Finished Jaleco’s Ikari no Yousai/Fortified Zone! It’s somewhat fascinating playing this after its successor Operation Logic Bomb, since the series originated on the Game Boy and you can see the groundwork being laid for that game.
The game’s a top down shooter, and each of the four levels feel almost a bit like Zelda dungeons because of the per-room scrolling layout and the use of keys and light puzzle-solving. The main gimmick is being able to switch between two characters - Masato and Mizuki. Masato has a secondary weapon, Mizuki moves faster and jump over traps.
While it’s certainly fun to play through, you get the impression the game isn’t quite reaching its full potential. There are some cool weapons like the flamethrower, but none of them are really necessary to beat the game, and the enemies and boss fights don’t put up enough of a challenge to compensate for the rather generous health and ammo drops.
The level design develops a lot throughout the course of the game, starting off as empty square rooms and evolving into something more involved. There’s rooms that are pitch black, rooms with moving floors, rooms with devices that reverse your movement controls. But again - nothing particularly challenging when the enemies aren’t posing much of a threat while you’re exploring.
Operation Logic Bomb on SNES addressed all of these issues, but before it Jaleco did release one more Game Boy followup: Ikari no Yousai 2, a Japan-only release. Managed to nab that one off the Japanese eShop, hopefully it’s a more well rounded challenge like its successor!