Derek's 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000

Derek’s 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000

Faceball 2000 on the Game Boy is what happens when someone looks at the gritty rise of first-person shooters and says, “What if instead of guns and gore, we had floating smiley faces and pure confusion?” You play as HAPPYFACE, a yellow orb of emotionless optimism, wandering a maze that looks like a wireframe dentist’s office from a cyberpunk fever dream. Your goal? Blast other floating emoji-like enemies into oblivion before they do the same to you. It’s like DOOM, if DOOM was designed by someone who had only ever played Pong and once saw a sphere.

Somehow, this plucky little Game Boy cart managed to cram in a 3D first-person experience using approximately four pixels and the processing power of a microwave. Each enemy has a distinct face, ranging from “mildly annoyed” to “existentially over it,” and they glide silently through the maze like ghosts of MSN Messenger past. The cherry on top? The game supported up to 16-player multiplayer via link cable—because clearly the Game Boy was designed for LAN parties in 1991. In the end, Faceball 2000 isn’t just a game; it’s an experience—a surreal, minimalist art piece disguised as a shooter where every kill feels like you’ve just disappointed a sentient emoji.