Re-release this: Revenge of the 'Gator
Re-release this: Revenge of the 'Gator
Another 3DS Virtual Console release that would, at the least, make sense on Nintendo Switch Online.
This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
HAL Laboratory has made games in pretty much whatever genre you can think of, whether those games were retail releases or “just” a sub-game stuffed into a Kirby title. One genre they’ve kept coming back to throughout their lengthy history, though, is that of pinball. It was an early one for them, even, with their first development work on a Nintendo property, years before they were a subsidiary but were instead just doing contract work for them, coming on 1984’s Pinball. While Nintendo R&D1 also shares a credit on Pinball, given its multiple releases and platforms, this particular version for the Famicom and NES was handled by HAL. As Satoru Iwata put it in a 1999 interview, “[Nintendo] would send a very general outline, along with some concept art. Then we’d make the more detailed decisions on how to bring that to life in the game. For something like Pinball, for instance, we’d decide how the ball moved, how the flipper response should feel, all those little details.”
Iwata would go on to say that, “Pinball was actually really well-made: in fact, it was so well done that the recently released Pokemon Pinball game uses the same basic engine!” Which is brought up here to say that HAL has always had a good feel for video pinball, and a clear interest in it. The 1984 Pinball title wasn’t even their first go at the genre — in fact, they likely were handed that particular deal because of their previous work in it. Pin Ball for the 8-bit home computer, the Commodore VIC-20, was a clone of Namco’s Cutie Q, which is a pinball/block breaker hybrid released in 1979. (A lot of HAL’s VIC-20 work was clones of existing, popular games — such was the industry at the time.) The Commodore 64 also featured a riff on a hybrid Namco pinball title, with Pinball Spectacular owing a debt to another 1979 arcade title, Bomb Bee. 1984’s Rollerball for the MSX, which would later release on the NES, as well, was meant to emulate a pinball table. A huge one that was twice as large as an actual table, yes, but still.
HAL clearly had a thing for pinball, and even as they moved away from the kind of contract work and cloning that made up their early years, they stuck with the genre. Kirby’s Pinball Land released on the Game Boy in 1993, and stands out for how it introduced not just visual elements from Kirby games into a pinball title, but incorporated them in a way that elevated it from being “just” pinball into something more unique — more than a pinball game with a Kirby skin, as it were. Brawl Ball is a Kirby pinball sub-game found in Kirby: Mass Attack, that has multiple stages and even boss fights, and just the one ball instead of multiple to fail and try again with. While it’s not quite pinball, their take on the classic pitch and bat arcade game, Baseball, included in the Satellaview-only release, Kirby’s Toy Box, has elements of the genre, of course. And there’s the actual pinball game included in Kirby’s Toy Box, to boot. HAL loves them some pinball.
(Kirby’s Tilt ‘n’ Tumble didn’t get a mention there, despite it being a game with pinball elements to it, because it was actually a Nintendo project until they decided to make it a Kirby game, too, and brought HAL in to make that happen. Though, maybe knowing HAL should be on the project for reasons beyond just “Kirby’s here now” says something, as well.)
In 1989 in Japan, HAL Laboratory published Revenge of the ‘Gator for the Game Boy, which had hit the market there six months prior. Making pinball games for the VIC-20, Commodore 64, MSX, and Famicom all made sense in the past: you couldn’t necessarily have a pinball machine in your home, so why not play a virtual one through your television or a monitor? Revenge of the ‘Gator took things a step further, though, returning to the Game & Watch idea of being able to play pinball wherever you were thanks to the beauty of a portable handheld device, and did it with the kind of setup that only a video game could construct.
Revenge of the ‘Gator doesn’t necessarily pull out all the stops in the way that, say, Compile’s excellent Devil’s Crush would on the Turbografx-16, but for a game released six months into this new world of the Game Boy even existing, HAL managed quite a bit here. You’ve got a five-screen pinball table, with the fifth of those being a bit of a stretch, in that it’s just an animation of a gator eating your ball after it fell through the actual bottom table and out. Then there are three bonus screens which you need to work to get to, which reward you with a ton of bonus points if you’re able to successfully complete the challenge in front of you.
