In Your Face / Koro Dice retrospective: Sham dunk | Game Boy Works

A portable gaming first-the first-ever handheld basketball game cartridge. Sadly, In Your Face is not precisely the game to lead the charge; it's more of a technical foul than anything else. Happily, the backup entry for this episode, Japan-only puzzler Koro Dice, is a pleasant diversion that makes up for it. Was I complaining about Game Boy puzzlers recently? Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking.
Video Works is funded through Patreon ( / gamespite ) - support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its KZbin debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

[@zachreddy]

"a cross between Menudo, the Polyphonic Spree and To Catch a Predator" ...truly an evocative and disturbing turn of phrase

[@FloatingSunfish]

It's always comfy seeing these old forgotten games get the limelight, even if they're not all that great. This is my favorite history channel!

[@duhdeedee]

To be fair, many GB games retailed for $19.99. Dunno if "In Your Face" was one of them, but one can only hope.

[@BenCol]

8:08 “If you ever find yourself stranded in December 1990...” Don’t you just hate it when you wake up after a night out and realise you drunk-time travelled the previous night, but can’t remember where you parked your time machine? C’mon, we’ve all been there. Still, probably a better year to be stranded in than 802,701 AD - way fewer Morlocks.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Knowing the 90s, don't be surprised if some crop up there too.

[@Real1Gaming]

I'd love for that to happen to me so I could fix a few major mistakes I made.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

@@Real1Gaming Blinovitch Limitation Effect, can't do that sorry.

[@sovrinn16]

The brief mention of that Evangelion game at the end made me frantically google "Neon Genesis Evangelion outro" and WELP. I had no idea that's what I'd been hearing iterated upon for hundreds of Works episodes.

[@starlightwitch12]

So now we know the origin of the new version of the Retronauts Video Works outro theme.

[@JeremyParish]

People ask where the music is from on a weekly basis and have been for years, so now I can breathe free.

[@DarkHeroAkutare]

@@JeremyParish Congratulations!

[@RogerPyoko]

@@JeremyParish Congratulations!

[@slightlyevolved]

NGL, I ended up looking up the soundtrack. That goes so much harder for a mahjong game than it should. Game probably is the best mahjong game just solely for the music.

[@Seafoamgaming]

Aw yeah GB Double Dragon II is next. Always find it fascinating how it reskins another technos brawler, even though DD was made to prevent reskinning from even being a possibility.

[@angelriverasantana7755]

The surprise reference to Menudo when describing AKB48 caught me off guard, being a Puerto Rican and all that

[@JeremyParish]

I grew up in West Texas, and they were pretty big there.

[@angelriverasantana7755]

@@JeremyParish ooh, that's an interestin revelation for me

[@JeremyParish]

There's a huge Mexico/LatAm immigrant community in West Texas, which means quite a few Spanish-language radio and television stations, so you'd see or hear Menudo in passing all the time. The group also had some visibility in English-language spaces back in the ’80s, like variety shows. They even showed up in some sitcoms-I want to say Silver Spoons? They were an international sensation. The BTS* of their day. [*Reference updated for 2023]

[@angelriverasantana7755]

@@JeremyParish ooh, this is quite interesting. Thanks for providing this info, Jeremy. It's a pleasure to learn these kinds of things

[@magnumvanisher]

Just to let you know, King Records is known for the anime song artists like Megumi Hayashibara, Nana Mizuki, etc. Oh yeah, and King Records also publish an obscure game called Jesus: Kyoufu no Bio Monster.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

I believe they were responsible for releasing Neon Genesis Evangelion back in Japan originally.

[@SuperKokuJin916]

@@ChristopherSobieniak Pretty much anything Megumi Hayashibara did voicework for King Records had a hand in it (outside of Ranma ½ & Project A-ko). All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, Slayers, Evangelion etc.

[@chamchamtrigger]

That AKB joke nearly killed me. I was eating something at that part.

[@SECONDQUEST]

I love you're little intro before "(blank)works"

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Now I've seen "In your face", I'm glad you put RoboCop in it's place in the previous episode. And does anyone here recommend Hoops?

[@transit000]

Keen as mustard for the Double Dragon episode

[@segadriven]

I can't speak for other Westerners, but Koro Dice frequents a lot of bootleg Game Boy multicarts and I'm super familiar with it, so it might not be so weird to suggest Westerners might have had access to this back in the day

[@IanSane]

One of the Zero Escape games (or maybe more than one of them; don't remember) has what is essentially Koro Dice as one of the puzzles. I recall it being pretty hard and made worse due to it having some sort of bug you hoped to not encounter. I don't remember the details but I think the key was to not save with the puzzle still in progress.

[@slightlyevolved]

Although my memory is fuzzy enough to not recall if it was that specific puzzle or not, you are correct that there was a save bug that would corrupt the game if you tried to save while it was in progress. I DO remember specifically it being Virtue's Last Reward, 3DS version that had it.

