When Digimon Was on the Game Boy Advance | Digimon Battle Spirit and Digimon Racing Retrospective

0:02 [Music] All right, we all knew the Digimon World 4 video was going to be a beefy one, and I actually have made some significant progress on that review. So, that video is not as far away as you might think. But that said, I could still really use something smaller right about now. Something that I could just pick up and play casually for a little bit. You know what actually would be perfect? let's say three games Digimon related that all came out for a handheld console that was really popular in the mid200s. We're starting to get into that era now where a lot of if not most of the Digimon games were starting to go portable. And I'm talking about mainline stuff, too. Kind of feels like things came full circle. Digimon started on a little portable keychain and now the main meat of the games were finding their ways onto systems that could fit into your

0:48 pocket. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen anyone use their pockets to carry any kind of handheld system. So, I'm starting to think that descriptor doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Starting in 2003, we saw a gradual release of three Digimon games for the Game Boy Advance. It's worth noting that this was not the original home for two of these titles, but we'll get there. I wanted to keep it simple today, but this is also my attempt to kind of get my reviews of the Digimon games back into release order since I actually found out halfway through working on the Digimon World for review that these titles actually came out before that one. So, let's take a step back today, grab our Game Boys, and let's take a look at Digimon Battle Spirit, Digimon Battle Spirit 2, and Digimon Racing. Hello.

1:36 [Music] Once again, two of the games we're talking about today were released on the GBA here in the States, but that's not where they debuted. The Battle Spirit games were developed by Dimps. Yes, that Dims and released for the Wonders Swan Color only in Japan in 2001 and 2002. They had different names in their country of origin, too, as Digimon Tamers, Battle Spirits, and Digimon Frontier Battle Spirit. And as you can imagine, both feature playable characters that started in the anime series they were named after. Though Tamer's Battle Spirit hosts a few playable Digimon from earlier seasons of the anime as well. They're simple pick up and play fighting games, but I wouldn't really compare them to the

2:22 first Rebel Arena title, even though the American box art for the first Battle Spirit took some obvious inspiration from that PS1 game. Probably trying to market the game with recognizability in mind. If anything, while I would still very much describe this as its own thing, I'd say it shares more similarities with the second Rumble Arena game, which would release after these handheld fighters. But let's go ahead and dig into the actual content on offer here. But before we do that, do you know how I stay on top of working on all these videos while also holding down a full-time job? Well, it's not with sleep, I'll tell you that. But thankfully, I can still get the boost that I need to keep up with all my projects with a little help from our partners over at Gfuel. Gfuel is an energy drink company that specializes in creating formulas to keep people in the

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3:55 cute. I like that it teases characters you can unlock later by flashing their silhouettes on screen for a second. But speaking of flashing, wow, do they love their strobe effect in this opening. It's honestly a little jarring to the eyes. I don't think it needed to be this strong. There actually is a plot to this game to a limited degree, but you can only find it in the manual, which I was able to read through a great scan over on videogame manual.com. The background is that in a dark secluded region of the digital world, some powerful and dark Digimon came to be that began to grow more powerful and spread its destructive force, causing other Digimon to collapse, but also reaching its influence into the real world, resulting in illness, natural disasters, and worst of all, computer problems. Think of all the unpaid overtime for all those IT techs. But all hope is not lost, as

4:41 several Digimon have crossed the multiverse to band together and tackle this threat together. And by that, I mean fight each other for some reason. and eventually take on the big boss Digimon by themselves. I have no idea why the manual tries to make it sound like these Digimon are working together and not spending 90% of the journey just beating ones and zeros out of each other. When you start the game proper, you get to choose from one of several different Digimon. Yilman, Terrimon, Renomon, Vmon, Wormon, Aguman, and Sukamon. Well, that sure is a choice, isn't it? Everyone else here has a tamer except for this little freak, but far be it for me to say who's qualified to step up and be a hero. God speed, you disgusting little creature. Each Digimon is going to have a slightly different move set, but the controls themselves are fairly simple. The A button lets you jump. The D-pad moves you around and

