Gameboy Advance Recommendations

[lonesome_pa]

Recently received this system and currently have only 2 games for it. Metroid Fusion (good game; but finished it) and Pac-Man Collection (interesting but not very time consuming) I'm looking to buy one or two and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of good games.

[Bratwurst]

Sonic Advance and Megaman Zero. The latter can prove difficult for most folk but remains fun. Plus, there are ways the game tailors the difficulty around your skill as you progress. Warioland 4 is great. I'd stay away from Circle of the Moon unless you had a suitable lighting setup.. or that newfangled GBA SP that isn't even out yet.

[tiggerthehun]

YOSHI'S ISLAND!!! (Unless you played it to death on the SNES) Great game - too often overlooked...

[MacGurl]

Castlevania--there's 2 of them.

[lonesome_pa]

I'll have to check all of those out later today except for the Yoshi's Island. Sorry Tigger, but I am Yoshied out from the SNES emulators. I was also told about the 2 Spryo games. I liked it on the Playstation, but I'll have to check those out too.

 

Thanks for the help.

[AtariX]

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Castlevania: Harmony of Disonance are top notch games. If your in for some old school FPS action, you have all the id classics such as Wolfenstein 3d, Doom and Doom II. If your into old school gaming, then you have the Midway/Williams, Atari, Namco and Konami classic collections. For strategy, you have the great Advance Wars and the classic Defender of the Crown was just released. For RPG gaming, I would go with Golden Sun and Phantasy Star Collection. Phantasy Star Collection is worth the money, there is 100+ hours worth of RPG goodness with PSC.

[MegaManFan]

You can't go wrong with Mega Man Zero, Super Mario Advance 3 (Yoshi's Island), Kirby's Nighmare in Dreamland, Golden Sun, Wario Land 4, Mega Man Battle Network, or Zelda: A Link to the Past - let alone of course Metroid Fusion.

[joeybastard]

I really like Advance Wars but I don't know anybody else who does.

[MacGurl]

I like Advance Wars

[MegaManFan]

I like Advance Wars

 

I keep hearing good things about it yet I +still+ don't have it. Go figure.

[Gabriel]

I also recommend Advance Wars. It's a bad ass little game.

 

Backwards compatibility gives you some really cool games too. Dragon Warrior I & II and Dragon Warrior III are for the GBC, but are also excellent on the GBA. Be sure to get yourself an AC adaptor or rechargable battery for those though.

 

Back in purely GBA territory, the Namco Museum cart is fun. Tekken Advance is also a pretty cool little fighting game. I must even admit that I enjoy the Monster Rancher games.

 

I might recommend some others, but the Dragon Warrior and Monster Rancher games take up the majority of my time on the GBA. So, while I have a shitload of games, some are still unplayed in the shrinkwrap.

[Mikau]

Castlevania--there's 2 of them.

 

There will be three soon. Aria of Sorrow should be out around June.

 

Everybody is right, Advance Wars is great. It has sucked away so many hours of my life. Advance Wars 2 should also be out around June.

 

Another great game that nobody has played is Tactics Ogre : The Knight of Lodis. A serious sleeper hit (very small shipments), and a great game for those patient enough to enjoy it.

[MegaManFan]

Another great game that nobody has played is Tactics Ogre : The Knight of Lodis. A serious sleeper hit (very small shipments), and a great game for those patient enough to enjoy it.

 

Boy was it ever. When I found two copies of it at a local game store a friend in Iowa +begged+ me to buy it for him. Literally on hands and knees. I said okay, sure. He repaid me back later in cash and game trades.

[sdstuff64]

Another great game that nobody has played is Tactics Ogre : The Knight of Lodis. A serious sleeper hit (very small shipments), and a great game for those patient enough to enjoy it.

 

Small shipments?At first yes but not anymore.It is a best seller at EBgames,yes a sleeper hit but that doesn't mean it will be the new PDS.

[joeybastard]

Glad to see somebody else likes Advance Wars. Whenever I have mentioned it with friends, nobody liked it but me.

