Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A playthrough of Capcom's 2001 interactive movie for the Nintendo Game Boy Color, Dragon's Lair.
Yeah, I know. That sentence is patently absurd. Almost as absurd as it is that such a thing - an FMV game for the Game Boy Color - actually exists.
Dragon's Lair for the Game Boy Color would've been easy to overlook on a store shelf in 2001. The box does nothing to draw your attention to the fact that the game isn't just another Dragon's Lair-themed platformer like we saw on the NES and SNES. It really should have, because what we have here is a marvel: an impossibly faithful recreation of the 1982 LaserDisc-based arcade classic, smashed into a 32 megabit cartridge and running on a creaky 8-bit handheld with a 2.5" LCD screen.
I don't know if it has every scene from the arcade game - I'm not a Dragon's Lair expert - but the rooms all play out the way I remember from the Sega CD and 3DO versions. Beyond the sometimes abrupt transitions that seem to stem from loading between camera cuts, nothing stuck out to me as missing or wrong. It plays like the arcade game, and on the GBC's non-backlit postage stamp of a screen, the heavily letterboxed image bears an uncanny resemblance to the original.
The reason for that? It's all FMV. To get it looking so clean, every frame was redone by hand and carefully optimized around the limited number of color palettes and unique tiles the GBC could juggle in memory. Painstaking work, I'm sure, but the results speak for themselves. It's incredible to see such clean footage moving at a reasonable framerate without any obvious compression artifacts on a Game Boy. I prefer the sharp line art of the GBC game over the muddy, washed-out look of the Sega CD version.
The sound is pretty barebones, but it does everything it needs to. The gameplay-related audio cues are clear, and the digitized speech clips haven't been bitcrushed to oblivion.
Dragon's Lair is such a weird choice for the GBC, but the folks at Digital Eclipse clearly believed in it, as must've Capcom to shoulder the manufacturing costs for such a large cartridge. This is the sort of quality you get when people pour themselves into something they care about.
*Recorded with a Retroarch shader to mimic the look of the original hardware.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
A playthrough of Capcom's 2001 interactive movie for the Nintendo Game Boy Color, Dragon's Lair.
Yeah, I know. That sentence is patently absurd. Almost as absurd as it is that such a thing - an FMV game for the Game Boy Color - actually exists.
Dragon's Lair for the Game Boy Color would've been easy to overlook on a store shelf in 2001. The box does nothing to draw your attention to the fact that the game isn't just another Dragon's Lair-themed platformer like we saw on the NES and SNES. It really should have, because what we have here is a marvel: an impossibly faithful recreation of the 1982 LaserDisc-based arcade classic, smashed into a 32 megabit cartridge and running on a creaky 8-bit handheld with a 2.5" LCD screen.
I don't know if it has every scene from the arcade game - I'm not a Dragon's Lair expert - but the rooms all play out the way I remember from the Sega CD and 3DO versions. Beyond the sometimes abrupt transitions that seem to stem from loading between camera cuts, nothing stuck out to me as missing or wrong. It plays like the arcade game, and on the GBC's non-backlit postage stamp of a screen, the heavily letterboxed image bears an uncanny resemblance to the original.
The reason for that? It's all FMV. To get it looking so clean, every frame was redone by hand and carefully optimized around the limited number of color palettes and unique tiles the GBC could juggle in memory. Painstaking work, I'm sure, but the results speak for themselves. It's incredible to see such clean footage moving at a reasonable framerate without any obvious compression artifacts on a Game Boy. I prefer the sharp line art of the GBC game over the muddy, washed-out look of the Sega CD version.
The sound is pretty barebones, but it does everything it needs to. The gameplay-related audio cues are clear, and the digitized speech clips haven't been bitcrushed to oblivion.
Dragon's Lair is such a weird choice for the GBC, but the folks at Digital Eclipse clearly believed in it, as must've Capcom to shoulder the manufacturing costs for such a large cartridge. This is the sort of quality you get when people pour themselves into something they care about.
*Recorded with a Retroarch shader to mimic the look of the original hardware.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
![Bases Loaded (NES) Playthrough [1 of 4]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eK0BY2_C9cc/mqdefault.jpg "Bases Loaded (NES) Playthrough [1 of 4]
A playthrough of Jalecos 1988 baseball game for the NES, Bases Loaded.
This is the first part of a four-part playthrough, showing the first twenty-three games of the penant mode as the Jersey team.
Part 2: https://youtu.be/z5czzzR5eK8
Part 3: https://youtu.be/anuJt4T0oko
Part 4: https://youtu.be/wIBKlkYC22U
Bases Loaded, known in Japan as 燃えろ!!プロ野球 (Moero!! Puro Yakyuu, lit. _Burn!! Pro Baseball_ ), was the first game in two long-running series from Jaleco. It kicked off the Bases Loaded series, which saw eight installments released across three console generations before ultimately being canceled in 1996. It was also the first game in the Moero!! line-up of eight NES sports titles, five of which (Bases Loaded 1-3, Racket Attack, Hoops, and Goal!) were released in North America.
