I was considering bringing those up. At least we can both agree on the bolded part. If you have any that you want to claim are "good ones" I'd be interested to hear. It definitely wasn't any of the ones that I owned.
Sorry for leaving you hanging, but I figured if I was going to recommend anything I needed to replay what I've got in order to give an honest opinion.
V-Tech - Talking Play by Play Baseball - This is a really unique game, with two player simultaneous play. There's two sets of controls and the whole system is quite large for a lcd game. There are two buttons and a d-pad for each player that do different things on offense and defense. One button pitches, and pressing a direction on the d-pad selects the type of pitch - two for curving slightly left or right and two for curving heavily. Just pressing pitch is a fast ball down the middle. If the opponent hits, you get a chance to time a catch to get them out. A hit that isn't caught has a chance to be a homerun, if it isn't then you will get the ball after a short time and can throw it to a base by pressing the d-pad. If it's a ground ball you can throw it immediately. The batter has a button for bunting and hitting. Bunting doesn't quite work like you'd expect, it's the same swing animation that has to be timed just like a normal swing. Only when bunting a hit is always a ground ball. When you have base runners you can tell one to try to advance by pressing the run button and the d-pad direction for the base the player is on, so you can advance individual runners instead of telling them all to go for an extra base, that's a nice touch. The game is brutally hard against the cpu. My first game I lost 0-18, second 1-11, and last 0-3. From what I recall even growing up when I played this a lot, I almost never beat the cpu. Two player is of course a much better overall experience. How much depth the game has comes down to that batter/pitcher part, and I haven't quite worked out how it functions. In my third game I was trying to bunt the ball to the left by swinging early but was never able to make it work. I might just not have quite got the timing right, or the batting results might be a little random, or it might be based on what the pitch was. I'm not sure how it works out. Even if the batting/pitcher part leaves something to be desired, the game is still fun, especially in two player. It also gets some major points in overall presentation. The Talking part of the title is there for a reason; there's
a lot of voiced lines. Seeing as this has a 1986 copyright mark, this amount of voiced lines is pretty impressive. It does slow down the game a little, but I think it's worth it. Unfortunately, there is also a harsh beeping jingle after
every play that brings the presentation down, that really didn't need to be there. I recommend it if you like baseball video games and have someone to play with.
Radio Shack - Space Alien - There's a three lane play field with alien ships coming down on a collision course. Move left and right to avoid them and get the fuel that shows up on the left and right lanes. About as simple as a lcd game gets. It's enjoyable enough, but I don't recommend it. Not because it's bad, it simply doesn't do anything a thousand other games do.
Radio Shack - Dinosaur Attack - You're in a four direction maze. Navigate the maze by moving with the d-pad and attack enemies with the attack button. Different screens will have some of these paths closed off. There are direction indicators that tell you which way to go, but the maze might not let you take a straight path. Enter the center of the maze to play a boss battle where you have to beat all enimies to advance to the next maze. The most fun part of this game is the enemies and dodging their attacks. As the game progresses it becomes a bit like a bullet hell game. You have a split second to evaluate the attacks and figure out where on the screen is safe and when. The maze part is a bit of a missed opportunity, it's too easy to just follow the direction markers. The markers do disappear if you take too much damage, but you get extra life for each enemy killed in the maze portion, so it's easy to keep it topped off. I wish they did more with the maze portion, but the core game is still fun and the maze does give it some variability. I recommend it.
Konami - The adventures of Bayou Billy - Beat up bad guys to rescue your wife. You have a d-pad and a punch and kick button. Tap forward to advance to the next enemy, left to change facing and attack enemies behind you, up to jump to avoid some attacks, and hold down to charge a fireball and press up to shoot it. This is an interesting little game. There are five distinct levels, varied enemies, and even a unique end game screen. This is a lot of progression and structure for a lcd game and it does a lot to make it feel like an adventure. The gameplay unfortunately lets it down. Enemies show up and get in cheap shots, but if you attack them with the right rhythm they get stuck in stun lock. The fireball seems like it might have some depth, but when you fire it, you are invincible the entire time it's out. This means you only need to worry about avoiding attacks while charging, which is too easy. The enemies also come in a set order, so when you know what's coming the game is just over. I still have a little fun with it for a quick play, but I don't recommend it unless you just want to see a lcd game doing interesting things.