5:26 lets you block. The B button has your Digimon use their basic attack, and pressing up while pressing B will unleash your Digimon's special technique. This will be different for each Digimon with Gilman spitting out a fireball. Redon shooting lightning that has a slight homing effect. Vimon uses a strong headbutt and Sukamon makes a little Pikmin style sacrifice of his little Chuman buddy. Not only that, each Digimon also has different attacks that you can use by pressing B while in midair. And if you double tap the left or right on the D-pad, you'll dash and can also press B while doing this to finish the dash with a powerful attack. That last one is especially useful against certain enemies to the point where you can basically keep them from moving at all. Now, the actual goal of this game isn't as simple as just hitting the opponent until they don't have any energy left. You're actually trying to knock these little spheres out

6:12 of them called Dspirit Balls. I do not like that name. And collect the most before the timer runs out. So, I was in the process of working on this video and it occurred to me what this gameplay style actually reminded me of, cuz it's not so much Rumble Arena 2. Uh there's a little bit of overlap, but not a whole lot. It really reminded me of the struggle competitions from Kingdom Hearts 2, except the Battle Spear games actually came out a couple of years prior to KH2. So, uh, I'm going to take one point away from Namora, and I'm going to give it to Digimon. I'm pretty sure that's how that works. When these balls go flying, you have to run over to grab them before they either disappear or your enemy grabs them first. If you get spheres knocked out of you, they will be in a different color, but you

6:58 don't need to stress about the amount you've collected being depleted. You don't lose anything when you get hit. You just have to make sure to recover quickly and stop your enemy from picking any up. You'll have to contend with the layout of each stage, jumping to different platforms, descending from them, and chasing down your opponents, avoiding them, or running around and collecting orbs. You'll also notice that each stage has some little Digimon wandering around, and they don't really pose much of a threat, but they can impede you if you run into them. If you take them out, they'll leave an item behind that you can use as a weapon against your main adversary. It's usually something throwable that will hit the enemy Digimon with a blunt force, a fire effect, shock, something like that that you can use to your advantage to gain a few extra orbs from the enemy. You'll also want to experiment with the most efficient way to use the Digimon you're playing as. Von can chain a bunch of attacks together in close quarters. Renamon is

7:44 great at spamming range attacks, and Terrier can be a little beast with his dashes. You want to hit quick, hit hard, and go sprinting for any orbs that you can as they scatter all over the arena. But there's just one other Digimon to keep an eye out for during the scuffle. Let's get scratching. Every so often, usually once per battle, Kuluman will come floating onto the field. And this will normally spark a mad dash to get to him first. and whoever does will be granted the ability to temporarily dig evvolve. This will give you an upgraded form based on the base Digimon you are playing as that can hit like an absolute tank and knock a ton of orbs out of the opponent and are basically invulnerable until they

8:29 revert back to their previous form. The only thing the opponent can do is run and try not to get hit and in a pinch. Grabbing Kuluman and scoring a Digi Evolution can turn the tides of a match pretty quick as long as you utilize the form well. And that's the game really. Yeah, that's pretty much all there is to it. And that's not a bad thing. I don't think a game like this was begging for overbearing complexity or anything. It's a decent setup that keeps you juggling a few different objectives between attacking, defending, gathering. And while you can track how many orbs you've collected, there's no on-screen counter for how many orbs your enemy has managed to gather. So, you want to pay attention to how much they've been able to grab. And it gives you that extra reason to make sure you don't get hit by them or some hazard out on the field. Once the timer runs out, the orbs are counted up, and the Digimon with the highest number wins. You run through seven courses, fighting each other playable Digimon

