Paperboy
System: SMS
Release Date: 1990
Developer: Tiertex
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Action
Wake up early in the morning, wrap the day’s news, and deliver them in Paperboy! Do paperboys even exist anymore? Do people still get home newspaper delivery? I see free community weekly papers when out on the town, but who is paying for a physical tome these days? You’ve got a week worth of deliveries on the docket and if you don’t make your customers happy, they’ll take it out on you. Can you deliver the goods?
I somehow missed this one on my master list, so I added it here. How do you take a game that’s been out for five years and make it worse? The main game works as expected, you throw papers and try to land them on the porch or in the mailbox of subscribers. Even if the paper throwing is uneven in release and good throws are often counted as misses…
One of the more entertaining aspects of the game is destroying the landscapes of the non-subscriber houses and hitting enemies to stop them from killing you. This isn’t part of the Master System Paperboy. This means that each level requires you to crawl around, avoiding whatever is on the sidewalk, and delivering your papers. Even if you have a good run, you’ll be awarded a miss. But as long as you make it to the obstacle course at the end, you can move on to the next day. It’s a rough job, but you don’t have to do it.
Graphics: 1.5
The graphics are alright. You can tell what everything is supposed to be.
Sound: 1.0
The music and sound effects are not very good and I found them to be more annoying than anything.
Gameplay: 0.5
Losing out on the ability to destroy objects kind of sucks. The only windows I could break were my customers.
Difficulty: 1.0
Avoiding enemies is sometimes simple and other times BS, same with throwing papers.
Fun Factor: 0.5
This port strips away all that makes Paperboy enjoyable, even if that wasn’t much to begin with…
Overall Rating: 0.9
Paperboy earns a D. This in an inferior port of an already inferior game. Stick to the Game Boy for your paper delivering needs.