[Ze_ro]

I asked this question a few months ago before I bought one of these things myself. The thread is over here in case you want to browse that as well (although you'll likely hear the same stuff as people have already said here.

 

As it is, I only have 5 games, but they're all quite good. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is excellent, and I think it's actually better than Harmony Of Dissonance (Plus, it can be had for cheaper now). There's also a third Castlevania game on it's way called Aria Of Sorrow... so if you REALLY want Harmony, I'd recommend you wait until Aria comes out, and the prices drop on Harmony. Despite what everone keeps saying about Circle, I didn't think the graphics were THAT dark. No more so than most GBA games anyways.

 

Golden Sun is a good RPG, although it has some really lame parts to the story (Like where you have to ride a boat and convince passengers into helping row... damn that part was stupid), it's got a great combat and magic system, and the weird Genie thing keeps things interesting. I still haven't beaten it, although I haven't been playing it all that much lately.

 

Sonic Advance is basically a GBA version of the old Genesis games. The graphics look even better, there are four characters to play as, each character has new moves with makes them somewhat unique, and there's even extra crap like multiplayer and the Chao Garden and such. I was worried this would be a waste of money since I already have tons of Sonic games, but I'm quite happy with it. Unfortunately, it was hard to find this game for a good price... every store seemed to price it at about $60! (I managed to get it used)

 

NHL 2002 is the only decent hockey game. It's too fast, but I still get some fun out of it. It's a straight port of the old Genesis/SNES NHL games, so if you liked them, you'll probably like NHL 2002.

 

More recently, I got Fire Pro Wrestling, and it's amazing! I hate wrestling, but I love this game! It's so simple, yet so deep. There's hundreds of wrestlers, and a VERY impressive create-a-wrestler mode if you want more. Since the sequel is out, this one should be available for cheap (I got my copy for $18 ), so there's no reason not to get it. The only really annoying thing is that since they didn't get any licenses, all the wrestlers have fake names. For example, instead of having Stone Cold Steve Austin hit you with a Stone Cold Stunner... you now get The Bionic Man Steve Majors giving you the Deep Freeze. Luckily, they were smart enough to allow you to rename all the wrestlers, so you can fix everything back to normal.

 

Beware that any game that sounds like a SNES game generally is. If you already have all the SNES and NES Mario games, then don't bother with the GBA ones, since they're 95% the same! Same goes for Contra, Earthworm Jim, and many others. Mario Kart Super Circuit on the other hand, has new levels, so it's probably worth getting.

 

By the way, there is a new Megaman game coming out soon (Megaman and Bass), so you might want to put off buying Megaman Zero until you try each to see which you like more (MM&B is more traditional, while MMZ has some odd stuff going on). I'd also recommend trying games in an emulator to see whether they're any good or not, since the GBA seems to have LOTS of really bad games. For example, Revenge of Shinobi is complete rubbish, and Jazz Jackrabbit is another disappointment (I used to like the old PC shareware game).

 

Some other games that I've been wanting to get, but haven't yet are Gradius Galaxies, Konami Arcade Advanced, Bomberman Tournament, and F-Zero. For some reason, the local EB has about a dozen pre-owned copies of F-Zero... I'm hoping they'll mark them down soon.

 

--Zero

[chrisbid]

gradius galaxies is pretty good, but a shooters arent really meant to be played on small screens

 

if you like puzzle games you need to get Puyo Pop. The Puyo series is huge in Japan, and i really cant understand why it never caught on here. Its the best multiplayer puzzle game ever devised.

[MegaManFan]

By the way, there is a new Megaman game coming out soon (Megaman and Bass), so you might want to put off buying Megaman Zero until you try each to see which you like more (MM&B is more traditional, while MMZ has some odd stuff going on).  

