Home Alone (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of THQ's 1991 license-based platformer for the Nintendo Game Boy, Home Alone.

Home Alone games appeared on every commercially-viable platform known to man in the early 1990s, and of course, the thoughtful folks producing these games thought that people (with money) might wish to take Kevin's antics on the road with them. And surely enough, three different handheld games appeared on the market to cash-in on the success of the movie franchise.

This green-and-grey adaptation of the SNES title was the first of those portable games. It retains the general feel of the SNES title quite well, albeit with badly compromised graphics and sound. Kevin runs about his mansion over four stages: each of these have him collecting a predetermined number of themed objects to deposit in the basement vault via laundry chutes. After he has collected the necessary items and evaded the Wet Bandits, a key to the basement appears. Kevin then has to avoid whatever hazards are lurking and defeat some sort of boss before moving on to the next stage.

The SNES game was a middling game - it was just okay. It played reasonably well, and the graphics and sound were reasonably good for how early in the system's life the game was released. The Game Boy version is still pretty mediocre, but comes in somewhat below it's 16-bit brother. The presentation lost any amount of gloss that it originally had, and while the graphics are passable, the sound seriously grates. Rhe screen no longer scrolls, making it too easy to run directly into hazards just ahead, and this issue is compounded by the slippery controls. Precision jumping is easy enough, but Kevin's movement feels twitchy and off, and he is generally not as responsive as you'd like him to be. That being said, the game is still quite easy. The challenge comes more from the frustrating mechanics than any good level design or creative obstacles. It's also a bit too long for a handheld game that lacks any password or save system. If your batteries die, you'll be starting again from the beginning.

It's not bad (why do I find myself qualifying these titles like this so often?), and it's not good. It's exceedingly mediocre, so your mileage is likely to vary based on your own preferences for 2D platforming and any affinity you might hold for the license.

I found it to be a somewhat entertaining distraction for a short bit, and then promptly forgot about it once I'd finished it.

If nothing else, it's certainly better than the NES trainwreck.

Recorded with Retroarch's DMG shader for that classic dot-matrix look!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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