Happy Holidays!

When I was around 15 all I wanted for christmas and my gaming life was a Nintendo Game Boy. You can find some good videogame-related reasons in the Geek Fighters rant but, if you need something one more human, it was its bundled game Tetris (1989). Some of my friends used to play Tetris in system link mode during day trips. They weren't devoted gamers like me but, on that bus, they sounded in my head like 'Hey, we are best friends and we're so gamers that we can't stop gaming together!'. It mixed our common better gaming system syndrome with my uncertainty in relations: having a Game Boy must improve my status of gamer and friend - not mentioning that the Game Boy had a number of great videogames.

My father thought that consoles are just computers you can't program, cartridges were more pricey than tapes and floppy disks and we already had a bunch of home computers, so having one of these things was out of question.

So, that summer came and, as usual, I was spending it in Sicily with my family.

My mother was probably busy somewhere in Palermo, so she left me to my aunt Giulia hairdresser studio for a while. I was very into this Game Boy affair and, as sometime still sadly happens now, I couldn't contain the obsession. Giulia easily discovered my wish and she promised me that she would have bought me that so desidered videogame. I remember every moment from that promise as a dream: it's the time to say goodbye to bad home computer portings and my loneliness - few cartridges and a system link cable was going to fix my life.

The time of coming back home in Lombardy came and Giulia and I was still without my saviour. I was terribly sad: that momemnt of redemption was crumbling under my feet. But then, Giulia came. And I clearly remember her words: 'It's better than that black-and-white videogame!'. She handed me the Game Boy competitor, the Sega Game Gear with its Alien Syndrome (1992) port. I smiled.

I just smiled.

I'm still ashamed of that moment. She gifted me with a better version of my dream and I just smiled. It wasn't a Game Boy. It's not going to fix my life. But, as usually happens, life decided to teach me the lesson in its sarcastic-karmik way.

The Sega Game Gear battery life was notoriously short, forcing me to play it in short bursts when around - it never managed to accompany me for a whole trip. It needed an incredible amount of batteries, so I mostly played it plugged to the wall and at home - mostly alone. Then, a friend of mine - richer than me - got a Game Gear too, with a great number of cartridges, leaving me in the dust with my 2-3 games to play. Cherry on top? One of these few games I had was - as the critics said - 'the best handheld fighting game ever released', Fatal Fury Special (1993). I owned and played to the death a masterpiece of videogames like a true gamer. A game that no one of my Game Boy friends ever played - but a game that I nearly never managed to show them.

Lesson learned, life.

Few years later my family gifted my little sister Rosalia with a Game Boy Pocket and, surprise, I discovered that Game Boy videogames were actually way better than Game Gear ones - and history in some way confirmed it. She was at the hospital when my father brought me to a mart nearby: I had to choose a videogame for her. I smiled and picked up its Battle Arena Toshinden (1996) port. It had a lot of manga-style images and she liked them a lot - but it also was, in my humble opinion, the best handheld fighting game ever released to a Game Boy. I closed the circle and made peace with life.

I decided to wrap all the games I liked to build during these years in Wright! Mag in a single Game Boy styled game as a memento. I hope you'll like it!

Plot!

You are a brave hero and... Just play the game! Use the BUTTON for jumping and press it again while midair to stomping your sword to the ground! Good luck!

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Install / Add to home View game sources ...or play it online below!