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Reviews » 2004Mbit Compo [GBA]

About a year ago I pre-ordered an awesome GBA cart. It was unique in that it was not developed by Nintendo or any of the big names we've come to know and love. This cartridge was not made by a game company, it was made by a group of dedicated people who simply loved making games. This cartridge was the result of the "2004MBit" contest run by the dedicated individuals responsible for GBADev.org. The goal of the contest was to use only the unofficial SDKs create a great game that takes up less than 4Megabits - only half a megabyte. The size limit was mostly so they could put several of these games on a standard sized cartridge, and some of them came in well under this limit. Size limits aside, the real challenge here was to create the best game possible in the time alloted.

I feel that even those of us who didn't participate in the contest still won, because we got to buy a GBA cartridge full of games made by these hard-working home brewers. At least it was going to be made by them, like I said I was pre-ordering it. It was going to come out in the summer time. I thought to myself "Hey, inpheaux said he was starting a new site about games! Maybe I can write the site's first article about how this cartridge turned out.". It was also supposed to ship right before my birthday, so it was like I was buying myself a birthday present! Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. There were numerous unforeseen production delays and it was actually shipped right before Christmas. So it was like I was buying myself a Christmas present. Of course, it's now March, so why am I only writing about it now? That's mostly because I'm lazy.

When it finally arrived I noticed another key difference between this product and commercially produced games. Part of being a modern consumer is having the pleasure of taking your newly purchased items out of their packaging. This particular product came with the standard packaging you'd typically find a GBA cart packaged in, but to save on shipping the cart was not actually in the package material.

Not to be dissuaded, I lost no time assembling the packaging. Once I had everything out of the packing envelope, I unfolded the box, and just as I was about to put everything together it all came apart on me. With all my clumsy manhandling the box had come unglued. Not a problem. I had some Elmer's Glue ready. After allowing half an hour for the glue to dry I had my packaging ready to go. All that remained was to put the cart and manual into the packaging, and then take the cart and manual back out of the packaging again.

Once I went through this slightly ridiculous ritual and actually plugged the cartridge into my DS, the first that that impressed me was how professional the menu was. It's a nicely programmed custom menu designed specifically for this project. The first time I saw this it surprised me that what is essentially an amateur project received such a finely crafted GUI with such attention to detail. The menu also has its own music and a credits screen that lists everyone involved in the project.

Bengt – Swinger of Longarm
The collection leads with what I believe is its strongest title. 'Swinger of Longarm' is a sidescroller about a man named Bengt whose arms are so stretchy he can use them like a grappling hook. The best part about this game besides its high quality artwork is the physics. It's a simple side-scroller grappling hook but it works well, it's fun and easy to get a good momentum going and swing through the levels barely ever touching the ground. His ability to jump off of vertical surfaces (sort of a double-jump) means you'll be flying all over the map. If you meet any opposition well, his super long arms are also handy for punching out trolls.
The game includes ten relatively long levels plus some sort of bonus level that you can reach by collecting three bonus tokens. I'd write more about the bonus level, but so far I've only reached it once, and then promptly died before I fully realized I was in the bonus level.

Gasp
Gasp is a falling blocks puzzle game. The goal here is simple: drop the blocks so that you have three blocks in a row of the same color either horizontal or vertical. The trick to this game is chaining. You want to line up your horizontal rows so that when they clear they clear some vertical rows in turn.
This is a cute little game that admittedly will not replace 'Tetris' in your life, but could keep you amused for an afternoon some time. My biggest complaint about this one is that the music is quite repetitive and gets old after a while. Also, "easy" mode is completely worthless. With four colors and four columns there's no particular challenge, so be a man and play at at least medium.

GunKid
The collection's second side scroller, 'GunKid', is markedly different from 'Swinger of Longarm'. Where 'Longarm' is about momentum and swinging through the trees 'GunKid' is about precision jumping and shooting things. In 'GunKid' you're running through a series of levels essentially shooting everything that moves. As you do so you accumulate 'energy' for your special weapon which is a "Super Shot" that can blast through the toughest enemies. (Careful though. The button to fire the super shot is the same as Longarm's run button, so don't forget which game you're playing and waste a shot.) For reasons I can't completely explain the term that comes to mind to describe 'GunKid' is 'slick'. The game has very nicely drawn backgrounds and everything seems to move with a certain smoothness.

Naval Battle
A new take on a familiar game. The cool kids call this "Battleship". Graphically this is now my favorite version of this game, sadly the AI is only passable. This is a well made battleship game that operates in a human-vs-computer and a human-vs-human mode where you pass a single Gameboy around. (The game is nice enough to include a 'buffer' screen that gives nothing away during the hand-over.)
The game supports two different gameplay styles : "Classic" and "Salvo". Classic should need no explaining, you take a shot and then your opponent takes a shot. In salvo mode you get one shot for each of your remaining ships. This has the effect of making the game progress a good deal quicker for those of us with short attention spans.
As I mentioned earlier the AI opponent is the weakest link in this game. While it's certainly passable it often seems to make mistakes no human would make, like not noticing that it's sunken your ship and continuing to investigate the area immediately surrounding your downed ship, or not immediately guessing that the fifth slot on your carrier might lie along the same line as the other four it already hit. However, I don't want to stress the AI's stupidity too much, because as I'm writing this the AI just beat me in Salvo mode.