9:14 along the way. You've got the cute and green grassy origin park, the warm sandy ancient shrine, and some stages will have inherent elements to account for, like how you run through the sand slower in the desert stage. The top part of the volcanic stage is periodically bombarded by molten rock from the cinder cone in the background. The ice stage has a slippery floor. There's stuff to consider just about everywhere you go, but there's also a surprise or two that could pop up along the way. Sometimes when booting into a match, you might be interrupted with Impmon, knocking your opponent out of the ring and jumping in for a fight. He can be tough to beat, too. His move set is ridiculous. And when any orb hits the ground, whether they get knocked out of you or him, they'll start floating towards him, which is just so broken. If you beat him, awesome. There is a reward for that, but only if you also meet one other goal, but we'll get into that

10:00 later. And if you lose, you just have to fight the character you were originally matched up with on that stage. You don't get any Impmon rematches. Once you've worked your way through all the matches, you make it to the main boss, the dark Digimon that's threatening both the real and digital worlds, Millennium, which is a really cool pick for this creature. Actually, this monster is basically a fusion of Chimeraman and Machine Drammon, two already powerful Digimon in their own right. And according to the Digimon wiki, it's theorized to be impossible to kill and can create and destroy pocket dimensions. Well, according to this game, he's not actually impossible to beat. And in fact, he's not that hard to take down, but it at least took me a couple of tries. And you did it. That's the game. You can honestly do a run in like a half hour, probably faster if you've got a

10:46 little experience, but it's your standard arcade mode for a fighting game. I was also really confused the first time I let the credits roll in this game and saw this at the end of it. Like, what in the world does Kimjoy mean? But when you look in the manual, it turns out when you complete a runthrough of this game, you will be given a cheat code that you can use in Digimon Rumble Arena. a quick way to unlock characters for that game's multiplayer. It's honestly kind of cute, and it was neat to see this one more connection to the console fighting game. Of course, you can do a playthrough as every available character, but there is also a little bit of unlockable content, too. Clear the game twice with two different characters, and you'll unlock a black Aguman. There are actually alternate colors for each Digimon just in case two of the same character are being played at once. And at first, I thought it was strange that we didn't just get Black Aguman as the default alternative. But when I saw that you can

11:31 unlock him as a separate character, it made more sense. Plus, this way, we get the return of Abluman. Then, once you beat the game with three more Digimon, not including the ones you got Black Aguman with, you'll unlock Lapmon. These characters will look similar, but have slightly different move sets. But not all unlockable Digimon are all reskins. If you beat the game as every character, including black Aguman and Lmonman, you unlock Gabuman and a third variation of Aguman. And both have their digivolution set to Omnimon. And that's a pretty good reward. The franchise can't write off the coattails of this Royal Knight forever, but it's going to try and honestly it still kind of works on me. The hardest challenge though is unlocking Impmon. You see that result screen at the end of each match where your collected orbs are counted up? It also includes a sum total of the full

12:18 amount of orbs you've managed to gather in every match in that particular run. If you lose a match at any point, you can try again for a rematch, but your count will be reset back to zero. Normally, this doesn't matter, but it is a factor you have to consider for unlocking Itmon, as he can only be unlocked by not only managing to defeat him when you encounter him through your run, but you also have to accumulate and hold on to at least 300 orbs during your playthrough without losing a single match. That includes the final boss. This is actually hard to do, and not just because you can't lose any of these matches or because you have to beat this little twerp senseless. I was able to do those just fine. It was getting those 300D spirit balls, and I still don't like calling them that. It's just hard to actually knock that many out of your

13:04 opponent and come out on top. My solution to this was not something I'm proud of. Turns out there's nothing that says you have to do all of this under a certain difficulty setting or anything. So, you can literally just go into the game settings, extend the time for how long the matches last, turn down the difficulty, and just breeze through this entire unlocking challenge. I only did this for Impmon, though, and I at least attempted to get him through normal mode like I did the others. But at this point, I really just wanted that last unlock so I could move on. Kind of neat getting to play as him, but he's not as broken as he is when you're fighting him, and he can't dig evolve into Bimon. He just scares Koulimon away from the fights, so at least you can prevent your opponent from digivolving. This game was fine. It's a simple, enjoyable little time, and it felt like it at least

