Faceball 2000

"A FPS for original GameBoy?!"

Face-Ball 2000 the first (and only) First-Person shooter released for either the black and white Gameboy or Color, was released back in the early '90s by the now deceased Bullet Proof Software. What is really interesting about the premise of this game is how unconventional it is. Rather then do the typical human or monster/alien enemy setup, you are a smiley face pitted against other smiley's in a virtual reality world.

The question is despite this whacked out premise is this a black and white Gameboy cart worth owning? Read on...

Gameplay: Face-Ball 2000 has two modes of play: Cyber-Scape and Arena. CS is a 1-player mode where you have to find your way through mazes, to find a door to move onto the next maze. It gets more varied as you progress with the addition of harder enemies,moves that will allow you to move walls of run faster, and keys that you will be required to find to complete the mazes later on. Arena is the multi-player death-match part of this portable FPS package. The first to get a certain amount of tags(kills) wins.
I have heard this game supports up to 16 players with the proper amount of game packs,link cables, and 4-player adaptors. I haven't tried this myself so I will say this game has 2-player multi since the game doesn't specify how many people can link up.One downer to all this gameplay bliss is the weapon selection, because there isn't one.
There is one standard unlimited weapon you carry; no more no less.

Graphics:In a word the graphics are basic. The only real bright spot is the enemies are composed of real honest to goodness polygons; a real rarity on such a limited portable as the original GB. Now the bad. The walls in the game have no texture to them, just a bunch a lines on them consist of their texture. Another strike is the horrid draw distance. You can only see about a few feet ahead of you, and any thing else out of view looks like a garbled mess. I was willing to deal with this rather basic graphical look so we could have a portable First-Person shooter. Because, what the developers did is quite impressive with such a limited platform, and obviously they tried as hard as they could to even have the graphics as good as they are. Besides several FPS are going to be out for GBA before the end of the year which will fix the graphics problems, so overlook the graphics issues and have a fun time at least until the GBA FPS's come along.

Sound: There is only one tune in this game, and it gets looped over and over. It's not that great either, and even if it was you would get sick of it real quick. I know I did.

Control:The control is smooth enough, A shoots, Start pauses, and the d-pad moves
your smirking face around. The only problem I encountered has to do with turning. Your face turns really slowly, so enemies can get cheap shots on you.

Gameplay Value
Cyber-Scape get old rather quickly, but Multi-player is a blast even by yourself. This is one of those great pop in and play games where you have no trouble in digging in and having fun.

Final Impressions
This is a very fun portable game that does justice to the FPS genre, and will keep you busy for quite a long time. My only concern is I'm not sure if this game will ever see use again; after all now that the wave of GBA FPS are already underway. Just keep that in mind.

Closing Quote
They won't be smiling very much longer. Bam!

Overall score:8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/02, Updated 07/29/02