I just want to know if you have any nominations to contribute before I put the poll up, @vakil. You typically do.
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Thanks for asking but I’m gonna skip this month. I have some games I’m playing that I want to focus on trying to finish before starting a new one. I’m traveling in September, as well, so I’ll probably be back in time to suggest something spooky for October.
Hope you all have a good time and a good game!!
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Oh wait, did Hamtaro not make the cut? Dang.
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Oh I missed your follow up message when I was tallying today. I can add it and people can go back to give it a ranking if they wish.
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Sorry, it looks like I can’t. I thought I made sure the option to edit after the poll starts was checked but I’m being told I can’t. I can start from scratch and people can re-vote.
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The July Grouvee Game Club poll is up. Our theme this month, handheld games. Once again we will be doing a ranked vote, so please rank your picks from highest (1) to lowest (7). Voting is open until Sunday night (16 July).
Happy voting!
July '26 Grouvee Game Club Poll
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voters
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Thanks, sorry for the hassle!
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Are you kidding?? I would have been INCENSED if Ham-Ham Heartbreak was not included, so thank you for pointing it out! It looks so ridiculously cute.
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Well damn, now I wish I nominated this:
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Ok folks, we are going to do a tiebreaker. Please rank the following four titles from one (1) as the highest to four (4) as the lowest.
- Lady Sia (Game Boy Advance)
- R-Type DX (Game Boy Color)
- Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak (Game Boy Advance)
- Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (Nintendo DS)
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voters
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It looks all four of us that previously voted have now voted again. I’ll leave it open until tomorrow just in case, but it R-Type DX might be our winner if nothing changes.
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I’m happy to vote for a game I don’t plan to play if you want me to. It’ll be the complete opposite of the Spiderman quote. With great power comes literally no responsibility whatsoever.
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I think I’m going to play the Steam version of this game but it’s currently not on sale there so I’m gonna see if I can find a key on sale elsewhere. I’m going to try and wait until I get paid though.
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You can emulate the original GameBoy Color game for free. You can get both the ROM and a GBC emulator at Vimm’s Lair.
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Looking forward to playing this one! Only in the past couple of years have I got way more into shoot ‘em ups. I’m still really bad at them, but they’re fun for me to dedicate myself to and try to master. Also the perfect excuse to stop being lazy and finally get my emulation BIOS’ installed on this new lappy.
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Yeah I’m excited for this too! I’ve got a big soft spot for the R-Type series but haven’t ever played the first or second game, so having both combined into one portable package is pretty neat.
Hopefully the Game Boy’s square aspect ratio doesn’t cause toooo much screen crunch, I’m probably just gonna use save states to trivialize any sections with wonky visibility.
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Just played my first run! it’s really cool they pulled all this off on the GBC. I guess I’ve never played an R-Type before lol. I can never tell with these games if I’ve played them before or not, stylistically they blend together a bit! Anyway this was all unfamiliar to me. I didn’t know that in R-Type, ship power-ups are these little like… dongles that slot/shoot out of the back or front of your ship. Orbs of Power. I was just kind of playing around with it for my first go-around, but it felt neat for the ship to have so many different firing capabilities, even if I’m still working out how I’d even take advantage of this (see below)!
Made it through the first boss but I got rocked by a big worm in the second zone whose body turned into meatballs when I shot at it. I think I was meant to shoot a little weak point that pops out of… whatever that thing the worm keeps flying into and hiding is. The Worm Factory. Anyway, this little thing I think is a weak point is in a weird spot where I can only shoot at it from an angle… my first big challenge is figuring out a reliable way to shoot my stuff diagonally. My second big challenge is to stop getting hit by stuff (it’s been a bit difficult to narrow down exactly where my hit box is). When you have a dongle on your ship is so WIDE on the tiny screen, I kinda panic-play thinking my hitbox is bigger because of it but I don’t think this is the case!
I’m so curious how tiny this is compared to the original versions of these games. I’ll definitely take a look for comparison’s sake at some point, but it does feel crowded especially in the boss encounters.
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Made it up to the 3rd stage and I think I’m gonna call it there. It’s a very cute conversion and a technical marvel for the original Game Boy, but it makes poor use of the Game Boy Color’s better hardware and has a bunch of issues that prevent it from being much fun to play.
Visibility is the main problem here, with enemy weakspots that don’t flash to let you know you’re hitting them, bullets that despawn when there’s too many sprites displayed at once, and enemies that constantly ambush you from offscreen. The 3rd stage also has absurd slowdown that drags the pace to a complete crawl. A lot of these drawbacks feel like they could’ve been remedied with the help of the GBC’s much faster processor, but outside of the lovely new color palette R-Type DX seems to be an unaltered port of the Game Boy releases.
Maybe I’ll check out the original arcade versions to see how they compare.
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I did a comparison of DX versus the Game Boy colour versions of R-Type and R-Type II (all on the same cart) and DX is noticeably smoother with a greater number of frames and none of the slowdowns that were apparent with the original Game Boy ports, so I would be surprised if the DX version wasn’t tapping into the additional processor power.
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To say something a bit more positive, R-Type DX’s “force” system is really nifty! Having a lil satellite ship that you can indirectly move around to extend your attack range or block enemy fire still feels super creative even today, and learning you could attach it to the back of your ship to hit dudes behind you blew my wee mind back in the day. They expand on the force’s moveset later on in the series, but even here in R-Type 1 it’s such a unique and well-realized idea.
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