Paperboy, Game Boy Color

The Game Boy Color version of Paperboy was converted by Digital Eclipse and published by Midway Games in 1999, and it is a playable, enjoyable version of the game.

The basic premise of the game is the same as the arcade original – make it through a week of deliveries as a Paperboy on three increasingly difficult roads (Easy Street, Middle Road, and Hard Way); landing newspapers in the postbox – or on the doormat – or your subscribers, and earning bonuses for causing damage to the houses of your non-subscribers.

If you miss a subscriber they will stop their subscription, but if you deliver to all your subscribers you’ll pick up more subscriptions in the next round.

Controlling the Paperboy in this conversion is simple and responsive. Crashing into obstacles is still a very real threat when playing the game, but overall this version does give you some leeway to experiment with what you can and can’t touch when you’re moving.

When you reach the end of a street you have a limited amount of time to make it through the Training Course and throw whatever papers you’ve got left at the targets for some final bonus points. For the game to stop and show a title card for the Training Grounds is completely unnecessary, though. I don’t know what the developers were thinking with that.

Overall, I’d put the Game Boy Color version in the top ten conversions of Paperboy of all time. I enjoyed playing it more than most other Paperboy conversions and it’s smooth, enjoyable and nicely presented.