Binary Monsters III - School Fighter (熱門高校 數碼怪獸III) is a Game Boy Color title published by Gowin, and released in 2001. It is the third game in the Binary Monsters series, and Gowin's 5th GBC-released game.
Overview
HotKid fighting enemies in the first stage.
This game is a side-scrolling beat'em-up/platformer hybrid consisting of 6 stages. There are 3 playable characters to choose from, consisting of 2 human characters, both male and female, and the publishers' mascot, HotKid, a green dragon. The game oddly places its character select screen before the title screen. All 3 characters play and behave the exact same, with the same movesets and attacks, but each of them have unique ending cutscene artwork after the player defeats the final boss.
On every screen, the camera will lock in place, and a group of 4 enemies will come from the right side of the screen to attack the player. When an enemy is knocked out, they may drop a food item that will restore health when collected, in the form of fries (restoring 3 hearts) or a small hamburger (which completely restores your health). Once the screen is clear of enemies, the player can move forward and continue fighting more enemies. On occasion, in some stages, the player may need to jump over obstacles or pits to progress, and may have to fight enemies while jumping across pits and avoiding deadly falls. Every few waves of enemies, a screen transition takes place, bringing the player to the next area in the stage. After a few more of these, the player will encounter the end of stage boss.
Whenever the player runs out of health or falls into a deadly pit, they are given the option to Continue, accompanied by a 10 second countdown. Pressing Start to continue will refill the characters' health and puts the player back on the same screen which they died on. There is no limit on how much he/she can continue. Letting the timer run out will go to the Game Over screen, where a 4-digit password is displayed on the bottom, which can be written down and inputted on the Password menu at the title screen to return to said stage at a later time.
Moveset
On the ground:
- Right, Right (quick taps): Dash
- Up: Dodge
- A+B: Jump
- Down+A: Crouching Kick
- Down+B: Crouching Punch
- A (not attacking enemy): Kick
- A (tap while facing enemy): Downward Kick, Upward Kick, Spin Kick
- B (tap): Punch
- B (held. then released): Uppercut
In the air:
- A: Jumping Kick
- B: Aerial Punch
Stages and Passwords
Stage names:
- Stage 1: Baseball
- Stage 2: Volleyball
- Stage 3: Judo
- Stage 4: Boxing
- Stage 5: Kendo
- Stage 6: Taekwon-Do
Passwords:
- Stage 1 - n/a
- Stage 2 - 3510
- Stage 3 - 2885
- Stage 4 - 8429
- Stage 5 - 2851
- Stage 6 - 7820
Bugs
- Note: These were observed on a modified version of the ROM that removed the game's copy protection. These might not occur on original hardware.
- Pressing A, then Start repeatedly on the broken Password menu will slowly erase the cursor and the password tiles. After pressing the Start button a total of 446 times, the game will crash with a variety of results, ranging from simply freezing the sound, to crashing into a glitchy/striped screen. It can also reset into DMG (monochrome) mode, similar to the Glitch Dimension in Pokemon Gold/Silver, with an additional side-effect of the game frequently slowing down when enemies enter the screen.
- Sometimes, dealing rapid, precise damage to a stage boss to deliver a fatal blow when its health is low (2-3 hearts) can result in the game crashing to a colored stripe pattern, instead of taking the player to the next stage or the ending. If preformed on Stage 4, the game will reset to the Gowin copyright screen.
Gallery
Video
A full playthrough of the game, playing as HotKid. Video length: 42:18