 

--Zero

 

Wait, seriously? That's the same as the Japanese game "Rockman & Forte." I bought a GBA version of it as an import because I thought, like the Super Famicom version, it would never be ported and released stateside (and you gotta love the non-regionality of GB imports). It's the same game ROM traders often mistakenly label "Mega Man 9."

[Ze_ro]

I'm guessing that that means that North American GBA's will play imports without problems, right?

 

--Zero

[MegaManFan]

I'm guessing that that means that North American GBA's will play imports without problems, right?

 

--Zero

 

That's exactly what I'm saying. It's great for an action game like Rockman & Forte, but if you're trying to play an RPG and you can't read Japanese, fuhgeddabotit. However in general there's no such thing as "regional lockout" when it comes to GB, GBC or GBA. It would be pretty hard to create one on a portable system with such small carts anyway, I would think.

[Rhindle The Red]

I'm sure that if Nintendo wanted a lock-out, they'd have one. For whatever reason they've never bothered with the Game Boy. Even their efforts on the SNES and GCN were modest, to say the least. Only the GameCube had any serious lock-out and that's been defeated.

 

Anyway, my recommendation for a GBA game:

 

DOOM!

 

Who's been spiking your beet juice?

[raindog]

I've bought a couple dozen GBA games (mostly from half.com, great way to build your collection up fast as long as you're careful of people selling games with no box or manual as "like new") and I'd say these are the best I've played:

 

Duke Nukem Advance (just seems more playable than Wolf3D or DOOM)

Super Monkey Ball Jr. (part Marble Madness, part 3D adventure, part puzzle...)

Sonic Advance (the Mario SNES ports are good too but this is better)

 

and as far as the classic arcade ports go....

 

Namco Museum (since you already have Pac-Man Collection)

 

One more thing: no matter how cheap it is, STAY AWAY FROM DEFENDER. Maybe the Midway classics version is okay, I haven't tried it, but the Defender cartridge itself sucks - you have your choice of the completely useless new game that has little to do with Defender other than the name, the "classic version" with a decent control scheme but "updated" graphics, and the totally original version which foolishly tries to recreate the "one joystick and seven buttons" sort of interface of the arcade game on the GBA, with no option to redefine keys (and they must have known it was a problem because there's a screen where you can view the bindings for each game, but not change them.) Seriously, stay away.

 

And once you try some commercial games, head over to gamegizmo.com or one of the other places that sells RAM cartridges for the GBA (sort of like the 2600 in a Flash project due to be released soon) so you can get in on the cool homebrew scene that's grown up around the GBA, including a number of really interesting emulators (check out the one for the NES.)

 

Finally, don't ignore GBC or GB games just because they're older or only available used. Donkey Kong for the Gameboy (actually "Super Gameboy" which means it plays using a limited amount of color) is a real classic, an example of how to take a good original game and extend it vastly (from the original 4 screens to 100 increasingly large and puzzle-like levels.) There are others like it out there, too.

 

Rob

[chrisbid]

i really liked DK for super game boy. the other really cool game for the super game boy that i need to find again was space invaders. the game boy port is fairly accurate, but if you put the game in your Super Game Boy on SNES, the GB cart also contained a 100% perfect arcade port of Space Invaders on the SNES (since the game was so small, they could easily fit both games on one GB cart). It was pretty cool, and im kindof wondering if the same thing may or may not be possible with the GBA player. (simple full screen games utilizing the cube's processors rather than the GBA)

[Rhindle The Red]

Donkey Kong for the Game Boy / SGB is one of the best titles ever to come out for the handheld, but there's a new version (Donkey Kong +) that's coming out for the GBA. It will include a GCN disc that will allow you to create your own levels on the GCN and upload them to the GBA.

 

Pretty nifty....

 

Mr. Bradford. It's good to see you're allright. We were disturbed you might've become lost in our corridors.

[+Sauron]

Yet another vote for Advance Wars....it rocks! If you do pick it up, just be forewarned....the "Training" section is just that, training. It took me several weeks just to get through it, only to find out that I had a whole Campaign to do! You won't get bored with it anytime soon.