13:50 offered enough in terms of options and things to unlock to keep the kid busy for a bit, but it's also an experience I would say is best enjoyed when split up from time to time. Shotguning the whole thing like I did for this video definitely makes it feel like you're droning on a bit. It's not like it's the most engaging or memorable fighting game experience in the world. I also only remember like one music track from the OST of either Battle Spear games, and that would be Origin Park. That one really got stuck in my head. decent time, engaging enough for what it is, and has some unique elements that keep it from being too bland. But far from a mustplay, even for Digimon fans, I'd say that's actually not everything there is to this game, as there was a more advanced port of this game released later, just not for the advanced systems. The Wonders Swan Color saw a re-release of the first game called

14:36 Digimon Tamers Battle Spirit version 1.5. All of the content from the original release with the extra characters unlocked from the start except for Ant-Man who still needs to be earned, a new final boss fight against Z Millennium, new characters in the form of Padamon, Gatoman, and a new Gilman entry that could dig evolve into gallanton crimson mode. And now itmon can finally dig evvivolve into Bzeamon blast mode. There's a couple extra levels to fight on, too. And some of them are actually really cool and dynamic. A moving train that I want to believe is a locommon. Imp gets his own dedicated stage. The moving waterfall on Gamon stage is cool, but we never got this over here in the States. I also noticed that some stuff got cut from the American game, too. Sukamon doesn't throw Chuman in the Wonders Swan version, he throws Sludge. Yeah, we'll call it that. What's more, you can

15:22 activate idle taunts for each character in both versions, and I thought that Augumans was weird and a little random, but in the Wonders Swan version, you see what the original taunt was, and I'm a little concerned about how often the Digimon games rely on this one joke. Seriously though, this is a cool expansion. I can't help but be sad that we didn't get all this content over here. But this is just one of a set of two games. So, how are these systems and ideas expanded or revised for a second entry? Well, I didn't really see a reason to split this into another video just for the sake of padding. So, let's just go ahead and pop it in and find out right now. Let's get scratching. [Music] Just like its predecessor, this was

16:09 originally released on the Wonders Swan Color in Japan. But instead of taking most of its inspiration from the Digimon Tamers anime, this game was more tied to the following anime known as Digimon Frontier. Now, this anime series is a bit of a blind spot for me. We're actually getting into that era of Digimon I'm less familiar with, but I remember this series often being used well as a bit of a punching bag. the ones where the kids turned into Digimon. I always hear it described that way and it's always mentioned as the point where kids dropped off the series. And as I'm looking back on it now, we're starting to hear from that generation of people that grew up with this series and a lot of them seem to have a pretty decent amount of reverence for it. I should really give this anime a proper look sometime and see how it held up. I don't think it's fair to leave the reputation of this series up to a bunch of people who all dropped off of it because they

16:54 were teenagers and felt like they were outgrowing the Digimon franchise. Anyway, we're getting off topic, but Frontier was the main platform Battle Spirit 2 was built on. And from what I can tell, the premise is actually pretty close to how the anime is set up, where a bunch of kids are all sent messages on their phones asking if they want their lives to change with a few of them answering yes, and please don't respond. It's obviously a fishing scam. What are you doing? There is more lore to it, but the long and short is that these are essentially a new generation of Digi Destined with the ability to transform into new Digimon forms to fight off a corrupted Cherubimon who's threatening the real and digital worlds. And this group of kids makes up your available roster for this game. You've got Aunimon, Lobon, Kumamon, the actual Digimon named Kumamon, Kazimon, and Beetlemon. Once you start playing,

17:39 things will feel pretty familiar to what came before, but it also won't take long to start noticing some differences. For one thing, wow, this is a lot snappier. This game is faster, and I feel like the characters are a just a bit more animated when they're attacking. Like, there's a much more aggressive undertone to all of this. Might also be because we don't have traditional rookie level Digimon fighting each other here. Well, for the most part, anyway. With some exceptions. These are bigger monsters right out the gate. But even then, Digivolution is still present, even if it does work differently here. The main battle mechanics aren't too alien. Attack your opponent and collect the orbs that come spawning out of them. But now you'll notice that there are a few different types of these orbs with some that are standard, glowing, or have this yellow border, meaning they're worth one, two, or three orbs, respectively. A new form of presentation, but they serve

