Go! Go! Tank & Aretha retrospective: R-E-S-P-E-C-T this R-P-G on the G-B | Game Boy Works

Next on the Game Boy agenda is an odd little puzzler with loads of personality, a great central hook, and some of the most frustrating gameplay imaginable. Go! Go! Tank flies a little too close to the sun, which maybe explains why you have to keep nudging your stupid little airplane down constantly.
Also in this episode: A frustrating, grind-intensive role-playing game in which it's entirely possible to lock yourself into an unwinnable state after dozens of hours of play. Fun!

[@dejongejohan]

Again a GREAT vid. I really like how your vids look, are cut and how you sound. Great narration, absolute quality in voice and sound. Right up there with Gaming Historian IMHO.

[@Levitz9]

Man, the chainmail-bikini-anime-girl trend of the 1980s is so refreshingly quaint in today's anime-scape. ... Now I'm wondering if there was ever a Dirty Pair game for the GB...

[@JeremyParish]

Not for GB, but there was one for Famicom Disk System!

[@hazy33]

Who doesn't love a Urethra Franklin ref ;)

[@FlippytheMasterofPie]

Oh, Waldenbooks. How I miss thee

[@JeremyParish]

Remember when you could to go the mall and there were four or five different stores selling video games and you could browse and comparison shop? Actually... remember when you could go to the mall?

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

@@JeremyParish I miss that every day.

[@cashnelson2306]

cracking up at the title, as per usual

[@declanfair4540]

I actually have a sort of soft spot for the Aretha series since I discovered it about the same time I was just getting into emulation as a teenager. Some of them are pretty good. That said, they are as mundane a JRPG series as they come. As a quick aside, I'm not sure about the format change as it has the potential to make the series more confusing.

[@arcadia1977]

Go! Go! Tank predates Lemmings by a year. I wonder how many games fall into the Escort Missions Only genre and what was the first game to feature this mechanic?

[@FloatingSunfish]

I was so disappointed to learn that I played as the plane instead of the tank. 😞

[@magus2342]

As a kid, the fact that we didn't get Aretha and RPGs like those would have driven me crazy. After all, it's something I'm not allowed to have! Being older and wiser, I can see that someone was looking out for us.

[@lucasm.thomas5976]

I could feel the frustration of the plane’s controls just from watching!

[@SlugKingsly]

Wow! I just finished the series up to this point. Perfect timing.

[@rubberwoody]

that music in Go!Go! Tank is so familiar...where have I heard it before

[@supermariosunshine64]

This channel gives me heavy Chrontendo vibes. I'm glad to find it.

[@rodneylives]

YES Chrontendo was (is?) awesome!

[@JeremyParish]

Dr. Sparkle was showing off the next episode's video timeline a few weeks ago, so I definitely don't think the series is dead.

[@rodneylives]

@@JeremyParish Inappropriate yaaay!

[@MapleMilk]

I made my first video essay because of this series It has so much polish and information that I couldn't be inspired Keep up the good work!

[@JeremyParish]

Good luck with your essays!

[@Dark.Shingo]

*R-E-S-P-E-C-T this R-P-G on the G-B* Well played, well played... Always a pleasure to watch your videos, thanks for the superb work.

[@kabutops87]

Very happy to see the long overdue return of Gameboy works, its been awhile. Look forward when you get to Bubble ghost, Battle bull and lol Gremlins 2, Good luck with that one. Great episode!

[@f0ry0u81]

I love you, Jeremy! Keep up the good work! 👍✌

[@crawdkenny]

I played Aretha. Kid of annoying to be honest. The enemies upgrade everywhere whenever you get to a new location and then when you pass a certain level, all weaker enemies disappear, so the optimum strategy is to get to a new area, go to a town and then fight around outside the town until all enemies disappear, then go through the new area (or even dungeon) now that there are no random encounters.

[@deepx77]

Yeah! A new GB video!

[@pontyfaxjr]

5.06 I realise after some thought that it says JVM, but I genuinely did a double take and said "Jizm!?"

[@CrimsonDX]

That does sound on the surface like an rpg Id love to give a shot. Simple DQ style gameplay, cute bikini clad heroine, but the presence of such a severe oversight in game design means I would not want to play it without either some kind of money cheat, or a hack that removes that mechanic entirely.

[@ArcaneAzmadi]

It probably wasn't THAT bad, he did say you'd have to "spend wantonly" to brick your playthrough. Presumably it was just something that _could_ happen, rather than something that would regularly happen.

[@mariusamber3237]

Like you mentioned, Aretha did surprisingly well in Japan - well enough to warrant 2 sequels, and 3 SFC games, kinda like Oni which you will cover in the not-so-distant future. The SFC version of Aretha is actually not "that" bad, but to my understanding the story differs quite a lot. Well, there are a couple dozen more RPGs to wade through. Nothing comparable to FC/SFC, but still quite a lot.

