Shall We Play A Game?
For Christmas I asked for a Game
Boy Advance game named Mario vs. Donkey Kong. I got Donkey Konga, but not the aforementioned GBA title, which I
wanted so badly I made a special trip into the local town to get on Boxing Day
morning.
I haven’t stopped playing it since.
Forget Fire Emblem, and all the other Super Mario Advance titles,
even. Mario vs. DK is WHERE IT’S AT.
What makes this game even more
incredible than it already is (I won’t go into details, this isn’t a review)
happens to be the fact that Mario vs. DK is in fact a basic port of an
earlier game called Donkey Kong ’94 for the Game Boy (Classic), which in
itself is a port of the original Donkey Kong arcade game! The GB version
added to that, and Mario vs. DK adds even more.
Now, I was daydreaming recently, as
a friend of mine asked me if she could play on my GBA, and I said sure. She
enjoyed Mario vs. DK, but found the puzzles a little too hard. What she
needed, I reasoned, was a straight platformer. One where you
pick things up, and race through the levels. Something
slick and playable, but fun and not too taxing. Something, one might
say, green.
I envisioned a world where Superfrog
has been a classic Game Boy title. Can you imagine it? Holding one of those
old, chunky Game Boys, playing Superfrog! Magnificent! Wonderful! And incredibly geeky…
So geeky, in fact, that I even
wrote a list of categories regarding how Superfrog might work on the
Game Boy…
List Of Categories Regarding How Superfrog
Might Work On The Game Boy
1)
Graphics. This is a little puzzling. All Game Boy games were made to
work in a monochrome fashion, yet there must have been some degree of colour in
the programming. Plug a GB game into a Super Game Boy, a GB player, a GB Colour
or a GBA, and the game will immediately look like it’s been fed steroids. That, or it will be in colour – rather basic colour, agreed,
but colour. The problem with Superfrog is that colour is a very
important factor to it – you can tell where the secret passages are because they
are a slightly different shade from the rest of the walls, and so on. Superfrog
himself, being a frog, needs to be green. However, we have to remember that
this is Game Boy… I don’t see the problem with having the outlines of the
Superfrog sprite in black, with a little shading of his body, but nothing too
complex. Well, I do, but, anyway…
2)
Gameplay. Easy as hell. Consider the controls of Superfrog for a
minute. Jump = Button A. Fire = Button B. Move = Control Pad. Taking into
account that’s all that Superfrog does, this could easily work. Think… you’re
on an ice slope in World 5. You slide along. Hit A to launch yourself into the
air, and pummel B… he flaps the wings. Marvellous!
3)
Lastability. Again, this isn’t a problem. Let’s do some basic maths. Six
worlds, four levels in each = 6 x 4 = 24 levels. Add Project F and the Final
Battle = 26 levels. The aforementioned Donkey Kong ’94 had one hundred
levels, PLUS the original 4-level arcade game as a starter world! There’s
definitely enough space in the GB cart to hold all of Superfrog, if not
twice! (Anyone remember Super Mario Land? You could play through that
game and then you could play through a new version of the same!)
4)
Music. Definitely the best thing about the game. Now, I don’t know
about you, but I really like Game Boy music. For a basic machine, it pulls off
sound incredibly well. The Dr. Mario ‘Fever’ theme still remains one of
my favourite video game scores – and so many more. Remember the music from Pokémon?
Put me next to a GB and have the music from Superfrog blasting out of it; I won’t
complain!
5)
Improvements. Taking Donkey Kong ’94 into account again here… the
original DK, plus a hundred new levels. How about the Witch reanimating
and making off with Superfrog’s girlfriend, after she has been turned into a
frog… OR, making off with Superfrog? In desperation, he chucks (anyone notice
the pun? ‘Chucks’? No?) a bottle of Lucozade at her…
commence four new levels, in a fast ‘chase’ style, in order for him/her to
rescue his/her Beloved, with the Witch finally running into a wall at the end,
or something? Maybe six new worlds are a bit too much, but a few good chase scenes
would really spice it up, don’t you think?
6)
Porting. There are three existing versions of Superfrog –
Amiga, Amiga CD32, and PC. They are all (basically) the same game. Annoyingly,
it’s one classic 16-bit title that hasn’t been ported to a cartridge console of
any type. The only problem (apart from re-coding to a cartridge!) would be
downgrading it a little, from 16 to 8 bits. As we’ve already discussed, the graphics
would need to be somewhat grayscaled. Surely that
would be enough… in fact, I think that the only reason Team17 didn’t port Superfrog
to the Game Boy was
So, as I have illustrated quite
clearly here, Superfrog would make the perfect Game Boy Classic title
and would probably have sold thousands. But instead, Team17 released a poor
And a
few years later, Game Boy Advance owners would unearth their old GB Classics
with Superfrog still inside them. They would play
through the game and marvel at its brilliance, then Nintendo would approach
Team17 with the idea of a version of Superfrog for Game Boy Advance, and a whole new generation of gamers would
discover the joys of frogs, witches, princesses, spuds and Lucozade.
Superfrog vs. Donkey Kong, anyone?