Stop That Roach! (Hoi Hoi Game Boy Ban) for Game Boy

 
Released in the US and in Japan in 1994.

The boxed copy of this game is apparantly quite expensive. Even the Japanese version.
I sold my boxed copy for only 75 SEK (10$) a couple of months ago. I had two, so I didn't think it was rare... I had actually forgotten about it until I made a google search and found my own image.

I had it up for sale for a year. I would have taken a better picture today.

Anyways, I decided to try the game out. There are some vids and pics of the game, but I couldn't find any past level 8. Only at level 9 you start to place "hoi-hoi" , a Japanese trap for cockroaches.

(pic from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannychoo/2697995445/sizes/o/ )
A video of the first levels.

The challenge is that your actions will affect nearby roaches, depending on where you stand and what direction you face. And you only have five moves.

Here on level 11, I will place the trap as in the picture, then move left, scream for the roach to move, he will move right, I will go right and scream again.

And he will fall into the trap.

It is more complicated than one might think, and it gets more complicated later. In total, there are 100 levels.

I have never played one of these puzzle games all the way to the end because it takes such a long time. I guess that it will take at least 10-20 hours to complete the game if you haven't played it before.  Probably longer.  The good news is that you seem to always have 5 moves, so in theory you could solve every level in less than a minute.

This is a 100% puzzle game with no action moments involved. Play until you find the solution. It puts it in the same category as games like Kwirk, Boxxle, Mario's Picross, the simplistic Q-Billion, and also Lazlo's Leap that I have reviewed earlier. I also know there are other games but they don't stick in my memory.

For example, I have played very many levels of the action/puzzle game Solomon's Club for Game Boy, but I can't remember a single level. I also played many levels of Snoopy's Magic Show, but I only remember it for how the moving balls slow the entire game down and make it unplayable.

As with all decent puzzlers of this kind, you have a password feature and can always restart the level. The first 20 levels also include an "ANSWER" option, that will simply tell you the answer.

The game has some Japanese text in the help menu, but I think that it shouldn't be a big problem once you have figured the game out.

There is nothing remarkable about the game, but it is a decent game. I rate it 3/5. If you enjoy spending hours solving puzzles, you will like this game. Otherwise you probably won't.