18:25 the same purpose as before. Collect more than your rival, and whoever has the most when the timer runs out wins the match. Landing blows does more than just give you the chance to go out and collect these, though. As when you connect a successful attack, this meter on the top of your screen will start to fill. Once it's full, you can press A and B together, too. Well, not so much digiv evolve, but you power up. What this does is replace your special attacks, the ones you get by pressing a direction along with the attack button, with a move that shows your Digimon taking on their more advanced form just for these moves. I actually don't mind this partially because it keeps the action going and it adds that extra sense of strength to the moves themselves. I don't know, it's unique. Not the way I'd want Digiolution to be handled for every game, but I think it works well for the quick, frantic pace of the matches this game offers. What's more, you also have these little gold

19:11 bits that can pop out as well. And while these are not counted as criteria for victory, they're absolutely worth grabbing. On the top left of the screen, you'll see a meter of these little diamonds. And as you collect these little gold trinkets and fill this meter up, you'll need to situate yourself very close to your opponent and press A, B, and up together to activate what's called an ancient warrior attack. Essentially, a super move that deals a massive amount of damage to your enemy. Like absolutely wrecks them. What keeps this ability balanced is the requirement to gather the diamond artifacts as well as get basically face tof face with your opponent in order to pull this move off. What we get here is a very fluid feeling combat system. You're always moving, always jumping to platforms to avoid attacks or collect orbs, incentivized to stay both aggressive and defensive to collect orbs and keep them from your enemy. And the smooth controls and

19:58 varied range of attacks held by each character keeps these matches feeling punchy, flashy, involved, and fun. They even got me more interested in some of these Digimon, seeing as I'm not as familiar with them as the ones that appear in other media. I think Beetlemon stood out to me the most. This man is a heavy hulking tank, and when he lands a hit, it lands hard, and I really liked playing as him. The thing is, while the core mechanics and overall game flow feel improved or polished over the first battle spirit, there is still a disappointing element here with how little there is to see and unlock when you compare it to the first outing. There's only three characters to unlock here. Ex Aunimon and Exol Lobon take up two of the slots, and they're just alternate versions of the first two characters in the roster, which is something the first game did, too. And they're not bad inclusions. But the only

20:44 other character you get is Lowi. Given that the base roster was already smaller than what the first game had, having such slim pickings on unlockable characters really made this game feel significantly smaller than the first title. I mean, you can also unlock this Digimon Shoot miniame, which exists, I guess. Comparing it to Tamer's Battle Spirit 1.5 really ain't doing it any favors either, especially when so many of the unlockables in that updated version actually rely on you to get good at the game and complete challenges on certain difficulty levels. Feels like the American game got the kid gloves and the sequel got just enough to release on a cartridge and really not much more. Seems like the answer they had to making this experience feel bigger than it really was was to make the final fight against a rubyon just really suck hard.

21:29 I hated this stupid boss fight, dude. The move set you have available to you works great for fighting another Digimon your size on an even playing field, but not so much against this giant creature in the background that's constantly spamming attacks, absorbing your orbs, which act as your health in this fight and can only be attacked from super specific spots. And even then, finding the moves that are actually helpful for this feels like rolling dice down a downhill dirt road. It took me so long to get this fight down. Mix that with the XD Digimon unlocks requiring a game clear with 800 orbs. And every time I made it to this fight, I just stopped having fun at all. For all the benefits this sequel has and just how good it feels to play, it still somehow feels like a step back. And from what I can tell, this didn't get an upgrade re-release in Japan like the first game did. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood. I didn't hate my time

