I haven’t had much luck with my Steam games being that good, so when I saw that my all-time favorite game, Sutte Hakkun, had a Game Boy version, I decided that would be the next game I play. (and sure, I could’ve saved this for my portable backlog, but on top of being really hyped for a game for once, I haven’t traveled much since late 2019)
This is a puzzle platformer. Along with your standard left/right movement and jump, you can absorb blocks and ink (but can only have one thing absorbed at a time). Absorbing a block lets you move it with you and place it in front of you, and absorbing ink lets you color in a block, affecting its movement: normal blocks stay still (even in midair), red moves up and down, blue moves side to side, and yellow moves diagonally. Beyond that, levels can have one-way tiles, spikes, and levers that change the ink jars’ color when you push the jump button in front of them.
And just in case you’re stuck playing this game in monochrome, there are helpful stripes and arrows so you can tell them apart:
There are nine worlds with ten levels each (and a tenth postgame world you unlock by beating the game). There’s no menu to select individual levels, but you still have access to all ten levels as soon as you unlock the respective world: just push left/right when the level is previewed and you’ll switch forward/backward a level (similar to what you unlock by beating the SFC version). Also, if you’re playing a relatively long level or need to do a tricky maneuver, the pause menu lets you quick-save and quick-load, just like the SFC version.
Speaking of, if you read my post about it, you might’ve noticed quite a few things from there aren’t present in this version. For one, there are no rainbow crystals; the goal of each level is instead to reach the door labeled “EXIT” (which also means there’s only one goal per level, unlike the SFC version where you had to collect all the rainbow crystals before you cleared the stage). There are also no dogs, no rocks (and by extension, no glass tiles), and also…
no doppelgangers! 
The points system also isn’t present. Instead, when you beat a level, you’re shown how long it took you to reach the exit (as opposed to the SFC version, where you had to unlock the timer by beating the game). The timer doesn’t count using quick-saves or restarting the stage, making it even more pointless IMO. As much as I like this game, I stand by the fact that trying to shoehorn timers into puzzle games shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the genre. At least this one counts up instead of down.
EDIT: Also, when you beat the postgame world, you get a plaque showing your rank based on how long you took to beat the levels, displaying your aggregate time and how many hints you used (I got B rank). The plaque also shows up every time you select your file, so presumably your rank goes up if you shave enough time off various levels (I didn’t check because timers for puzzle games are stupid).
Weirdly enough, this game also has an antagonist, but there are no enemies or boss fights. It’s mostly just an excuse for the game to happen, but between worlds, you also get a cut-scene showing the player character chasing the antagonist, then demonstrating a gameplay technique, á la Donkey Kong ‘94. Let me tell you: if these were in the SFC version, the language barrier wouldn’t have been as big of an issue:
That said, I can’t help but feel like some of the tactics shown in the cut-scenes are needed earlier than they appear. For example, it isn’t until you beat world 7 where you’re shown that desynchronizing horizontal blocks lets you climb them easier, but there were already a couple levels before then that made you use horizontal blocks to climb. That said, you can push select in any level to bring up more in-depth instructions, not unlike the hut in the SFC version (plus, it isn’t hard to figure them out yourself, which is what I did when I played the SFC version, for all except that accursed block-lifting mechanic).
The difficulty curve is also not as steep as in the SFC version. Not only are there less obstacle types, but the ones here aren’t used as often. For example, one-way tiles aren’t introduced until world 5 (edit: typo) in this game, but in the SFC version, they first show up in 2-3! Levels themselves are also smaller: while the SFC version had scrolling stages, this game crams everything onto a single screen.
That said, there is one major downside to this game, something that single-handedly makes it hard to recommend…
…recycled content.
Yup, the further you play, the more you’ll recognize structures from the SFC version (I counted over 20 blatantly-similar levels before I gave up trying to keep track). Some duplicates have minor differences, like how 10-6 SFC has a rock and glass while 9-8 GB just has a second ink-jar switch, but the solutions are mostly (if not exactly) the same. The only exception is 10-10 SFC compared to 10-10 GB: the basic idea of creating a bridge to cross one-way tiles is still there; but a second rainbow crystal was added, the color switch was moved to be beside the original goal (so you can’t reach it until you can no longer benefit from it), and the whole structure has various minor changes to compensate (though in this case, the minor changes add up a bit). EDIT: actually, in retrospect, this one’s not that much different, either.
Lastly, for those of you wondering what the 2P GAME is…it’s a competitive race. You pick the number of rounds (best out of 1, 3, or 5), then pick if you want a shadow designating the other player’s current position on your screen (yes, no, or constantly toggle on/off every 2 seconds), then you pick one of the 50 single-player levels accessible in 2-player mode (or you can have a random stage chosen for you). However, it’s not entirely ridiculous because the levels aren’t completely identical to their single-player counterparts: exclusive to this mode are P blocks. They act like regular blocks, except they affect both players’ levels at once. This means if one player absorbs the P block, it disappears from the other player’s level (and reappears wherever the initial player places it), and if one player colors/decolors the block, it has that property on both players’ screens. Sometimes, they replace one of the original level’s blocks, while other times, they’re in addition to the level’s pre-existing blocks (theoretically making the puzzle easier to solve, if you don’t get usurped by the other player). In other words, there actually was a bit of effort put into trying to make this mode somewhat unique and competitive (though you’d still need someone else to play it with, preferably someone who already solved the single-player counterparts).
Overall, this one’s a bit tricky to recommend. Don’t get me wrong; it’s still Game of the Year material, but between all the duplicate levels and how difficult it is to track down the dmg_sgb.7z Platinum leak, it’s probably a good idea to have a couple more games in the lotcheck you’d be interested in playing. Also, whichever version of the game you play first, remember to wait a few years between playing them so you’ll have forgotten the solutions to the identical levels when you play the other version. Come to think of it, I never did finish the postgame for the SFC version; I should probably do that at some point.
P.S. Anyone else here check out the SFC version since I made my post about it (or possibly before)? What’d you think about the game?