Saturday, January 25, 2020

PrinceWatercress plays The Little Mermaid (Game Boy) - Part 1 of 2


Believe it or not, some of the Disney-Capcom games had Game Boy ports. This was one of them, and interestingly, this one made it to Europe but missed Japan, unlike the NES version, which hit Japan but missed Europe.

The game takes place during the second half of the movie, it seems. Ursula is back, and she's taken control of the fish and making them do her bidding. If she isn't stopped, she'll eventually take over the whole sea. Ariel becomes a mermaid and heads back into the sea to stop her.

Being meant for girls, this is probably the easiest of the Disney games...but it's actually really fun if you like Capcom's Disney-based material.

Stage 1: Sea of Coral



The stages in the Game Boy version are the same as the NES version; they're just in black and white now.

Well, you're underwater, so feel free to move in any direction you need to. Ariel can move pretty quickly if you need her to, and it's like a shoot-'em-up where you can move in any direction as well as turn around. It really makes the game easier to get into. A lets you attack, and holding B lets you move faster.

Though you have five hearts for your life bar, you'll always start with three. This happens whenever you start a new stage. You can find hearts in certain areas that will be able to add one heart to your current health.

The enemies are pretty easy to deal with for the most part. Most of them will just swim towards you, but a few of them, such as the octopi, will shoot projectiles. You can fire bubbles at enemies with your tail, trapping them inside a bubble and allowing you to grab them to either throw them into a ceiling or at other enemies or hold them in your hands and ram through them. You can also pick up conch shells that you may find to do the exact same thing, but they also let you break open the chests to get treasure and health, so you'll definitely need them. The treasure just adds points to your score.

The dark and light pearls are the most useful. The light pearls give your bubbles increased range, while the dark pearls give you increased power. You can only have range or power...not both. You can increase your range or power up to three times, and if you switch from range to power (or vice versa), you'll increase the new stat while the old stat goes back to normal. Thankfully, this isn't set in stone, becuase if you reach maximum speed or power, you'll be able to reach maximum on the other stat afterwards without powering down the stat that's been been brought up as far as it can go.

The Ariel doll, if you find one, will grant you an extra life.

The octopi will be the first of the bigger normal enemies in the game. Unlike the smaller enemies, the bigger enemies cannot be encased with the bubble attack. Instead, you'll have to encase a smaller enemy and let them loose on the bigger ones.

The boss here is a shark. He takes four hits to defeat. He sends fish after you, which you can then attack with bubbles and send into him. He'll move to the other side of the screen and send more fish at you, but he's a real pushover.

When you beat a stage, you'll get a stage clear bonus as well as bonus points for any treasures you collected.

Flounder will tell you that Urusla is headed towards the sunken ship.

Stage 2: Sunken Ship



Hit the barrels with your tail to send them moving. They can get rid of enemies and also open chests if they run into one.

You can leap out of the water and onto dry land, but if you do that, Ariel will just hop around in the direction you move her until she enters water again. To do that, hold Left or Right on the Control Pad and the B button, then hold A to leap through the surface of the water. Once you're on dry land, hold the direction you want to go and keep tapping the A button. If there's a conch shell in the way, Ariel will push it forward. When it drops into the water, you can use it to open a chest and take down enemies on the way. Much like the smaller enemies, you can send them upwards, which is useful for reaching treasures on dry land. Just send them up through the surface of the water towards the chest.

The sea urchins move across floors and are indestructible. At least they aren't very big.

There are certain gaps in floors and corners where you can drop conch shells and bubble-encased enemies to get power-ups. You can get hearts to refill and extend your health this way, so give it a go. To extend your health, collect big hearts. You'll refill your health while adding one unit to your maximum health.

The boss here is Ursula's pet eels, Flotsam and Jetsam. They'll always change places as crabs drop from the ceiling. Hit the crabs with the bubble attack when they stand up, then toss the crabs at them.

When you beat this stage, you'll find out Ursula has frozen the sea. Yes, even though the game takes place almost entirely underwater, we still have ice physics.

Stage 3: Sea of Ice



Well, at least the ice physics apply to the platforms only. You'll hop a little farther on dry land, but not by much.

At this point in the game, you'll come across treasure chests that contain nothing in them. Once you get used to where everything is, you'll know which to avoid. They usually show up in areas where there are two chests nearby, but only one conch shell. Thankfully, the location of the chests that contain power-ups is fixed and does not change every time you play.

The seahorses will usually move downwards when you move towards them if you time it right, so getting rid of them isn't a problem.

The boss here is a walrus. Use the conch shells he sends at you and throw them back at him. The frozen fish in the ice cubes cannot be used against him, so just wait for the conch shells to come down and hit the boss with them. Yet another easy boss.

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