"Battleship" (Game Boy)

A so-so game featuring one of the most popular board games, even to this day. While this release presents some challenges, you're better off playing the actual board game.

I can't imagine anyone going through life without playing the board game Battleship. You have played that game at least once (I hope). If you never played it, it's possible you're living a wretched, unhappy life. There's NO excuse that you haven't played this board game—this Game Boy variant to which the game was inspired from. Now, yes, I understand everyone's childhood is different, but when given the chance, it's impossible to imagine that anyone has not played this game.

When I found this for the Game Boy, I thought it's another casual game that's easy to beat. No one will understand how wrong I was.

You have the option to play two players, otherwise, it's you versus the computer. Then you can either START or enter a password to continue your progress (passwords available online). Once you start, you begin your quest at STAGE 1 and you're shown the famous grid screen. Now it's time to set the positions of your ships, starting with the Battleship which occupies 5 spaces, then the Destroyer which covers 3 spaces, the Frigate that takes up 2 spaces and finally the Submarine which takes up 1 space. You can place them anywhere you want on the grid, but arrange them in a way where your opponent will have difficulty trying to hit and sink your ships. There are a lot of ways to set up your ships on the board, so if you ask around, you'll get a ton of different answers. Nevertheless, plan ahead and place them in a way where you just hope all your ships won't get hit.

The game begins! With the A button, you can choose which area in the grid you can launch and shoot your missiles toward in hopes to strike your opponent. Thing is there's no such clue so you can only hope you hit something. When you press the START button, you get options to get an Item or look at your Ocean Grid. Choosing Item enables you to use specialty targets/missiles that should make your ship-hunting a little easier. Depending on your progress and how many stages you've defeated, you can use these items once. The items vary from SPS-10, Harpoon, MK-45 II or an MK-45 III. An SPS-10 is a 4x4 radar that detects if there's a ship on the area you targeted; The Harpoon launches missiles and strikes in an "X" configuration. While you're given special items to help you eliminate your opponent much faster, you must get through each stage without losing all your ships.

If you think that sounds easy, feast your eyes on my gameplay video here:

Tedious? Yeah, that's very much the nature of this game.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, this game has 48 levels to beat. You think that's enough?!

As a matter of fact, GameFAQs ranked this #24 as one of the toughest strategy games to beat on Game Boy, as of this writing. I struggled a lot trying to beat the first level, but as you can see, it's too much. The animation is cool but it does take up a lot of time. The music isn't impressive either, so I often lower the volume on the TV to concentrate on the game. Not much to say about the controls since it's a simple UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT and using the buttons. When given the chance, the computer opponent can be ruthless, eradicating your entire navy without fail, and its frustrating to say the least.

I'd say stick to Battleship the board game. Once again, if you've never played the board game, NOW'S YOUR CHANCE.

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he managed a personal blog made back in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming (software development) and video production, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, playing old video/DOS games, digital video archiving, and listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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