Game:

Brave Prove (1998)

Duration: 26:31

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While the retro game market has seen a rather dramatic boom in the last ten years or so, the explosive rate within Nintendo's handheld market is especially noteworthy... I'm just curious how many of our viewers have observed the prices of Game Boy / GBC / GBA / DS titles lately? If you haven't, go take a look... it may shock you. This is in part because they have a ton of unique and exclusive games which have little to no hope of being ported ever (besides an emulator of course) and because they're portable, but a lot of them were released in rather modest quantities as well and are the subject of tons of counterfeits. In the case of the Game Boy Advance, it also didn't help that the system had a comparatively short lifespan compared to Nintendo's other handhelds (barring perhaps the GBC, which was incredibly popular in a short amount of time) and was introduced to a lot of shovelware outside Japan (though it lasted more than a year longer outside Japan as well).

I have a lot of fond memories of the GBA (especially the SP) and there are quite a few games that can only be experienced on the system. It seemed to gently caress that sweet spot between 16 bit and 32 bit, leading to games that weren't too far removed from what was perhaps the golden-age of video games. Of course, this means different things to different people. Case in point, we have a obscure game with big bold sprites, lots of color, a fantasy soundtrack and fast-paced gameplay that harkens back to simpler times with SIMS' 2003 (late 2002) release of the Arcade-style action game, "Elemix!". It is a short, stage-based game that has light puzzle elements and adventure themes disguised in a run-n-gun shmup and the basic premise isn't too different from top-down shooters of old such as "Mercs", "Twinkle Tale", "Etoile Princesse", and many others merged with a little "Beyond Oasis" / "Story of Thor" and "Brave Prove" as you can use your powers to solve puzzles. The game is flawed and won't rock your core, but it's still kinda cool.

The game's story is a brief one: the land of Galiant (spelled "Gwuriant") is being overrun by monsters sent by the wicked Marius who has also kidnapped your father (King Graccus) and the one person who can turn the tides is Prince Skip, who possesses the sacred "Elemental Ring" which allows him to wield the powers of Fire, Ice and Earth at will. Upon returning to the castle town of Kanne after training, you find that the citizens are under attack and you rush your way through the enemies in a quest to find answers. There are several NPCs along your journey who give you a little information or tips about what you will encounter as well more plot to digest, but it's really simple stuff in its entirety. When you dive into the game, a few things will become apparent.

The first thing is the game might be colorful and seem easy, but it is actually rather difficult. For better or worse, the game's sprites are large and the viewpoint is zoomed in very close, so you have little view of your surroundings and very little time to react to enemies and obstacles, which is made even harder as you can deal with several enemies at once (about a half dozen or so) who don't always go down in one or two shots. This issue is compounded somewhat by the game's "ability wheel" system where you rotate through the three elements and the fact that most attacks can't attack up stairs or hills and many areas are very confined, leaving you little room to dodge or retaliate. This is alleviated somewhat as you have brief invincibility when switching elements (which becomes necessary to dodge some attacks) and you can double-tap a direction to dodge or jump from higher elevations in a pinch, but it doesn't fully compensate.

Secondly, you'll notice that enemies have different weaknesses / traits and while most enemies can be defeated by any element, it is to your detriment to attack fire with fire, ice with ice, etcetera. Even armed with this knowledge, you sometimes don't have much choice when an area is overrun with enemies and ice becomes your best friend more often than not as it freezes just about anyone (including bosses). Fire is the most powerful outright and can destroy obstacles and such while ice is the weakest but can subdue enemies and freeze water / objects while Earth can rebound (somehow) and move heavy objects or hit switches. Each element can also be powered up to three levels and you can briefly charge them to increase your power, and you get scrolls which can summon a deity of the selected element to deal significant damage to anyone on screen.

Lastly, you'll notice a "Beat" system which helps increase your score ranking along with speed (Beat is the main scoring component). You can unlock an expert mode after clearing the game once and the beat counter resets when hit. Dying (shown) releases all of the power stored up from the selected element, but you can retrieve some of it. This is a video of things in action. Enjoy.