Super Dodge Ball Advance

This game is brutally difficult.

The mechanics of jumping and moving around while looking very good feel so floaty and just kind of slippery your character is going all over the place and any wrong pixel movement will send you into either a jungle creature that is ready to eat you or a pile of quicksand that immediately kills you there's a lot of one-hit kills in this game and a lot of bullshit off-screen that you can't quite see until it's a little bit too late i did not make it to the end of this game not even close i played a lot of it i didn't get i don't think any better at it it's very hard to distinguish with these beautiful graphics unfortunately what is foreground and what is background what will actually kill you and it takes a lot of trial and error through some of these to actually figure out the route that you want to go and the level design is also a little bit rough there are a lot of dead ends and it's very maze-like it really feels like it's banking on you finding the wrong way and just stumbling into one of the many one-hit kills which is disappointing save states are a miracle though for this playing it on original gba hardware i think would be just too rough this game like also many good remakes of really old games gives you the option to play the original 2600 game in the title screen which is pretty fun and also very tough though the controls feel a lot less floaty in that than they do in this one for some reason which i don't know that feels a little bit off well i don't really know if it's worth going through and playing this game all the way for the gameplay of it it is really visually gorgeous and pretty interesting to look at it gives you a lot of different environments to go through a lot of cool secret areas to find um but it's just so hard and there are a lot better i think platformers on the game boy advance that you could go for other than this i think it's worth going back to simply to look at and for maybe pixel art inspiration but i think it's worth trying at least for a little bit if you can get through the i think if you can get through the first level you are set up for a pretty challenging but fun platformer that first level is really the killer figuring out his mechanics figuring out where you actually go for some reason that is the maziest level by far um it is very hard to tell where you need to be but i think if you can get past all of that it's a pretty fun difficult platformer that's that's worth doing it's not for everyone though that's definitely for sure and i think that just about does it for games for us today this was a pretty good batch to start with i think having a castlevania in there and a decent mario game is a really good start to this i'm really excited for the games that are going to come next uh there's a lot i'm really excited about on here a lot that i had visited as a kid that i really want to go back to now that i'm uh at least slightly smarter adult uh maybe i'll be able to understand them a little bit better and some of them that i just completely missed over golden sun is one i'm really excited to go to mother 3 is going to be maybe an episode of its own um i think there are a couple of these games that do warrant full episodes to themselves and i think we'll cross that road when we get there and i think that is a decision i'll have to make as we get to those episodes some of these games like penguins of madagascar well that's not a good example i i think i've played penguins of madagascar more than most of the games that i'm going to be covering but like a more foolish less exciting game may take five minutes pitfall mine adventure for example i don't have really a lot to say about pitfall mine adventure unfortunately it's a lot like pitfall and it's a lot like the other platformers on the game boy advance but mother 3 has a lot more you can say about it i think some of these games especially the rpgs on the system have a lot more story have a lot more to dive into and we'll have a lot more to talk about the games that we did pick today while they are all really good i think i think that this was a really good batch of games none of them are very story heavy even the one that you might kind of think was castlevania the story is really you hate dracula and you're gonna get him there's not much more to it than that you get a little bit of dialogue but it's nothing like a fire emblem or a oh that's also going to be interesting this will be my first fire emblem will probably be the one for the game boy advance which i've heard is a weirdly good starting point depending on who you ask three houses is obviously the correct starting point depending but uh i've heard that this is a pretty good spot to jump in so i'm excited for that all the zelda games will be really fun there's a lot of really unique games on the game boy advance that i'm excited to check out well thank each and every one of you for listening to this new experimental podcast that we'll see if we make it through the entire game boy advanced if you like what you heard and you want to keep up with this horrible adventure you can rate and subscribe anywhere that you get your podcasts we have an instagram under breaking backlog and i also stream most days also on twitch and youtube under breaking backlog if you want to come check me out there you can see me playing uh some game boy games and a lot of open world nonsense also for the show i set up a backlogged account which seemed fitting and it's just a good way to organize the game so i have a list in there that i will be updating with all of the game boy advanced games as i play them along with i guess a star rating since that is something you do on there and a little review along with it that'll basically be my thoughts from the episode if you want to follow along there as well all righty and now the part you've all been waiting for if you are a little freak and want to follow along with me and play these games next week we will be playing rayman advanced f-zero maximum velocity tony hawk's pro skater 2 and super dodgeball advance four very interesting games very excited to go back to rayman i remember being terrible at rayman and i'm also very interested to see how a tony hawk game runs on the game boy again these are all launch games all from june 11 2001 and go play those games and thanks for listening see you next week