Daikaijuu Monogatari: The Miracle of the Zone (Game Boy, Japanese Import) - Authentic Hudson GB KISS Cartridge, Tested
A 1998 Hudson RPG with an infrared transceiver built into the cartridge itself, before the Game Boy Color had one. Japan-only. Japanese needed: a lot.
$25.00
How I grade condition: every grade is tested and plays; grades differ only in looks.
Want to see the exact copy you'd get, inside and out? Ask me for photos, board included.
A cartridge with its own infrared port
The Game Boy Color brought infrared to the console in late 1998. Hudson had already put it in the cartridge. Daikaijuu Monogatari: The Miracle of the Zone is one of Hudson’s GB KISS games, a short list of carts with an infrared transceiver built in. It was Hudson’s scheme with the magazine Famitsu Bros.: carts could beam data to each other, and participating shops could add free mini-games to them. The GB KISS logo is right there on the label.
Those shops closed long ago, so I make no promises about what the infrared does today. The hardware is in there: a 1998 Game Boy cart with a window to the outside world. Its cousin in the shop, Pokémon Card GB, uses the same trick for card trading.
The black shell can fool people: this is an original monochrome Game Boy game, not a Game Boy Color one. It gets a border on a Super Game Boy.
Shell beasts, not monsters
The title is a pun. 怪獣 (kaijū) means “monster”; this series swaps in 貝獣, “shell beast”. The Daikaijuu Monogatari series goes back to a 1988 Famicom RPG published by Namco, which Hudson carried on afterwards, including a Super Famicom entry English-speaking fans know through a fan translation.
This one is its own game: an RPG based on The Miracle of the Zone, a Japanese trading card game from 1997-98 that got a reprint through Premium Bandai in 2022. A sequel, The Miracle of the Zone II, followed in 1999 with an unrelated story.
About the Japanese
It is a text-heavy RPG with no English release, and the fan translation people mention is for the Super Famicom game, a different game. If you read Japanese or collect Hudson, it is the strangest cartridge you can put in the drawer.
Everything else for the Game Boy is on the Game Boy shelf.
Specifications
| Authenticity | Authentic original Hudson Soft cartridge (DMG-AMZJ-JPN) - not a reproduction |
|---|---|
| Condition | Graded on my condition scale - every copy is opened, cleaned, and tested by playing before it ships. |
| Gameplay | RPG based on a Japanese trading card game, 1 player |
| Hardware | Hudson GB KISS cart: an infrared transceiver lives in the cartridge |
| Includes | Loose cartridge only (no box or manual) |
| Language | Japanese, heavy: a text-driven RPG, with no English translation that I know of |
| Region | Japanese release, never sold outside Japan. An original (monochrome) Game Boy game in a black shell, not a Game Boy Color game. Region-free: plays on any Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance or Super Game Boy (with a border on a Super Game Boy) |
| Title Full | Daikaijuu Monogatari: The Miracle of the Zone / 大貝獣物語 ザ・ミラクル オブ ザ・ゾーン (Game Boy, Hudson Soft, Japan, 1998) |
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