusing than it ought to be. Finally, with so many titles to choose from, there's a risk you might play something you'll regret, like Primitive Princess, or uh... 90% of the GameBoy Color library. Nevertheless, once you've tried some games on RIN, you'll agree that there's no better GameBoy than the PSP. I know, that doesn't make any sense, but trust me on this one.

I'll review a handful of the GameBoy titles I played in a future post, so stay tuned!