October 16th, Jack Bros. for the Virtual Boy

Who would’ve thought that the Virtual Boy would save Halloween. We have, not one, but two frightening games to review BS about for the Virtual Boy. This means that the Old Boy has a greater percentage of Halloween games than any other console in existence! We heart you Virtual Boy.
Jack Bros. for the Virtual Boy, just based on the name alone, is ripe for ridicule. However, we here at the kentdog blog, like to think that we take the high road when it comes to these kinds of things. We could talk about how the gameplay is rudimentary and boring, how the dialogue is poorly translated, and how we only played it for about two minutes. Sure, Jack Bros., is all of those things, but it is also so much more. Most of the games we’ve covered so far have had fairly obscure connections to Halloween. Monsters and ghosts are pretty standard video game fare. From Doom to Super Mario Bros., a lot of games feature macabre creatures that get translated into plastic masks and find their way to the seasonal aisle of your local Walgreens to hang between Spongebob Squarepants and a Power Ranger. It’s a rare game that fully embraces Halloween. The Halloween section of Bully was over before we had a chance to enjoy it. In an era where it’s nearly impossible to come across a broadcast of Garfield’s Halloween Special, Jack Bros. will now and forever hold a special place in my Hallowed heart.

Following Japanese Halloween tradition, the intro to Jack Bros. is long and agonizing, but it sets the stage for an epic journey rivaled only by The Adventures of Milo & Otis.

It seems that every Halloween, due to the purchase of so many miniature Snickers bars, the fabric of the universe is torn asunder, thereby allowing fairies to enter our realm and gad about the house all day like Sandy Frank.

Three brothers from different mothers, all named Jack, but with different last names, have come together for their one night of human-style debauchery. The brillgenius of naming all three of your characters Jack quickly becomes apparent. When the player chooses one of the three as his avatar, you can refer to them by name in dialogue and cut-scenes and not have to lift a finger assigning variables or using arcane GOTO commands. Jack Bros., can you do no wrong?

Like a moose on a coke-induced rampage, or Cinderella, Jack soon realizes that it’s almost midnight and if he doesn’t high tail it home, he’ll be trapped in our dimension forever. You’ll guide Jack through a series of mazes on his way back to the land of the fairies.