 Thanks to Kyle for this rather unusual request of Dai Katana for Game Boy Color? That's right, some of you may remember the game Dai Katana, or if you go by its proper title, John Romero's Dai Katana, the same principal mind behind games like Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake. And similarly, Dai Katana was developed as a first person shooter for Windows and N64. Only development was a complete disaster and the game was, and still is, absolutely awful. But Nintendo Power couldn't even apologize for it, giving it a 5.6 out of 10. Ouch. Dai Katana was an embarrassment in every facet, from the absurd hubris behind the ad campaign, to the planning, to the development, to what ended up being the game itself. What people may not know, however, is that this game also received the Game Boy Color Edition, only released in Europe, from a completely different development team, and even more surprising, it's really not that bad. And that's probably because it's completely utterly different than the godawful PC and N64 editions. This is a top-down adventure style game reminiscent of stuff like Crystallis and Final Fantasy Adventure, otherwise known as Seiken Detsetsu. You go from room-to-room slaying monsters and beasts, with kendo sticks, swords, and various projectiles, occasionally solving a Zelda-like puzzle here and there. There's a jump mechanic here, which is always welcomed in a top-down adventure game like this. So yeah, there's a lot of moving parts in the gameplay, spread out over 8 locations and 32 levels, recruiting a couple allies as you go. What might be a little odd is that there's no overworld here, you're just shuffled from dungeon to dungeon, but that's fine. The only real flaw with the gameplay is that the controls can feel a bit oversensitive, like when you're jumping between platforms, it takes a bit of getting used to. There's also a battery save option here that allows you to save at any point. So that all sounds decent enough, right? Well, the catch is that the story is a complete mess, I don't even know where to start on how to describe what's supposed to be happening in this game. You start the game playing as Hiro Miyamoto, leader of the Miyamoto Clan. Huh, I would have thought this dude would be the leader. Hiro is out to retrieve the powerful Daikatana Sword, which enables its user to cut through the very fabric of space-time and travel to different time periods. There's also some kind of virus that's killing everyone, and I'm honestly not sure how to even explain anything after that because the dialogue is so poorly written. If there's any game out there that needs a re-translation, it's this one. In addition to the confusing story, the game has you switch characters out of nowhere for some reason. Like I said earlier, you can recruit two other party members, but you only play one at a time, unlike a game like Secret of Mana, so the game kind of compromises this just by switching your character seemingly at random. Even more frustrating is that each character doesn't get to use the same items and weapons. You're just kind of at the mercy of what the game wants to do at that point, and it's pretty damn annoying. But either way, Daikatana for Game Boy Color is a pretty interesting game. It's a complete disaster on PC and N64, but the Game Boy Color release is actually half-decent. It's not any kind of lost hidden gem or whatever you want to call it. It's definitely got some big problems, but it's just a peculiar piece of gaming history. If you like games of this ilk, it's worth playing on an emulator. It's not a long game, and it doesn't take too long to complete. And if you're a collector, this one's a bit pricey, but it would definitely be an interesting piece for anyone's collection.