The cover art that depicts an alligator swinging its tail to strike a pinball isn’t just for show: that’s a thing that can actually happen in the game. Get the ball too close where it sticks near a particular gator, and he’ll swipe at it like he’s a paddle, too. You’ll smash in some gator faces with the ball, leading to bonuses and some blocks put on the bottom of your table to keep you from sending the ball down to the hungry gator beneath for a time, and a gator’s tail is even used as a one-way turnstile for a particular shot you can pull off that leads to a slot machine-style bonus play.
The tables might be a little cramped, being on the Game Boy and all, and there isn’t scrolling from screen to screen but instead a flip from one to the next — HAL was working with an 8-bit system using a graphing calculator screen essentially just outside of its launch window, cut them some slack there — but it’s wild how much there is on these tables to interact with. Basically everywhere the ball touches or bumps into or travels across begins or ends some process or another that will lead to some defensive help, or a bonus screen, or another part of the table. There is simply so much to navigate that you won’t be able to succeed at this game without meaning to: you’ll have to put the time and work in to figure out what everything does and how it reacts, to play it like you would a real pinball machine where you need to eventually be intentional if you plan to rack up a high score instead of just trying to not lose.
You can tell, given how the ball feels as it’s moving, that HAL was able to program the game with the kind of skill that allowed 1984’s Pinball engine and its physics to still be in use 15 years later for Pokémon Pinball. It’s not a 1:1 representation of how a ball would move in an actual pinball table, no, but it all feels like it moves as it should in a virtual pinball sim like this one, and that’s all you need. It’s a different game than a table one, and that’s fine! That’s a positive, when done right, and Revenge of the ‘Gator absolutely did it right.
There are multiple game modes in Revenge of the ‘Gator. The standard single-player, of course, and a two-player mode which can be played on just the one Game Boy and cartridge, with players taking turns. You can play it solo, too, if you want to just be able to play longer with more balls before a game over: either way, you can compare scores at the end to determine the winner, which is pretty standard pinball stuff. There’s also the Match Mode, with A and B modes, where the former is for rookies and the latter for veterans. Instead of a high-score competition like in standard pinball play, here, you can see your opponent’s screen, and are attempting to get your ball past their flippers, while they do the same to you. You can also knock out the various targets on the other player’s side, in an attempt to reduce their score to zero, and there are power ups to help you along, as well, which must be collected with your ball. You need a pair of Game Boys, a connect cable, and a pair of cartridges to be able to play this mode, and, to this day, that’s the one way to play it.
In Europe, it’s known as Pinball: Revenge of the ‘Gator, and was published by Nintendo. It’s not a Nintendo game, however, as it’s a HAL one, and just happened to be one that Nintendo saw the benefit of publishing abroad, given its high quality and the broad support needed for their new handheld and its potential uses. Nintendo did end up releasing Revenge of the ‘Gator on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console (with its European name regardless of the region, for some reason) shortly into that system’s lifespan, but, as with everything else on that platform, if you didn’t already grab it before the eshop shut down, then it’s lost to you there.
What Nintendo should do now, however, is re-release it as part of Nintendo Switch Online, in order to re-enable the Match Play feature that was shut off for the Virtual Console release. The June 2024 announcement that The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past + Four Swords was releasing for the Game Boy Advance portion of the service and would feature online play is a reminder that this sort of thing is possible, if Nintendo wants to put in the time and effort. Revenge of the ‘Gator might not have the cultural impact or following of a Zelda game, even a comparatively obscure multiplayer one, but that’s not reason to leave it buried in the past, either.
In the meantime, there’s a patch that can be applied to the original ROM of the game that makes it look like a Game Boy Color release, axes the slowdown, fixes bugs, and lets you record your high scores, too.
Regardless of the how of you playing, Revenge of the ‘Gator is a fun little pinball title that’s worth your time, all these years later. The ball physics felt on point, there’s a shocking amount of depth to the table considering how early of a Game Boy release ‘Gator was, and essentially everything you see on screen serves some function or another that enhances or changes the gameplay of your run. If you’re into video game pinball but somehow haven’t had the pleasure yet, find a way to change that.
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