Bill & Ted's Excellent Game Boy Adventure - A Bogus Journey!

The original Game Boy Bill & Ted game succeeds less as a film story than as a series of compact route puzzles. Each single-screen stage asks you to gather every time fragment before the phone booth appears, while enemies, shifting platforms and one-use items make the order of collection matter. Ten zones and fifty levels provide a sizeable first journey. Early stages teach the controls, later ones demand more exact jumps and route memory, and zone passwords keep that journey practical on a handheld. Pale period backdrops usually leave hazards legible, although the small sprites do little to sell the characters and the music becomes repetitive over time. D-pad movement, A-button jumps and B-button items are easy to grasp. Occasional slowdown in busy scenes and a briefly displayed password are more concrete frustrations than the hardware's age. The game is rewarding while routes remain unknown, but offers less discovery once its solutions have been learned. This assessment covers the original Game Boy cartridge, not features of a later compilation.

Who it is for: Game Boy players who enjoy short platforming stages with route planning.

Play notes: The original password screen is timed; later compilation conveniences are excluded.