There are twelve fictional teams, and the penant mode challenges you take your chosen team to the top over the course of an eighty game season.
The primary selling point was the presentation. To give it the feel of a television broadcast, batting and pitching are both shown from a behind-the-pitcher perspective, the umpires calls are voiced, and big ticket moments (like homeruns and fights) are displayed on the jumbotron.
The gameplay is about what youd expect from an NES baseball game. There are multiple pitches, you can swing at specific spots in the box to direct where the ball goes on contact, you can steal bases, and you can substitute players whenever you like by calling time.
Bases Loaded is its best when youre new to it. Its fancy, flashy, and fun. However, the more familiar the game becomes, the more its flaws are made apparent. The pace of play is slow, the game will crash at seemingly random moments (especially when a fight breaks out after the pitcher beans the hitter), bunts occasionally send the ball flying out of the park, and the CPU players are totally braindead.
The games difficulty is upended by a couple of teams who can steamroll everyone else with very little effort. Jersey is an excellent example. Rose and Hall both have pitches that the CPU-controlled batters wont swing at. Once youve figured that out, a single run is all you need to win any game, and thats where Jerseys power hitters come in. Paste is a one man wrecking crew, and Bay can easily mop up Pastes leftovers. The lack of balance makes for a fun power trip for a few games, but then youre left bored out of your mind for the six dozen remaining games that have to be slogged through to finish the season.
Bases Loaded deserves credit for being better than LJNs MLB, but its playability doesnt compete in the same league as Nintendos Baseball or Namcos Famista (RBI Baseball). I liked it well enough when I played it casually as a kid, but now, after more than forty hours spent recording such extraordinarily repetitive gameplay, I understand how it came to be so reviled by the Japanese.
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
![Splatterworld: Rick vs. the King of Terror (Famicom) Playthrough [English]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f3D_ERm8cow/mqdefault.jpg "Splatterworld: Rick vs. the King of Terror (Famicom) Playthrough [English]
A playthrough of Namcots unreleased JRPG for the Nintendo Famicom, Splatterworld: Rikku to Kyoufu no Daiou (スプラッターワルド リックと恐怖の大王, lit. Splatterworld: Rick and the King of Terror).
Splatterworld, the Famicom-exclusive follow-up to 1989s Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (https://youtu.be/5T9d5aaV-nQ), was developed by Now Production. Though the game was essentially finished and promotional media had already been circulated, it was canceled shortly before its slated Q1 1993 release date.
Coming out of nowhere, a near-final build of the ROM was posted to 4chan on Halloween 2025. A month later, AeonGenesis released an English translation patch, and thats what youre seeing in this video. You can find the patch at https://aeongenesis.net/projects/splatterworld
The game begins with a throwback to Wanpaku Graffitis showdown with the Pumpkin King before opening up and sending Rick and Jennifer on an homage-laden quest to save the world from Dr. Wests mad ambitions.
As cartoony as the graphics are, they dont blunt the impact of Splatterworlds horror underpinnings. Thematically, it goes to some dark places, it doesnt shy away from being grotesque, and it carries a few unexpectedly poignant messages in its narrative. You get to see the creation of one of Splatterhouses signature squishy baby flesh bag enemies. Freddy Kruegers mommy issues lead him to save orphans by wielding the power of epic guitar solos. The triple-threat tag team of Napoleon, Nero, and Hitler can be summoned to lay waste to enemies in battle, but their support comes at great cost to your own survivability. The game subverts horror and RPG tropes in all sorts of clever ways, and its more thoughtfully written than its humble NES presentation lets on.
The battle system is especially cool in how it allows you to channel spirits to fight in your place. Some are weak on their own but become powerhouses when paired with like-minded souls. Some will abandon you at the first opportunity, while others might become overly attached and will refuse to leave unless you force them away with a spell. The riskiest of them have self-serving motives that lead them to disregard your commands as they forcibly possess your body to exert their own will.
I can only imagine that Namco realized that the Famicom was no longer a viable platform for big releases in 1993, and that it was more palatable to cut their losses than to risk shelling out for the manufacturing and marketing costs. Its not like they couldve sold it outside of Japan, either. The content wouldve made it a non-starter under Nintendo of America and Europes family-friendly guidelines.
Whatever the reason, it sucks that Splatterworld never got a chance, because its a quality game. I wouldve adored this back in the early/mid 90s! Still, Im happy to see it given a second life in 2025. It looks and sounds ancient (because it is), but the game holds up in all the ways that count.
Its not every day that you get the chance to experience a new game that was produced back in the day, so dont miss out on this one. Its excellent.
(And so is the translation patch. Kudos to the folks who made it!)
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