22:15 here or anything. I can still see myself popping this in to play a little to pass the time, and in that sense, it still succeeded in its main goal, but it did also make me appreciate the first game in a new light. I would still say that together, these make for some fun little spin-off titles that I would still recommend, even if that recommendation isn't exactly what I would call glowing. Sadly, just due to how I had to capture these games and a lack of time and resources, I wasn't really able to play or capture multiplayer footage. But even if I had these games when I was a kid, I think I knew like one or two people that actually had link cables. And it's not like everyone around me was buying up the new Digimon games on the Game Boy. I swear I met like two people growing up that didn't totally write off Digimon as a franchise. I only get to talk about this series with other people now that I have to hold down a job and pay taxes. Just going off how this game is designed

23:02 though, I can't imagine a scenario where this wouldn't be fun to play with other people. It feels like it's so competitively driven in both titles. like this is a slam dunk for quick one-on-one matches. I've been trying to be better about covering multiplayer aspects for games that include it as an option, but especially games like something released for the GBA should be able to stand on their own as a single player product outside of that mechanic since even when they came out, getting multiplayer matches going was not something you could actually count on. Unfortunately, that means I was also unable to tackle any of the multiplayer aspects of our final entry today. But at the same time, I also think this last title is interesting enough to talk about it on its own because I'm just fascinated by the fact that this game even

23:50 exists. Digimon is a franchise with no shortage of conceptual potential. The very essence of the brand is the unexpected avenues in which it will evolve. And I think trying out so many styles of games, especially in RPGs, makes a lot of sense. Even the fighting games feel like a no-brainer. These are some of the coolest monster designs you'll ever see. Of course, I want to play as them with my friends. But have you ever looked at this series with cyborg dinosaurs and a boxing cactus and just thought, "Put that radioactive salamander at a go-kart." Digimon Racing is the final game on today's list. This one is exclusive to the Game Boy Advance. It looks like at this point the Wonders Swan was getting left behind, and in 2004, we got our opportunity to see our favorite Digimon burn rubber. I know we were all waiting anxiously for that moment. Now that I think about it,

24:35 I think this is the first time I've tried talking about a racing game on this channel. I don't exactly have an extensive history when it comes to racing games. I loved Crash Team Racing as a kid. I'm pretty sure it was one of the first games I ever had on the PlayStation, and I would play Mario Kart with friends on occasion, but I never really got into it on the same level. I think my main impression of Mario Kart that always stuck with me the most is how much Baby Park sucks. It wasn't until my later years that I got more into enjoying the digital automobiles with stuff like Slipstream, Split Second, and of course, Outrun. God, I love Outrun. Do we count Crazy Taxi? I I kind of think that's a beast of its own. All that is to say, I'm no expert when it comes to racing games. How to handle a car, the stats for different vehicles usually make my eyes glaze over, but I

25:20 feel like it's not too hard to understand if I had fun with something or not. There isn't really much of an intro or anything when booting up this game, which might be a first for the Digimon games I've looked at so far. But I mean, how much do you really need? Well, if there is any context granted to this title, I wasn't able to find it. I don't have the instructions for this game, and for the life of me, I was not able to find any online scans of it. Which reminds me, I was talking to someone once about backing up scans of a bunch of Digimon game manuals and such for preservation, and I really got to get on that. It's strange how often this stuff just doesn't seem to get archived. When you boot up the game, you've got a couple of options here. Cup race, quick race, time trial, and a trophy room to view all your achievements. We'll start with cup race since that's kind of the main type of racing most people will think of. First, we'll pick the Digimon that we'll be racing as. We start with

26:07 the original partners from Digimon Adventure: Aguman, Gabon, Pelmon, Padamon, Tenton, Boman, Salomon, and Gomanon. You can also pick what color your cart will be, but some of the available colors are locked off and need to be earned by accomplishing certain tasks, like winning a certain number of races in a particular game mode. Same goes for three character slots, as these three unknown Digimon need to be unlocked, just like the card colors. And wow, I really wonder what other characters you might get to play as. I have no idea. First things first, I actually really enjoy how the character models are done here. They strike me as pre-rendered 3D sprites, a lot like what was done for Donkey Kong Country. It adds a lot of motion and detail to the characters. They look good. You might also notice that yes, there is a bit of a digivolving mechanic here. As you race through each track, you'll see these

