The 20 best Game Boy Advance games (Nintendo 3DS)

The launch of the 3DS is just a few days away – so to celebrate, our weeklong retrospective of the best games on Nintendo’s previous handhelds continues. And this time, we’re actually focusing on a system from fewer than 10 years ago: the Game Boy Advance, a tiny powerhouse that singlehandedly defined portable gaming in the first half of the ‘00s. Released in June of 2001, just three years after the Game Boy Color, the GBA immediately kicked its predecessor in the proverbial teeth with games that weren’t just in color, but looked like sharper versions of Super NES games with better sound and – gasp! – occasional polygons.

Above: Maybe not the classiest ads, though

Of course, it was far from perfect. A combination of the GBA’s unlit, highly reflective screen and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon’s dark, murky visuals immediately started a boom in clip-on lights, none of which quite worked right. (Those unafraid to ruin their systems could buy aftermarket backlight kits, although one wrong solder could brick the then-expensive handhelds.) Thankfully, we only had to suffer for two years before Nintendo rolled out the GBA SP, a backlit, fold-up mini-laptop of a handheld that was sleeker, sported a rechargeable battery and quickly became THE must-have item for every gamer who ever had to stand in line at the DMV.

The SP was followed  two years later by the Game Boy Micro, Nintendo’s tiny answer to the iPod Nano – although by then, GBA fans had mostly moved on to the shinier DS or PSP. During its years of absolute handheld dominance, however, the GBA produced some of the best handheld games ever to hit the market. Many of them were ports of Super Nintendo games (which we’re mostly leaving out of this article), but plenty were able to stand up to the best of other consoles on their own merits. With so much quality to pick from, it’s not easy to single out the five, 10 or even 20 best titles on the system – although we’ve done our best below.

Additional entries by Henry Gilbert, Carolyn Gudmundson and Brett Elston.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2

In 2001, Tony Hawk’s name still carried serious weight in gaming, so a handheld adaptation of THPS2 in the GBA’s launch library was a pretty big deal. It’s still a pretty big deal, actually, if you consider what a challenge it must have been adapting Pro Skater’s kick-flipping, rail-grinding 3D action to a 2D handheld. THPS2 pulled it off brilliantly, though, delivering an isometric, kinda-3D-looking game that felt uncannily like its console counterparts.

The sense of gravity, the responsiveness of the tricks, the depth of gameplay and even the layouts of the levels were all carried over faithfully from the “real” THPS2. Sure, it could sometimes be a little hard to make out whether certain objects were convex or concave, and one of the console version’s biggest selling points – its soundtrack – was necessarily left out. But the gameplay was all there, and it was proof positive that the GBA was going to deliver some amazing things in the years that followed.

Mega Man Battle Network 2

He’s probably the most thoroughly exploited character in all of gaming, so it wasn’t a question of IF Capcom would put Mega Man on the GBA, but when. However, instead of creating another familiar, platformer entry, the Mega team crafted an entirely new series for the little guy. Mega Man Battle Network meshed the Blue Bomber with tactical RPG gameplay in a new and fun way, even if it wore its Pokemon influence on its sleeve.

BN2 continued the story of young boy Lan and the MegaMan.EXE program that lived in his NetNavi (basically a proto-iPhone) as they battled evil programs out to destroy humanity one hack at a time. Once you jumped from the “real” world to the internet, MM battled with new foes and familiar enemies redesigned for web 2.0, in tense, action-strategy combat, with card collection added for flavor. The series was eventually run into the ground, but Battle Network was a breath of fresh air on GBA, and that’s how we’d rather remember it.

Ninja Five-O

This was a game seemingly nobody played, but that almost everybody should have. A bizarre little action-platformer gem, Ninja Five-O (or Ninja Cop in the UK) had a lot in common with the original Shinobi games, as ninja officer Joe Osugi slashed and shurikened his way through bank robbers and terrorists – some of which had hostages, and many of which used some form of cover.

Never mind the action, the upgradable ninja powers or the mazelike levels, though. The game’s real appeal came from its grappling hook, which clearly aped Bionic Commando, but added a little more flexibility and inertia, enabling players to do things like latch onto the bottom of a platform and swing over the head of a bad guy above, then shoot him on the way back down. It added a dimension of finesse and freedom that turned what might have otherwise been a dull side-scroller into something memorably great.

Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-20-best-game-boy-advance-games/a-2011032318464410084

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