07 - Stargate (GameBoy)https://vgcollect.com/item/59254Hardware: Game Boy Color / Game Boy Advance w. Screen-Mod / SNES + Super Game Boy
Playtime: about 15 Hours
Highscore: 21.600Stargate was among the first batches of GameBoy cartridges I aquired when I seriously started my collection back in 2018. Back then, not knowing the game at all, I considered it quite trash because I exspected some sort of action-game or platformer. I watched the SG1 TV-series in the 90s "a bit", and never really saw the original motion picture. After recognizing it for what it is, I sometimes played it for some highscore, but most of the time got annoyed by it very quickly. Fast forward to 2026: having it listed in my backlog aka pile of shame for some years, I decided to take it with me on a weekend trip and managed to beat it after a few attempts (and learning that you can actually flip tiles in this puzzler). Here's what I got to say about it:
Stargate for GameBoy was released in europe in 1995 by Acclaim to go along with Roland Emmerich's cinematic motion-picture of the same name that first screened in theaters around the globe in 1994 and gave birth to the (hopefully) ongoing Stargate-franchise spanning over several TV-series and other media. It was developed by Probe Software, a british company that developed countless games for several handhelds, home-consoles and PC's since 1984. A more reknown title amongst those countless games developed by Probe are the Amstrad CPC- and Sinclair ZX Spectrum-versions of
Sim City on diskette and cassette from 1989 and 1990. They made a lot of SEGA-ports to other systems as well.
The plot of GameBoy's
Stargate features not the movie's protagonist Col. Jack O'Neil, but rather his scientific advisor Dr. Daniel Jackson (portrayed in the movie by the great James Spader), the one scientist who managed to decypher the glyphs on the stargate found in 1920's egypt. He's comissioned to use his knowledge of the glyphs in order to close every other stargate to hinder sun-god Ra from conquering the whole galaxy.
Stargate is - surprise - a puzzle-game. That wasn't what I expected it to be when first playing it leading to me abbandoning it as crap for several years. Gameplay happens on a tube shaped window with some hieroglyphs and symbols shown on the top of the screen. Tiles with symbols traverse down this tube and while they do, the player is to flip them and sort them together to make them disappear, always 3 of one kind, with the speed increasing according to difficulty and level. To complete one match or progress in level you must stack and thus "destroy" packs of tiles with the symbols shown on top of the screen. It start's out quite cozy but get's fast and challenging very quickly.
The game offers three modes: an endless sudden-death mode, a story-mode in which you actually battle Ra and his minions for different squares of a star map, and a vs-mode requiring a
Nintendo GameBoy Game-link cable. A match between players or between one player and the computer ends, as soon as one participant's tube get's filled up to the top with tiles. Destroying tiles quickly in your own tube make tiles appear in the opponents tube, similar to the vs-mode in
Tetris for example.
Once gotten into it, the gameplay can end up quite addictive, and I found myself replaying it even after beating it.
Graphically
Stargate has not much to offer but a few nicely rendered intro- and outro-sequences of Dr. Jackson, Col. O'Neil (Kurt Russel!), Ra, Horus and Anubis and of course, the tube-shaped puzzle window itself.
I am heavily in love with the Super Game Boy adapter for SNES ever since it came to existence, but sadly this title doesn't feature any specific functions when using this awesome device. Nevertheless, I tried to enhance my experience with a few own
colour-palettes on Super Game Boy:
1382-6626-7393 (Stargate Blue)
0051-3326-1400 (Horus Gold)
1441-1517-9243 (Anubis Dark)
1332-1526-1400 (Ra Redgold)
1082-2028-3391 (SG1 Olive)
Feel free to try them out...
When making such custom palettes with the Super Game Boy, it's important to let the symbols on the tiles still be visible. I once or twice played around too much with it, resulting in the symbols not being distinguishable at all.
The musical "score" of
Stargate for GameBoy (AND GameGear, apparently) was conducted and produced by Steve Collett and Andy Brock, both british composers and sound designers that startet being active during the early 90s up until 2020 (Collett) and 2018 (Brock). The music gives a sort of egyptian vibe, which definetly fits the setting and background-story but there are only a few (I suggest 3) different tunes and those aren't really memorable, even for usual GameBoy standards. Imo, it's fairly enough for a simple puzzle-game though.
This game is recommendable to every fan of short, challenging puzzle-games in the likes of
Tetris, but I'm afraid real Stargate-heads might feel a bit underserved with this one. IF you try it out: let me know if you beat my highscore
I'm kinda glad I finally got this off my backlog tbh ...
7 games finished in 2026 - on to the next one
Show Posts