26:53 tiles on the ground, and when you drive over them, you'll fill up a meter on the side of the screen. As this meter fills, it will determine the digivolution form your Digimon will take. Your characters will be split up into in training, rookie, and champion forms. So, Motimon, Tentimon, and Kabuton, for example. I thought there was a mixup with Salamon, but no. I guess I went my whole life thinking Gatoman was a rookie. I didn't intend to take part in the arommon eraser. I'm so sorry. As you increase in form, the items that you pick up can, I think, become more powerful. Some Digimon will unlock the ability to use a special tech, which is usually a powerful attack or something like a shield. I also swear filling up the mirror more makes you a bit faster, but I don't have real proof of that. It's just based on my experience in time trial. You can pick up items along the track that you can use against your

27:39 opponents, like a bubble that can fly forward and temporarily trap a racer. A bomb you can throw behind you, or a lightning strike that can hit everyone around you. Just some stuff to keep shaking things up and also give someone a way to catch up if they're falling behind. Get enough of a lead, though, and you're pretty much untouchable. This stuff is pretty standard for a cart racer, and that little flavor of chaos is what keeps things interesting from race to race as friends play together. I also like this little hopping mechanic. I've seen this before to a limited degree, but it feels like there's a bit more of an emphasis I haven't seen many other places. There's several tracks that will have hazards like water or lava that you have to jump over in order to progress. Sometimes it's an optional move that you can use to access a shortcut, but it can also be pretty essential to travel through some courses in order to avoid falling off the road or get over hazardous terrain. I actually came to like this a lot as it added a bit more of a tactile nature to

28:25 the game play. You feel involved. There's a different kind of skill that you have to account for. That won't be the only kind of skill you'll need, though, as a lot of this game is just getting down the turns, and I think it's an element that took me the most time to get used to. The thing I had to unlearn was how I understood drifting, which can be an easy way to take certain turns and corners and keep getting a boost of speed in other car racers, but here, relying on a drift too heavily will more than likely just cause you to spin out. You really just have to learn how to time when you start your turns and how to space your adjustments to it. I'm sure this is all very obvious for people that are used to this genre, but for me, this was a bit of a learning curve. I actually took a little time after a few cup races to enter time trial and practice, trying to get the controls down and learn how to properly drive in this game. Taking turns, hitting boost pads, driving over areas that will

29:10 charge your digivolution meter. Time, patience, and learning go a long way. I went back into Cup Race, and started performing a lot better. With or without items, I was able to make my way through each course without too much trouble. At first, you're faced with several cups that center around four tracks scattered around a portion of Bile Island. Race through these courses and you'll be faced with a boss battle, one for each of these three major parts of the island. You don't have to get first place in the whole cup to make it to the boss battle necessarily. As long as you get high enough placements in each race to score enough accumulated points to land at the top three placement of the cup total, you'll be able to unlock that boss battle. The boss fights themselves really couldn't be easier. The enemy boss, either Omnimon, Diaboron, or Malommyotusmon, will be standing in the center of the arena. You just have to

29:57 drive around, pick up an item, which will always be a fireball projectile. Listen for the audio cue of the enemy attacking. Register the fact that that is not what Omnimon sounds like. Let them miss two or three times. They'll hunker down and you just land a good shot in. Hit them three times and that's the game. They try to shake it up a little for the next two fights. Diaboron jumps around the map a bit and Malamayotus mom's arena is just a simple maze to drive through before you get to the center and kill him with the age-old tactic of rinse and repeat. At the beginning, there are three main cups with a boss battle at the end of each. Once you've cleared these, you'll unlock a few more cups with smaller batches of races that are themed more heavily around a certain type of track. You notice early on that there are multiple courses with a desert or snow theme, and these cups just lean into that and throw