[@adamking6645]

So we have a RPG where you can actually run out of monsters to fight?

[@jasonblalock4429]

Man, I do not envy you having to chew through the endless piles of mediocre action-puzzle games on the GB.

[@DarkHeroAkutare]

Those poor souls wandering around trying to grind enough money to get the plot critical item to get to the next area... ...But nobody came.

[@Wuss2ns]

Jeremy is savage as usual

[@JeremyParish]

Really? I thought I was pretty even-handed here.

[@Wuss2ns]

@@JeremyParish I just meant the climate change line!!

[@rubbercarp]

I _knew_ I played Go Go Tank before, but couldn't remember the name or how the gameplay worked for the longest time.

[@221b]

You've got some dirt on your lower third.

[@AQuestionofCharacter]

This game scared me at the time with the name Electro Brain, synonymous with awful, and Toei Animation, synonymous with really cool.

[@vaguerant]

That's a shame, Go! Go! Tank looks theoretically like a bunch of fun, I was about to mark it down on my "to-get" list but then the video continued.

[@JeremyParish]

I liked it a lot for about five minutes, but it's so frustrating to wrestle with that damn plane.

[@djsquarewave]

Brand new copies of the US release were cheap and plentiful a full ten years after it shipped. I picked it up after reading a particularly scathing review thinking "oh, it can't be that bad." Turns out it was just frustrating and kind of boring.

[@rodneylives]

Go! Go! Tank sounds like with a little more work it could have been something great.

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, my initial draft of the script based on playing the first stage was really positive. But then I captured footage of more of the game and had to rewrite to address my mounting frustration.

[@lilgazib]

Oh man go go tank made me mad when I was a kid. I died my second last life in the last stage , lost my temper and reset the game by pressing all the buttons at once . I never played it again until recently when I found it again at the discount bin at my local game shop. I finally beat it the other day and it’s much easier than I remember haha

[@JeremyParish]

Is there a secret to making the controls not suck?

[@lilgazib]

@@JeremyParish just patience and the desire to win haha

[@sergiomanxeraa]

It is just me or I'm hearing the Mario Tennis GBC music on that first game?

[@diebesgrab]

I don’t think humanity needs the help of its own stupidity to go extinct before you finish the Game Boy library.

[@user-a5Bw9de]

Allegedly, Aretha series on Game Boy is rather unforgiving and in the league with extra dungeons of Wizardry Gaiden series.

[@delaorden]

Mario Land and Go Go Tank were the first games I played of the game boy, I always loved the idea of the game but found it always too infuriating every time I tried it

[@hw5091]

I had gogo tank and used to beat it all the time, because I didn't have much else. And I knew it was not very good.its not terrible, but it was definitely a budget title I got because it was $20.

[@BanditTheCatRIP]

You probably still "beat it all the time"

[@jamesmoss3424]

Aretha should have been released in the USA in the first place. 😀👍🎮

[@Isthecakereallyalie]

Oof, you had to remind me about global warming, huh?

[@JeremyParish]

There's a massive hurricane bearing down on my home at the moment, so yeah, I'm dragging everyone down to hell with me

[@bfish89ryuhayabusa]

@@JeremyParish Be safe.

[@jamesmoss3424]

I will play go! go! tank. 😀👍🎮

[@childofcascadia]

Dammit, I was hoping it was a JRPG about Aretha Franklin. Was looking forward to some sheer insanity about a soul singer in a jrpg. Im extremely disappointed now, armor bikini not withstanding.

[@perpetualgrimace]

B-E-S-T title

[@ValkyrieTiara]

OK, I'm confused. You were already combining weaker/less interesting games into compilation videos, right? But now you're specifically combining one american and one Japanese game per video instead? Does that mean the series is no longer chronological? I mean what if two japanese or two american games release in a row? Part of the reason I like this series was the strict chronology; I don't care if you do multiple games in a single episode, and I don't care if games are from the same region or not, but I do think that breaking the chronology will take something important away from the series. Regardless, this was a great video and I appreciate all the hard work you do!

[@JeremyParish]

American games almost never have precise release dates recorded, only release months. The JP titles will continue to be chronological by precise date, and the U.S./EU titles will be paired with games from the same month. And in any case, we're seeing multiple JP titles released on the same exact date, so "breaking chronology" would rarely put things more than a few days out of order. Basically I'm saying it's nowhere near as dire as you seem to think.

[@ValkyrieTiara]

@@JeremyParish Good to know, thanks for the response!

[@GamerGoingGrey]

Yay! It's back! This isn't 2020, is it?

[@MrJWTH]

Gamer Going Grey No, my best guess is that he’s waiting for the Switch remake of Link’s Awakening to release before he shows the GBC version.

[@FallicIdol]

I'm getting frustrated just watching you lay Go Go Tank. Definitely not the game for me.

[@BanditTheCatRIP]

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