I watched this movie a few months back with a close friend of mine, and it got me thinking about this GameBoy game of it. I’d always heard that this was quite a good GameBoy game, especially for a licensed game, and this seemed like a great excuse to check it out, but finding a Japanese copy proved difficult enough that I was ready to give up on it and focus on other things. But my friend is such a sweetie that she actually found a copy local to her and bought it for me! I played it on Twitch via my Super GameBoy, and it took me just about 2 hours to get to the end of the English (British, technically ;b) version of the game.
While the story of this does ostensibly mirror the film’s (even down to recreating the introduction of the film quite charmingly), in grand 8-bit fashion, they add a LOT more action and combat to things XD. The only story really in the game is that title crawl at the start, and the submarine kinda sorta following the path from Russia to America that the sub takes in the film over the course of its 8 stages, but it hardly matters. Given that it’s a 1991 GameBoy action game, licensed or not, a good or compelling story really isn’t what you’d expect here, and the game is perfectly fine even with such a threadbare story x3
The gameplay is you, as the titular submarine “The Red October”, dodging all manner of (Soviet, I would presume?) enemy submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers, jets, helicopters, and giant crazy undersea fortresses and robo sea mines in your quest to reach the end of each stage and make it to America! In your arsenal, you have equipped unlimited front shooting, weak missiles, a limited number of very powerful heat seeking torpedoes (which can even heat seak out of the water and into the air! XD), and the ever valuable EMP to slip by distant enemies while mostly avoiding their AI (as well as making their heat seeking missiles inactive). It takes a bit of getting used to how the Red October controls, as stuff like tapping left or right twice to change direction and only once to just move that direction without turning has a real learning curve to it, but thankfully you have a big radar of enemy movement at the bottom of the screen to help you avoid ambushes (and it even points out power ups too~). Stages are well designed, and even though the difficulty is a bit front loaded, it’s got a pretty darn good (certainly for the time) difficulty curve as well. I was honestly shocked I was able to beat it over just 3 tries (one of which was game over-ing basically instantly XD) over two hours, but I was certainly happy that I did it, and I had a fun time too! X3
The presentation is pretty much what you’d expect for a quite early life GameBoy game, but even still it does the job very well. Enemies and bosses as well as their projectiles are easily distinguishable (at least via a Super GameBoy screen), and your little sub marine is never confusedly stuck against terrain or anything. The music is also quite impressively good, with some stages having some really surprisingly good tracks. Though nothing can, of course, top the incredible 8-bit rendition of the Soviet National anthem on the title screen xD
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you’re in the market for some 8-bit GameBoy action, this is a great place to find it! It’s not too difficult and not too long, but it’s also unique enough and well balanced enough to be a good time well worth trying out (and you don’t even need to have seen the movie to enjoy it either, even if it is a movie really worth watching x3).
While the story of this does ostensibly mirror the film’s (even down to recreating the introduction of the film quite charmingly), in grand 8-bit fashion, they add a LOT more action and combat to things XD. The only story really in the game is that title crawl at the start, and the submarine kinda sorta following the path from Russia to America that the sub takes in the film over the course of its 8 stages, but it hardly matters. Given that it’s a 1991 GameBoy action game, licensed or not, a good or compelling story really isn’t what you’d expect here, and the game is perfectly fine even with such a threadbare story x3
The gameplay is you, as the titular submarine “The Red October”, dodging all manner of (Soviet, I would presume?) enemy submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers, jets, helicopters, and giant crazy undersea fortresses and robo sea mines in your quest to reach the end of each stage and make it to America! In your arsenal, you have equipped unlimited front shooting, weak missiles, a limited number of very powerful heat seeking torpedoes (which can even heat seak out of the water and into the air! XD), and the ever valuable EMP to slip by distant enemies while mostly avoiding their AI (as well as making their heat seeking missiles inactive). It takes a bit of getting used to how the Red October controls, as stuff like tapping left or right twice to change direction and only once to just move that direction without turning has a real learning curve to it, but thankfully you have a big radar of enemy movement at the bottom of the screen to help you avoid ambushes (and it even points out power ups too~). Stages are well designed, and even though the difficulty is a bit front loaded, it’s got a pretty darn good (certainly for the time) difficulty curve as well. I was honestly shocked I was able to beat it over just 3 tries (one of which was game over-ing basically instantly XD) over two hours, but I was certainly happy that I did it, and I had a fun time too! X3
The presentation is pretty much what you’d expect for a quite early life GameBoy game, but even still it does the job very well. Enemies and bosses as well as their projectiles are easily distinguishable (at least via a Super GameBoy screen), and your little sub marine is never confusedly stuck against terrain or anything. The music is also quite impressively good, with some stages having some really surprisingly good tracks. Though nothing can, of course, top the incredible 8-bit rendition of the Soviet National anthem on the title screen xD
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you’re in the market for some 8-bit GameBoy action, this is a great place to find it! It’s not too difficult and not too long, but it’s also unique enough and well balanced enough to be a good time well worth trying out (and you don’t even need to have seen the movie to enjoy it either, even if it is a movie really worth watching x3).