Panzer Panic
This is a pseudo-vector-based game that is clone of the old arcade 'BattleZone' game. I've never been very good at BattleZone so I'm not sure what I can say about this other than I'm not very good at this game either. 'Panzer Panic''s big departure from 'BattleZone' is that it's done away with BattleZone's trademark two-stick steering mechanism in favor of a standard d-pad drive control system.
This game looks a bit cheezy in screenshot form but somehow it looks good on hardware.

Simonchu 2
The collection's third side-scroller, 'Simonchu 2' is the only game that seems targeted exclusively at children, this game tells the story of a hamster who wakes up and decides to go out and fight monsters by jumping on their heads. This game's artistic style is slightly uneven, but can be described as going for a "hand drawn" look and feel. This game does make use of one charming visual effect that you don't see often in side-scrollers : The use of foreground objects that occasionally pass in front of the camera as though there was some depth to the world.
Shortly into the game a hummingbird side-kick is introduced that is able to lift Simonchu into the air, essentially giving him a double-jump. The manual makes reference to a "hamsterbot" mode but I never got far enough into the game to experience that.

Snackman
Another new take on a familiar game, 'Snackman' gives us Pac-Man style pellet munching on three different maps each with four screens of ghost-eating action.
I'm not sure what else I can say about this other than with familiar gameplay and smooth graphics this game is a fun one to pick up and hard to put down.
My only complaint with this title is that when you clear a map the game just ends in victory, I would have preferred the unwinable infinity of the arcade. That's a minor point however, it only takes two button pushes to get back into the game.

SpaceGems
This is a great puzzle game. It's easy to learn but it's hard to master. The basic setup will remind you a lot of 'Puzzle Bobble'/'Bust-a-Move' (or 'Snood' if you prefer). There is a grid of brightly colored things slowly being pushed down from the ceiling and you've got to clear them forming groups of three-or-more. However, instead of adding objects like in 'Bust-a-Move' or 'Snood', you're actually rearranging the existing blocks.
This title is quite nicely made with nice art and tight gameplay that can entertain for hour after obsessive hour.

Swish-It
This is a simple timing game. Four basketball players have labels on their jerseys that indicate buttons on your GBA. Push the buttons to make the corresponding players shoot at the moving hoop. This game contains unlockable difficulty levels and some sort of mystery "Bonus Level" that I'm just not cool enough to unlock.
There's not much I can say here except that this is the sort of game that you can pick up at a moment's notice and play for five minutes to kill a little time. It actually reminds me a lot of a Game&Watch, but a good Game&Watch.

Yuckfu
Another relatively simple game. Basically the player pilots a space-craft that handles similar to the one in 'Lunar Lander'. Unlike Lunar Lander, however in this game you have no intention of landing. You are collecting boxes before they harden into hazards. There is no way to clear the hazards so your failures compound themselves until you can barely navigate without running into one. All collisions are fatal. This game starts out relatively easy (once you get a feel for the ship's handling) but quickly becomes frantic as the boxes harden faster and faster and missed boxes begin to accumulate.
Noticeably missing from this game is any sort of music at all.

Summary
Almost as soon as I got it this cartridge has become my most cherished GBA cartridge in my humble collection. Not just because it includes ten (count 'em, ten!) cool games, though that's certainly a big part of it, but also because I'm thrilled that this sort of thing even exists at all. I think it's awesome that the amateur GBA developers can work together to pull off something like this.
But lets not give all the credit to the developers. The guys down at GBADev.org put in a tremendous amount of effort into planning, organizing, and pulling together this project and I think they got a lot more hassle than they did thanks.
In closing, I'd just like to say that I think this is exactly the sort of thing the amateur developer community needs to give it focus and direction and to showcase the talent and hard work of some of its best and brightest. I hope to see more of these in the future. If GBADev.org can't handle the admittedly large amount of work it takes to make it happen, then I hope someone else steps up to take their place. It would even be interesting to do a project like this with a classic console if enough interest could be drummed up. And with amateur development for the DS just now starting to ramp up, I am eagerly looking forward to the day when I can get a cartridge full of a dozen or so games that represent the hard work of a few small teams of dedicated amateurs.

Postcript
Earlier this week, between the finishing of this article and publication, there was a bit of news regarding this project. It seems that the ROM image for this game has been released to the public! This is great news for all you folk who missed out on owning this in cartridge form. So everyone warm up your GBA and your flash-cart, or fire up your emulator and play this great assortment of games.
Download Link : http://gbadev.org/demos.php?showinfo=1271