Retroulette #15: Roswell Conspiracies - Aliens, Myths & Legends

Today's game is a little mystery by the name of Roswell Conspiracies - Aliens, Myths & Legends for the Gameboy Color. Now, a name like that is intriguing. With most games, you can mostly tell what kind of game it is by the name. A game called Rugrats: Party Babies is invariably going to be a terrible collection of awful minigames. But what kind of game could this be? A trivia collection? A collection of news clippings and photographs for your Gameboy Color?

Just what the hell is this?

It begins with the usual collection of logo screens. But what's this?

That's the Rainbow Six guys, right? That's highly unexpected. This game may be ok.

The next screen is less comforting.

When I play these games I let these screens just play out, without pressing any buttons  in case I miss some super awesome intro cinematic or whatever. If you do that in this game though, it takes like 30 seconds per screen before they skip to the next one. And there's like six of them. It was a few minutes before I reached the menu screen. But reach it I did.

See? Here's proof.

That's our hero, Nick. He looks quite a bit like Bruce Wayne from Batman The Animated Series.

*sigh* He's my son. I don't talk about him because he sucks.

Well now it's time to see what this game is all about. First we get our mission objectives from some  G-Man.

 
Ok. STOP.

Werewolves? What the hell does this have to do with Roswell?

Whatever, do continue.

Fucking STOP.

Now it's Aliens? Make up your goddamn mind. That's more of what I expected from a Roswell game, but what's all this werewolf business? Short story shorter, I gotta collect 8 aliens and then meet up with some chick named Sh' lainn. So then the game begins. It turn out it's an overhead action game. I begin the game in a house. The B button makes me blink yellow, and who knows what the hell reason there is for that.

Shit, I think I'm an alien.

And the A button fires my gun. Except the bullets are fucking massive, so I'm pretty sure I'm throwing shot put balls everywhere. That seems to be a pretty inefficient way to fight werewolves/aliens but whatever, I'm sure he knows what he's doing.

Follow your dreams little buddy!

 So now I wander the streets of London, and I have no idea what the hell to do. I mean, I have to capture aliens, but where are these aliens? It takes me a long ass time to figure it out. Basically, there's tons of people wandering the streets and in buildings. I've been ignoring them the whole time. By accident, I go into yellow super saiyan mode and touch one of these people. This happens.

Sir, if you could help I need some directio--OH SHIT

When you touch them in this mode they blink in between humans and werealiens. Sometimes, they just stay humans and continue to wander the streets aimlessly, as the people of London are wont to do. But sometimes they fail the test and their disguises are interrupted, revealing them to be the monsters they are. I blast them a bit with my gun, and they turn to statues. I then blast them one more time and they disappear. Easy stuff. This goes on for a looooong time. I go around London and blast some aliens. And my people counter keeps going up. But that doesn't seem to affect anything. My alien counter is still firmly at 8, so I'm making no progress whatsoever.

 Also, as a little aside, look at that picture. Every once in awhile that douchebag will just stick his tongue out at me for no reason. It's a silly little thing to notice and mention, sure, but it's a silly thing to program into the game in the first place.

 Anyway, back to the game. It turns out I have another item in my inventory. I seen it earlier and didn't know what to make of it. But it turns out it's a cage. So what you're supposed to do is shoot them until they freeze in place, and then throw a cage at them and collect them.

I didn't learn this until an hour into playing it.

And that hour was pretty torturous. Mostly because the song that plays during the level, while a pretty enjoyable chiptune actually, loops after like 10 seconds.

So now I've got this game figured out. I learned all the tricks. For example. If there are two people standing close to each other, without exception, one of them is an alien.

It's probably that guy.

Finally I beat this level. Let's see our next objective!

Ok. I'm not reading these things anymore.

So in this level I have to find some bombs. This  level looks exactly like the last one, but I don't care because it has a different song. This tune is equally as enjoyable but repetitive however. This stage is pretty easy because you can just ignore all the enemies and find all the bombs. I wasted a lot of time though, because I was looking inside of each building when it turned out not one of them was in a building.

Pictured: Bomb. Not pictured: An interior.

So after another half hour that's another level down! The next level mixes things up a bit. I have to drive all these aliens back to HQ. There's also UFO's blasting me everywhere and it's timed.

Hahaha you dumbass UFO that shot is way off.

For the record this level sucks ass. After getting to HQ I am informed the boss alien has followed me. And because an agency that fights alien attacks apparently has no defense against aliens, I am sent alone to fight him off.

This alien is a really huge version of the normal werealiens. This looks like it could be a pretty tough fight, but laughably I kill him with one shot.

The next objective is to--damn it--drive to my "next destination". Same as the last level, except now I'm horribly driving in a different direction. While driving around UFOs it makes me wonder, why all the secrecy when the aliens are clearly just hanging out around town, blasting at things when they get bored.

The next level is in Ireland, now I have to collect 10 Banshees and meet up with Sh' lainn. It's totally different, see, because before it was aliens.

I'm done with this game. But look at this picture.

That guy is like 78% neck. But it could be worse.

HOW MUCH DID THE COVER ART LIE?

If I'd looked at the boxart before playing it, I might have been less surprised that it wasn't an interactive slideshow. It turns out, after some internet detective work, that this game is based on a TV show I'd never heard of. So presumably I was supposed to be like "OMG I get to be Nick? I can actually talk to Sh' lainn?" but I don't know or care about these characters.

This game isn't too shabby at all. The graphics are pretty great for the Gameboy, the music is catchy, and the gameplay is decent. The problem is it's all too repetitive. In shorter bursts though it may have been a much better experience.

P.S: Hilarious story. Getting the footage and the screenshots for this game didn't work when I played it. So I had to play it again to get all these screens.

It was not more fun the second time around.