[@samfrito]

Glad to hear a soothing voice talk retro. gaming. Such an occasion as I'm enjoying a chili and kimchi breakfast burrito and I get to see "In Your Face" and you even got a dig at Jaleco. Koro looks cute. Pretty much my kind of Gameboy game experience between short, self-damning Burai Fighter sessions

[@DanielBurapavong]

I have a bootleg of Koro Dice on one of those ## in 1 carts. I forgot I had it. Memories.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

I'm thankful you got in my face with more Game Boy Works. Episode was a slam dunk!

[@broy8172]

the closed captions have decided the game's name is Oops. Oops by Jellico also i havent thought about polyphonic spree in ages (and what a way to be reminded) - they played plenty of dive bars in those white robes in the early 00s. If I remember it right, they wore them as much as possible before cleaning since the dry cleaning was a fortune for 24 robes on tour

[@THEmuteKi]

Koro Dice seems like the sort of game that you'd see in a mobile ad with the text HARDER THAN IT LOOKS and a dumb "IQ meter" that goes down the longer you play it. Which is to say, not bad, but probably not something I'll go out of my way to play

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, like I said, it's awesome if you ever end up trapped in December 1990

[@ericjenkins2737]

Hey, that’s like Devil Dice, an amazing game for the original PlayStation.

[@staguar]

Devil Dice and the PS2 sequel Bombastic were incredibly fun!

[@jessragan6714]

I was thinking, "Yeah, that's like a really, reeeeeeally low-key version of Bombastic." Mental note: play Bombastic one of these days.

[@Real1Gaming]

"and To Catch a Predator" Okay you won the Internet

[@7thangelad586]

I guess they chose “In Your Face” because “Goodsir, I Taunt Thy Mediocrity” didn’t roll off the tongue.

[@StuffedVulture]

5:38 "Think back to the puzzles in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past..." Boy, LttP looks worse than I remember.

[@feitclub]

Your definition of AKB48 broke me.

[@JeremyParish]

Thank you, I'm very proud of that tiny passage.

[@smurfyx]

@@JeremyParish it was art dude, I fuckin died

[@bradhalverson8510]

This is just barely related, but remember when Electronic Gaming Monthly was giving away t-shirts with subscriptions that just said "In Your Face" on them? I never got one, but even as a kid thought it was weird that of all the video game related things they could have slapped on a shirt, they went with a random, and somewhat hostile, display of 90s attitude. My new head canon is that it was actually a reference to this excellent looking game boy basketball game.

[@teeveeparty]

I just want to say thank you for playing this junk

[@fingrati]

Koro Dice is on the GB Boy Colour.

[@Poever]

In Your Face sounds like a real~ sham dunk.

[@BanditTheCatRIP]

I'm glad you like Hoops

[@stoozdee]

Hoops was good stuff.

[@Sheepy007]

Oh boy, double dragon 2. Please tell me that you emphasize the music of that game, it is so damn good

[@auralunaprettycure]

Koro Dice is so cool!! It reminds me of CuOnPa on the Super Famic

[@FloatingSunfish]

Wow, from dice puzzle games to AKB48... What are the odds!? 😂

[@TobyDeshane]

That music in 'In Your Face' is unsettlingly addictive to me. 😰

[@crawdkenny]

Korodice reminds me of a puzzle in Virtue's Last Reward, only that one has several dice at a time.

[@JomasterTheSecond]

Oh FUCK yeah, Kunio Kun's the next episode!

[@Technosphile]

In your FACE, Jeremy Parish!!

[@perpetualgrimace]

That opening line 🤣

[@vaguerant]

I fundamentally cannot play these dice rolling games, I just have zero ability to visualize where a die is going to be. I just end up rolling it around via trial and error until it's correct, and then I don't feel like I've achieved anything because I didn't actually solve the puzzle.

[@JVeg199X]

That LED basketball game was probably more fun.

[@BasementBrothers]

Koro Dice looks a little like Cu On Pa for Super Famicom and Playstation.

[@HiroPlaysGames]

I thought the same thing! I had that one for Windows back in the day, published as Endorfun.

[@anonymouskaiju9101]

Well 1990 might be a boring year for the gameboy so far, but 91 should be much stronger, games like metroid 2, castlevania belmonts revenge, the gameboy mega man's, final fantasy adventure mean next year there will at least be more big games from major companies

[@GetLostGames1]

This was really good!

[@jamesmoss3424]

I should get in your face for the game boy. 😀👍🎮

[@kingextreme88]

Jaleco definitely does sports games right. But "In Your Face" is a hard pass. It deserves to go into the Shadow Realm where New Coke, that horrible Cher & Gregg Allman collab album from the 70's, and that Randy dude from "That 70's Show" reside.