90% of the Game Boy Advance’s library was pretty fucking ugly. Lots of crusty prerendered graphics with terrible use of color that looked even worse on the GBA’s original screen that sucked. What wasn’t prerendered was instead the most amateur looking pixel art you’ve ever seen in your life. You really had to dig deep to find that remaining 10% that was some of the most beautiful or stylish stuff you’ve ever seen in your life. At least half of that 10% were the bit Generations games.
Boundish was one of the first games in the series to be released, and it’s also the most simplistic. Basically, it’s Pong. It’s just Pong. We all know Pong. Your parents know Pong. Your grandparents know Pong. Boundish is a game where a ball bounces between two paddles on a court until one of those paddles fails to return the ball to other side of the court. Boundish is Pong, but it is also the coolest, most stylish version of Pong ever made.
Well, maybe it’s a bit disingenuous to say that it’s just Pong. There are four and a half variations of Pong, none of which are strictly the original version of the game.
The first game is Pool Flower. You’re a dude of non-specific gender holding a big paddle, swimming around your half of the screen bouncing a ball to the other side. Over time, bubbles of different sizes and movement speeds appear, and if you send a ball through one, it’ll change to the same color as your paddle, and the ball moves faster afterwards.
The next one is Box Juggling. This is you playing Pong against gravity. You bounce a box into the air, and make sure it doesn’t hit the ground. The higher your score, the more boxes you have to juggle. Getting hit in the head stuns you, preventing you from moving or juggling.
Power Slider is next. Instead of Ponging up and down, you do it on the line of your half-circle. Pressing the A button right before the puck hits you will give your return more speed. That’s pretty much it.
This is Human League. Here you have two little guys to bounce the ball around, your forward and your goalkeeper. The goalkeeper is stuck on the up and down y-axis, but it will follow the forward, though you can also send it to the very top or very bottom of the screen with the d-pad and A button. However, after doing this, or if the goalie hits the ball, it’s stunned for a short period of time.
The final mode is Wild Go Round, which is played on a giant vinyl record. Or maybe the players are very small. In any case, the record does spin, which means the ball can have its course altered, and you have to be ready to catch it.
I figured that it would be a good idea to show off every mode, not because they’re secretly super-deep, but because I could post screenshots and see for yourself how good Boundish looks. The games in this series have always been about minimalism, but Boundish seems to be the one that takes it to the extreme. Everything is a square, a circle, or a rectangle, basic geometric shapes. The soundtrack is a very ambient affair (except for Human League, which is a full-on three minute chiptune track), with maybe two or three sound channels in use at any time. Kind of sounds like the beginning of a World’s End Girlfriend song on repeat. Plus the fact that these modes are all variations of the most basic video game. I feel at this point I should probably make it clear that my reiteration of this game just being Pong is not a complaint. They’re fresh enough takes on a vintage game for a handheld system, something to be played on the go for a brief period of time. Also, not much in the way of difficulty. Boundish is the closest any of the bit Generations games get to actually being a chill, relaxing experience.
But I need to get back on track: Boundish looks cool. Actual art on a Game Boy cartridge. Minimalism; using very little in order to say a lot. I think that, of all the “minimalist” video games I’ve played, Boundish might very well be my favorite. It’s a very basic game, but on a visual level, there is a lot packed into it for my mind to take in. Everything is shapes. Basic, no detail. The use of color, contrasted with a simultaneous lack of it, presents something of a calming atmosphere despite the competitive nature of the game. In a way, it’s almost meditative, especially Box Juggling. You can send a box so high up in the air in that mode that the next several seconds will be dead air. All you can do is sit and wait, listening to the droning music and watching your score drift in the background, colored numbers on a plain white background. Watching the bubbles rise and descend in Pool Flower, looking like something you would see on a monitor at an installation somewhere. The kind of art meant to be created with computers, not typing in a prompt so you can see a nude Taylor Swift and a gun-toting Rudy Giuliani saluting an American flag where the colors are all wrong and the stars are actually rhombuses. There is nothing half-assed about the visuals of Boundish, and I’m thankful for that.
I will always recommend the bit Generations series to people looking for GBA games to check out. I would recommend checking out Boundish first, despite the fact that this is actually the third game I’ve recommended. If you’re just looking for “content,” it will take you minutes to see everything that Boundish has to offer, and you’ll never touch it again. But if you have an eye for style, you’ll come back to it. Turn on your GBA, bounce a ball, juggle a box, scratch a record, and relax for a little while.
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