Friday, October 13, 2017

Manual Stimulation: Noobow (GameBoy)

Up until the early part of 2013, I had only a passing interest in Nintendo's GameBoy.

Oh, I owned one as a kid--got one as soon as I possibly could after it hit store shelves in the summer of 1989, in fact--and I loved it as much as anyone can love a bulky electronic gadget with a green-and-black screen.



After I sold my GameBoy system and catalog of carts a few years later, though, I rarely looked back. It just wasn't an experience I felt like revisiting, you know?

So, what happened in 2013? I came across a small blog post about the game highlighted here: Irem's Noobow.



That post included a short video of Noobow in action. I was hooked a second after I hit "start."

Over the next few months, I searched the Internet high and low for other Japan-only GameBoy games that had escaped my attention and that might appeal to me as much as Noobow.

All of that digital sleuthing resulted in me discovering import gems like PeetanPainter Momopie and Osawagase! Penguin Boy. (OK, so that last one actually earned a Western release--as Amazing Penguin.)



Once I became aware of those titles, too, there was no going back. In the years since, I basically made it a goal to obtain complete-in-box copies of those Japanese GameBoy games and a slew of others (like Astro RabbyBurning Paper and Cave Noire).

Curiously, each of the games I've mentioned so far were sold with stellar instruction manuals packed inside their colorful cardboard boxes.



Noobow's manual isn't as stellar as some of the others linked to at the bottom of this post, but I think it's still pretty nice.

Chiefly responsible for me calling it "nice" is that it sports a number of adorable illustrations of the eponymous Noobow, who apparently began life (and I believe continues to serve) as a mascot for a line of merchandise.



Strangely, this booklet doesn't contain even half as many illustrations as Noobow's outer box does, but at least almost all of the ones stuffed inside the manual are unique.

Also worth celebrating: the Noobow manual features three full pages of item drawings and descriptions.



If this is your first visit to this site, or if you haven't been visiting it for long, you need to know I love old game manuals that feature item drawings and descriptions.

Admittedly, the item drawings showcased here are on the rough side, but that just adds to their charm, if you ask me. (For another Japanese GameBoy manual that features rough item drawings, check out my post about the booklet made for the system's Bubble Bobble port.)



The second-to-last page of the Noobow instruction manual (see below) is supposed to be reserved for jotting down passwords, by the way. Whether or not the text a previous owner scribbled onto mine actually is a password, though, is up for debate.



Now that you've taken it all in, what do you think of the Noobow GameBoy instruction manual?

Also, if any of you have played this 1992 release, what do you think of it?

See also: previous 'Manual Stimulation' posts about Astro Rabby, Bubble Bobble Junior, Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru, Snow Bros. Jr. and Tumblepop

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