When I was eight, Resident Evil was the horror game everyone played and talked about. But Alone in the Dark did it first, though it was far less successful. I admit I haven’t played the original, but I noticed the Game Boy Color version of Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare on the Nintendo Switch, and I was just perplexed as to how that even worked on a device with the power of an NES.
And the graphics are… very bad. Even the storyboard segments, which have no sound, leave a lot to the imagination.
And holy crap… this is a 3D game on the GBC. I thought they would make it 2D, but no, it’s 3D. Maybe not true 3D, but still impressive for the handheld.
However, combat switches into modes that kind of remind me of Metal Gear’s NES-only sequel Snake’s Revenge, and it’s not very fun at all. You feel totally overpowered by spiders even though you have a handgun, and those suckers are pretty hard to shoot with the controls.
So I stopped playing once I knew this old game was a turd. It had some fans back in the day, but now, in 2025, you’d have to be broke and bored to give this a full playthrough. It may have done ambitious things for the platform, but it’s aged like milk.
The PS1 version was a pretty decent game and I enjoyed it a lot back in the day. It wasn’t nearly as good as the Resident Evil games, but it was a good placeholder while waiting for the next RE. I’d actually love to play it again someday.