Game Boy Works: A (side) pocket full of miracles
I have to admit, the past few episodes of Game Boy Works were not quite as painful as I had expected. I don't like sports, sports don't like me… and yet, tackling games about skateboarding, baseball, wrestling, and now pool all in a row somehow didn't destroy me. It helps that there was just enough weirdness in there to keep things interesting — I mean, that Skate or Die game was downright bizarre. I can't say I'm sad to be moving along to other subjects now, however. I think there's maybe a single sports release among the next dozen Game Boy Works titles, and honestly I could go for a few mundane puzzlers right about now.
That said, Side Pocket was a pretty decent way to wrap this blitz of jocularity. It's a nice, low-key game with chill music and probably the best physics programming I've seen on Game Boy.
Honestly, playing this just a few months after reviewing Yakuza 0 shows how little billiards games have evolved over the decades. Of course, pool in Yakuza 0 was a minigame, not the entire work (as it is here) — but even so, those modern-day gambling side contests really demonstrate what a great job Data East did of translating pool into video form way back in 1986. There's not really that much more you can do with pool beyond what Side Pocket presents. Also, the conjunction of Yakuza 0 and Side Pocket in my life demonstrates that I am just as lousy at the 1986 version of the sport as I am its 2017 rendition, but that's neither here nor there.
Reviewing Side Pocket for Game Boy makes me pine for a modern portable update to the series. I know Data East doesn't really exist anymore, its properties having been absorbed by G-Mode, and all those classic Data East franchises exist now as nothing more than archival material to be churned through and reissued with no real thought to evolution. But still… a modern Side Pocket for, say, Switch would be pretty great. Especially since you could set up impromptu multiplayer contests as demonstrated by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Ah well; at least you can download this version of the game for 3DS Virtual Console. That's not quite the dream fulfilled, but it'll do the trick in a pinch.