30:43 them all together. There are nine cups in total with the last one just being a boss rush. And once you've cleared all of them, that's kind of it. That's the game. Those are the credits. And yeah, you notice the repetition pretty quick with so many of these cups just being compilations of the same tracks. And the selection of tracks are fine. There are a few with some fun themes. I realized while playing that I've really got a thing for aquatic themes like the coastline, swamp bog, and underwater stages. They take advantage of the hopping ability and I don't know, I I just like water. The ice stages are fine. The desert stages are fine. There's really only one or two tracks that actively annoy me, like how easy it is to go off the rails or into lava in the volcano track or the horrible visuals of the caves. Like, guys, I get

31:28 the effect you were trying to go for here, but this does not look right. It is so disorienting. At first, I honestly wasn't really enjoying myself. And then there was the fact that so much of the content on offer here was just going back over the same material over and over. But then, I mean, yeah, what do you expect? It's a cart racer. In reality, I think I slowly came to enjoy the game more as time went on, becoming more familiar with the tracks, how to handle my cart, and how to time pressing on the gas at the beginning of the race just to get that extra boost right from the get- go. I wound up deciding to just unlock everything while I was at it. And that meant winning every cup, setting a new best time on every time trial, and landing first place on every track through quick race, which gave me access to Gilman, Vmon, and a Goimon as playable characters. You really just have to complete each cup with a passing

32:15 grade, so to speak. Earning a silver or bronze trophy for that cup still counts towards the unlock, but by the time that I had gotten the medal for every other achievement, I just decided to literally go for gold and achieved 100% completion of the game. The more familiar I got with the game, the more my impression of it improved. I wouldn't say this is in my top five racing games I've ever played or anything, but hey, this was a good time. I actually kind of want to see if I can track down a way to get some multiplayer going for this. Maybe I'll even take the time to go through all these races on hard mode. I enjoyed myself with this one, and really, that's all I could ask for. The Game Boy Advance gave us three solid, if a bit simple, games to throw on and kill some time with. Not the peak of what you'll see this franchise deliver in the gaming space, but these would have been perfect car trip games for me when I was a kid. I can especially see myself putting a

33:01 lot of time into Digimon racing while sinking into the back seat. But not everything coming out for Digimon in those days had the same way of demanding your time, even if it was still encouraging you to spend that time with friends. Y'all have been waiting for this next one for a while, so be sure to keep an eye out. It's already well underway. Until then, remember that my top tier patrons get to see these videos two days early. You can find me on Blue Sky, Twitch, Discord, Twitter, whichever you prefer. Links in the description. And of course, as always, spread the word, tell your friends, and until we see each other again, thank you so much for watching. See you next mission. Hey there, everyone. Thank you so much for watching. This particular video gave me a couple of little surprise issues that I wasn't expecting.

33:48 things like uh my footage for the Dichuan racing video getting kind of messed up because I wasn't paying attention to my OBS settings, but I couldn't just go back and re-record all of it. Uh things like uh part of my voice over having to get re-recorded because my mic was peing at a couple of lines and it just sounded really bad and I wasn't going to release it like that. You know, things like that. And this was a video that I decided to do while I was in the middle of making the Digimon World 4 video. And uh hey, at the end of the day, I do have a head start on that one. I'm not going to make any promises on when it's actually coming out, but rest assured that that one has already begun production and it should not be too much of a wait. Of course, I have a lot of generous supporters that help make all of this possible. And I would like to go ahead and shout out my

34:33 current top tier patrons this month. They are and Mr. RSP, Brendan Hessie, Dressalite, Earl Valco, Jazzy Jefferson, Jeremiah Harrison, McKenzel, Mitch Py, Old New Type, Patricia Maru, Peter Oh Hagen, Cinderin 7, Snapkick, Sirrus the Skeptic, and Talon Kosh. I can't thank you enough for all of your support. You make this possible and you make it worth it. If I mispronounce anybody's names, just go ahead and shoot me a DM through Discord or something and I will be sure to correct that for the next video. With all that said, it's time to get back to Digimon World 4. See you next mission. [Music]