Exor's Dungeon - Book Reviews - Super Game Boy Player's Guide

The Super Game Boy Player's Guide

Authors: n/a
Publisher: Nintendo of America, 1994
Pages: 72
ISBN-10: n/a

While it has some issues, the original Nintendo Game Boy Player's Guide was a solid effort that described in various degrees of detail all the available Game Boy games at the time. And by the time of the Super Game Boy's release, there were a lot more Game Boy titles available. In this guide, however, there are two main sections, one describing the Super Game Boy and its features (a lot of the stuff that was, or should've been, in the manual) and some with games that you could try with.

Some of the main game section includes stuff you could color to make them a bit easier to see, but there's also a bit of strategy too for some of them. Mostly this is just wasted space. Super Mario Land, which was several years old at this point, gets four pages. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins gets six pages but it's just a few tips for each level, likewise for Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Donkey Kong (Donkey Kong '94) got a full strategy guide in Japan that described every level in detail (it's much like the GameFAQs guide floating around except with maps and notes) as well as a comic at the end. Instead you get six pages and it covers the first four stages of the classic Donkey Kong (including the "pie factory" level left out in many ports), with nothing on the last third of the game. Metroid II: The Return of Samus has six pages but no maps at all.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a great title, but it seems a bit of a waste to spend time on it (eight pages) considering it got a full guide of its own.

Kirby's Dream Land gets six pages that includes a few maps. Kirby's Pinball Land is two pages and has a map of the full pinball table, which is multiple screens like Revenge of the 'Gator was (makes sense—both were developed by HAL Laboratory), then two pages for Tennis, two pages for Nintendo World Cup, two pages for Alleyway, two pages for Dr. Mario, two pages for Mario & Yoshi, two pages on Tetris, and a troubleshooting guide. And that's it.

As it only runs for 72 pages, less than half of the original Game Boy guide and significantly smaller than a typical Nintendo Power issue at the time, it feels like it was definitely done on a budget, but even then, so much of the actual content has been wasted.

Ideally, for older games like Super Mario Land or Tetris it should be just one page for any new SGB features, and if you cut down the space in the front to four pages, that's around fourteen pages to play with...enough to give more love to Donkey Kong, Metroid II, and Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3.

The better way to do it would be to budget and craft it as a "Volume Two" of the Game Boy guide, so all strategy would be for newer titles as well as for games that got stiffed last time around, like Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge or BurgerTime Deluxe (I feel BurgerTime Deluxe got screwed when it came to Nintendo Power coverage, not even a review). Then you'd have a "Directory" section for all the games that came out between 1991 and 1994 (and there's a lot of them), then a full "Game Pak Index" which indicates which games are covered in this volume and which ones were covered in the Nintendo Game Boy Player's Guide. And that tradition could continue with a Game Boy Color guide released in 1999 that covers the next few years of titles as well as new GBC titles.

Interestingly, for the first few years of Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Power did return to the older style of Player's Guides with multiple games covered in detail and listing of other games that only got a paragraph ("Nintendo Power Advance"). The first issue could've been bulked up with the last two years of Game Boy Color games (including backwards-compatible titles). Done correctly the Game Boy line could've had a line that carried it all the way through Final Fantasy VI Advance published in early 2007, discussing some of the games that only got maybe one line in Nintendo Power (definitely a lot of shovelware, but licensed Nintendo games the way through).

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