ON The Insider:
The Dark Knight Sets Another Record
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Best Game Boy Color Game
Winner: Dragon Warrior I&II
Enix's Dragon Warrior games, along with the first Final Fantasy, essentially wrote the book on early console RPGs. As some of the first modern RPGs to be released in the US, Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior II created a lot of fond memories. Ten years later, Enix has released the first two games in its epic series on one Game Boy Color cart. The games still hold up so well against the test of time that we really didn't have much trouble selecting the collection as our Game Boy Color game of the year. Turn-based combat, experience points, towns, world maps, a reasonably deep plot - these early RPGs really set the tone for things to come. The Game Boy Color versions stayed true to the originals and even enhanced them. Gone are clunky interface issues such as the "stairs" command. Characters are larger and more animated than they were on the NES. Enix also went back and retranslated the games, staying truer to the original Japanese script than the NES releases did. Finally, Enix added animated intros and endings to both games. Beyond the nostalgia that these classic games drum up, there's still plenty to both games. The storyline of the second game picks up right where the first game leaves off, giving you a real cohesive narrative throughout both games. Dragon Warrior is a solo adventure, while the second game adds additional characters and creates an adventuring party for you to control, lending new strategy to the series. While there were boatloads of outstanding Game Boy Color games released this year, such as Wario Land 3 and the rest of the runner-ups on our list, Dragon Warrior I&II won the award rather easily. Beyond offering great updates of already classic games, the RPG proved to be an excellent on-the-go game, adding the ability to quicksave anywhere, rather than forcing you to return to a town or castle just to save your game. This makes the game work well in small doses and allows it to fill in the gaps during car rides and bus trips, no matter how long or short they may have been.
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