Navy SEALS (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
233A playthrough of Ocean's 1991 license-based action-platformer for the Nintendo Game Boy, Navy SEALS.
Who remembers the movie Navy SEALS?
Okay, I see... thr... no, four... wait, that's a shadow... three hands! Okay, good crowd!
Seriously, nobody would blame you for not recalling a single thing about the movie. Somehow, despite starring Charlie Sheen, Michael Biehn, and Bill Paxton, it wasn't a particularly good movie. It was a film with a lot of "America, yay!" sentiments, but it lacked all of the charisma, flair, and budget of Top Gun.
But it was a movie that had guns in it, so Ocean was ready to have a go at making a game of it. Scared, are you?
Well, believe it or not, this is actually one of those times that they got it right. I mean, they weren't always known exclusively for crap. The Addams Family, Lethal Weapon, Jurassic Park... they did some good stuff, and while Navy SEALS doesn't quite set the world on fire, it's a very solid action game. Solid enough, in fact, that it even received a feature in Nintendo Power.
It is a US-exclusive port of a game designed primarily for the European 8-bit computer market (the C64 version is a pretty amazing showcase for the machine!), and it looks, sounds, and feels fairly similar to Ocean's RoboCop Game Boy game.
You play as Hawkins (the Charlie Sheen guy) whose ultimate goal is to secure caches of American missiles that have fallen into the hands of terrorists, and ideally, this mission should be accomplished before the terrorists get the chance to use them against America.
Navy SEALS is a simple game, but a well made one. As you'd expect, you march through each stage shooting at everything that moves. You have access to limited-use gun upgrades as well as a cool "sniper" attack, which brings up a sweet cinematic of a wannabe Duke Togo wiping out all of the on-screen enemies.The stages often have spots that feature multiple levels that can be leapt between (think Code Name: Viper, Shinobi, or Rolling Thunder), and enemies can spawn from all sides at any time, forcing you to take advantage of the multi-tiered layouts.
The controls are super sharp, and the game can be punishingly hard toward the end, but it never feels ridiculously unfair. Just demanding. The sprites are bold and clear, even on the blurry Game Boy screen, and the music lives up to Ocean's reputation for awesome soundtracks.
And doesn't it sound just like Bow-Wow's bark in Link's Awakening when somebody gets shot?
And that's about all there is to say about Navy SEALS. It's a great game for antiquated hardware based on a so-so movie. If you like 80s era run-and-gun games, you'll probably find a lot to like buried within this long forgotten cart.
*Recorded using the Retroarch DMG shader for that classic look!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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