Adrian's Stew: Vol. 1 Ed. 1
Written By: Adrian V.

I’m irked. I’m peeved, unsettled and generally unhappy with just a touch of discontent. What the hell is going on with Gameboy games? Not the content of the games themselves, we’re talking about 8-bits here, and 7 of them usually run around hitting each other in the head, screaming ‘SEGA!’ and then gibbering incoherently for a while. This is absolutely true, because I took my copy of MIB apart to figure out how exactly a strip of silicon could emit what can only be described as a tidal wave of pain when switched on. Birds fell from the sky, I kid you not.

What I want to know is: Where are my plastic cases? Was it that difficult to provide me with a protective cover for an item created with the concept of portability almost at the top of the design list? Not the very top, since that spot is usually reserved for ‘How do we make an interesting game with only two buttons? Someone already made Asteroids.’ but really close.

This isn’t the only alteration we’ve endured recently. No, first it was the slightly cool but useless switch to black cartridges. I dug that. Then they started making them clear, as if the people at Pepsi hadn’t already proven how popular that idea can be. The clear cases have made two things very apparent that I was probably better off not knowing:

2) Some of my games only fill 75% of the available space inside the cartridge.

Let’s focus on this second item, shall we? At first, I thought this missing space was a very useful indicator. You see, I owned Metal Gear on the game boy, and Rampart. I don’t know how familiar you are with these titles, but put simply, Rampart sucks in a way that only hydraulic compression can hope to compete with, while Metal Gear, on the other hand, does not.

So you see, the easy and logical conclusion here is: More board, less bored. (That was a ‘clever mnemonic device’ we writers like to use to appear clever and make sure the reader is entertained...write in and let me know how it worked!) Or, more coherently, it was obvious that there was less hardware in Rampart, therefore there was less space on which to fit the fun. I even drew a graph. Unfortunately my scanner doesn’t work, and as it turns out, the graph was even more convincing upside down. That sort of blew my theory, particularly once the new perspective also proved that Amanda Peet has discernible talent, and James Van Der Beek would one day be president, so I’ll ask you to trust me and ignore the figures.

My theory received a shot in the arm by my acquisition of additional hard evidence. I purchased Boarder Zone, another hardware deficient cartridge in clear plastic that made the pathetic Rampart look like the brain squeezings of every person who has ever worked at Square poured directly onto silicon. I was very close to publishing this amazing piece of scientific investigation when my brother gave me Driver as a Christmas gift. This game made Rampart look like Rampart again, which was a very good thing because I was beginning to wonder what would happen to my Rampart cartridge if I compared it to my Street Fighter II cartridge. Nothing good could come of that.

Driver was not only an excellent Gameboy game, it was also able to compete with most of my N64 library (which contains only games of considerable excellence, with the exception of Shadows of the Empire, because LucasArts tricked me) for coveted game-playing time at home. This was the death-knell for my proposed theorem, as Driver only used ¾ of the available space. My Nobel now a distant pipe dream, I began contemplating the ramifications of such obvious quality contained in such limited space.

Now, we all know that, with the exception of Betty Crocker and prescription drug products, if something is good, getting more of it is always better. So if Driver could be this good on minimal hardware, then it only makes sense that full-sized circuit boards containing games that cause your eyes to bleed as a result of their incalculable ineptness have obviously been programmed by headless chimps. Wearing togas.

More on this theory as events warrant.