Tiger - Stan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road - There is a high speed and low speed button. If you hold high speed you will get to your max speed in a couple of seconds. Turning functions completely defferently depending on if your at high speed or low speed. At low speed your truck will change orientation and will have to travel to the next lane, then you will need to change orientation again to avoid hitting the wall and crashing. If you are at high speed pressing left or right will have you instantly change lanes while still facing forward. This game gets so much out of this simple mechanic. There are times you will need to slow down to avoid things, and you will also have to factor in how the turning works at that speed. The track is two lane and has other cars, power ups, and jumps. Hitting a car is a crash, jumps must be hit at high speed or will result in a crash. Crashes will stop you for a few seconds, and there is a time limit for each level. There are also turns in the track. Taking these sections will require you to change orientation, which can only be done at low speed. That's a great way to model slowing down for turns in a simple way. The two power ups are tires that give you points, and engines that give you engine power. Hitting a jump at high speed takes one point of engine power, so you need to keep your engine power up to successfully navigate the jumps. In between levels you can buy additional engine power for some of your points. I love this one. It really nails the racing theme, and the core loop is really fun. It does have a few problems though. The worst is that cars will come from behind you with no warning and can result in a crash. It would be a better game if cars only came from ahead of you. You can wise up to the way they do this and avoid most of them, but it still sucks when it happens. The game starts with you having no engine power which requires you to crash out when it gives you unavoidable jumps. They really should have started you with level 1 enginge power. Once passed level one it is also too easy to keep up your engine power which lessens the need to play around that limitation. Even with these nit-picks I still recommend this one.
Tiger - Darkwing Duck - For everyone that wants a Tiger beat down, buckle up, I'm about to crash out. Super villains are breaking out of prison and you need to apprehend them. Shoot you gas gun at them when they show up. Grab a bomb when Launchpad ( a character from the show ) throws them, and that's it. Bombs defeat all enemies on the screen at once. Okay, so it's a shooting gallery game right? You'd think so, but no. You have no control over which enemy is targeted, so you can't prioritize targets. There is also no dodge or block button, so there is no way to avoid attacks. Having a dodge button wouldn't help you anyway, because there is no warning when an enemy attacks. Okay, so the game is about deciding when to use your bombs?
NO, if you have a bomb you immediately attack with it when you press the attack button, and since your only option to deal with enemies is attacking them there is nothing to do but use that bomb. So it's just a test of reaction speed? Kinda, but there is no loss condition. If you are hit, you just have a jump in the air hurt animation. So it's a time based thing?
NO, there is no timer and absolutely no loss condition. It's also only three stages long and can be beaten in a few minutes. Every time I play this thing I find a new reason to hate it, so let's dig even deeper into this latrine of naughty word. Lcd games are fundamentally about using your extremely limited screen space to get the most out of it, and this
thing ( I refuse to call it a game ) wastes valuable screen space at every turn. When you hit an enemy they have a running away graphic. How about instead of that running away graphic we use that valuable screen space for, oh I don't know, maybe
Gameplay. Have them running toward the play space and have them show up there first, this would give you some warning of what's coming. We still don't have any way of meaningfully dealing with them once they come, but one problem at a time. Launchpad is only there for the bombs, let's get rid of him and the bombs. This frees up the entire bottom left portion of the screen for gameplay stuff, like I don't know, maybe you can move there to avoid attacks. then get rid of that wasteful hurt animation and let you jump to also avoid attacks. Now make it so that being in neutral, left, or jump positions allows you to attack different enemies. Rework the graphics a little to give room for attack animations, and would you look at that, we made an actual game. It's not that hard to hit the baseline of decent people. But wait, there's more wasteful use of screen space. There is a sidekick graphic ( with animation frames ) that does literally nothing.
Nothing. She just shows up in the last stage for no reason. I know that I praised Bayou Billy for having a unique bit of end game graphics, but let's dig into that to show how you do it thoughtfully. The boss graphic in Bayou Billy is a bad guy towering over your wife with a knife to her throat. The wife graphic is in front of the bad guy, so graphics wise she's actually half of the boss graphic. When you beat the boss the enemy part of the graphic turns off and the only actually unique, non gameplay, part of the end screen is a text bubble saying "I love you". See, that is how you use limited space thoughtfully and purposefully. I hate Darkwing Duck the "game" and I'm going to stop talking about it now.
Tiger - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - This is the most advanced lcd game I have ever seen, and I love it. Darkwing Duck shows using screen space at it's most wasteful, Sonic 2 is a masterclass in getting the most out of that screen space. Gameplay wise you have a d-pad; press forward to advance the screen, up to jump, and left to move to the left part of the screen. Press attack to attack enemies with a spin attack, with every position having it's own unique attack animation that hits different parts of the screen. Since you attack with your body, you have to worry about avoiding attacks during the attack animation as well as when you are in neutral. Then on top of that basic gameplay they layer on mechanics and enemies to an amazing degree to fully simulate a full sonic game playthrough. Tons of enemies, underwater sections with a drowning timer, floor graphics that change between levels to show progress visually, loop de loops that require you to back up to get speed to get through them, and a Robotnick boss that evolves and changes his attacks every stage. The core attacking/avoiding enemies gameplay is fun, and all the progression makes this feel like a full complete game. The only nit-pick I have with this game is that there is an invincibility power up that is way too plentiful and makes the game too easy, but you can decide to avoid that power up if you want more challenge. I highly recommend this game.
I'm sure not everyone will enjoy the games that I've enjoyed, but I hope this critical review shows that there are ways to do lcd games well for those that like them, and ways to do them very badly.
