In this month's Console of the Month, we'll be talking about the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's first major follow up to the original Game Boy line of systems. Released in 2001 in all regions, the Game Boy Advance was quite successful with 81 million units sold worldwide.
The GBA library had a lot of ports from the Super Nintendo, but it also had enough games of it's own to feel distinct, with classics such as Advance Wars, Golden Sun and a selection of Castlevania titles amongst others. It was also backwards compatible with all Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
There were 3 major models of the system that represented some big advancements in the portable space during the era. The original GBA had probably the nicest ergonomics, but a dark screen that was very hard to see without a good light source, even compared to earlier handhelds. It also used AA batteries to run. The SP followed in 2003 with a new clamshell design, a frontlit screen for more easy viewing and a rechargeable battery bilt into the unit. A revision to this model later swapped the frontlit screen for a backlit one. Finally, the Game Boy Micro arrived in 2005 - a year after the DS, so it wasnt the biggest seller. This unit dropped backward compatibility with earlier Game Boy systems, but had an absolutely tiny form factor, with a higher quality (albeit smaller) backlit screen and swappable face plates.
Lets discuss the GBA this month - what are your favourite games for the system? Which model GBA do you like best? What was your first experience with the system? Lets get to it.
The GBA is a wonderful little system and is slotted comfortably as my second favorite platform, next the the DS which is in the top slot.
I got the GBA way back in 2001. I had the indigo and it came with Mario Advance 1 (SMB 2 port). From there it got better. Many ports like the Donkey Kong COuntry games, original RPGs like the Golden Sun games, some stellar strategy games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem. I mean, I can go on! I spent hundreds of hours with the Pokémon games too!
Since some of you are playing Phantasy Star Online in another thread, I will take the opportunity to mention that the GBA had the ability to connect to the GameCube with a wire that connected into a controller port. In the case of PSO, you were able to connect to the game with the GBA to download the Tiny Chao Garden without the Sonic Advance carts or any cart for that matter (when turning on the GBA, I think you hold down the start and select buttons or it was automatically, i don’t remember). The garden would come with an exclusive Tails Chao that had S rank on every stat and was immortal. You can then transfer to Sonic Adventure games and you’re good to go.
I think the GBA platform was, on the whole, a fantastic one. So many great games came out and the system did pretty well for Nintendo at a time they were otherwise struggling. It really felt a lot like a portable SNES.
I will note that I do have one major complaint with the core design, however, and that's in the audio department. By making the advanced audio capabilities (that weren't just the original GB hardware sound channels) dependent on CPU time to run AND by building in a linear 8-bit DAC, they guaranteed rather poor audio quality. If your game was CPU-heavy or you had poor programmers you were going to be leaning on the GB sound channels, which really limited what kinds of sounds you could produce. And even if you had fantastic programmers and had CPU time to spare for great sampled and mixed audio, the output to the speakers/headphones was inherently degraded by being down-sampled by the 8-bit linear DAC, meaning it would come out scratchy and rough. There were some fantastic tunes on the GBA and some great music crafted for it, but it always came out sounding low-fidelity, because it was by the time it got to an analog pathway. I'm still confounded by this design decision. Why would Nintendo let the system mix relatively high-quality samples and sounds internally and then force them to shit quality when outputted? Drives me batty.
I also wish the screen were slightly higher resolution, like at least 256x240, but whatever. That was only a hindrance on ports of older titles. The system was, on the whole, fantastic and I played the heck out of it.
I mean, what's not to love? It's the SNES 2, just with a slightly less impressive audio chip. With the Gamecube player it really is like having a new SNES console. Also, a modded 3ds really makes it fun to revisit the GBA as it runs GBA natively via injection. Though the most authentic and arguably best experience is probably playing GBA games on a Game Boy Advance SP AGS-101
Drill Dozer is an amazing little game, one of the best platformers ever
I'm also currently playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the first time, bouncing back and forth between the original GBA version and the 3ds remake. They both have their charms. GBA version just feels more retro, but the remake is a bit more polished. Both games are a ton of fun. The soundtrack in Superstar Saga is incredible and the site of Mario and Luigi dancing will put a smile on your face on even the worst of days. Here's some fun youtube videos I just have to post:
I have Drill Dozer sealed. I bought it with intent to play, but it's shot up in value and I was afraid it wouldn't be very color-blind accessible, so I never opened it.
I played a few hours into Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, but also had to stop because the core mechanic is distinguishing between red and green.
I really enjoyed the two Metroid games and Gunstar Super Heroes, but I think I've mostly used mine to play gameboy and gameboy color games.
I own, like, three of the original model, but don't own an SP or Micro.
Much like the Nintendo Wii recently, I have only started getting into the GameBoy Advance.
Obviosuly, for me, I am really excited to play all of the RPG's on the system. Those seemed to be the games that flourished on it along with so many SNES RPG's getting ports to the console as well.
I had been working in a game shop and I was getting extremely upset with commercial video games. Halo, GTA3, PoP: Sands of Time, Sonic Adventure, Luigi's Mansion... it was all so cinematic, so mundane. I go so cynical that when customers tried out games, I would openly criticize them "yeah, this game has long loading times", "It's not arcade perfect because of the framerate at this section", "The previous version was better because of x, y, z.".
And then this guy did the exact opposite of what everyone else was doing. I and my faith in the medium was restored!
About two years ago, I posted a thread talking about my history with the GBA. I also go into detail about my GBA setup. I'll sum it up in this TR thread, but if anyone is interested here is that other thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=53530
I got the original GBA model sometime after it was released, and I picked up Super Mario Advance along with it. I enjoyed it, but I was really starting to get sick of a non-lit screen. Then the SP model was released, and I traded my original GBA away to try and get the SP. The problem was the SP was sold out everywhere for quite a while. Being a teenager at the time, I sort of just lost interest in the GBA after that. It wasn't until recently that I realized that it's kind of like a handheld SNES with lots of quality titles, and I should put some effort into exploring it more.
I have enjoyed a few titles for it, but mostly just SNES ports. I've played a couple of exclusives, but nothing to completion. I really need to play more GBA exclusives at some point!
I know I'm a few days late, but I really love the GBA and would feel sad if I didn't weigh in. For a very long time I held the GBA up as my favorite handheld of all time. While it may have been supplanted by the Switch at this point (does the Switch count as a handheld?), it's still a system I hold near and dear and that I love to go back to.
As others have already stated, at the time of its release it felt like a portable SNES, and the SNES is my favorite console of all time. The original Gameboy and the GBC, while possessing robust libraries, had felt very static for a very long time. With its much more lush graphical capabilities, the GBA felt like an enormous breath of fresh air into the portable gaming landscape when it was released. To this day I think it's still the only piece of hardware that I have ever purchased at launch. Being an enormous Castlevania fan, I was absolutely stoked to get Circle of the Moon as soon as it came out. And while that game didn't quite live up to my anticipation, the GBA system was an absolute winner on all fronts. With a mixture of fantastic SNES ports and excellent original titles, it has one of the best libraries out of any piece of hardware ever, I think.
Despite Circle of the Moon being somewhat of a disappointment at the time (I've since warmed up on it a bit), Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow are both games I consider top-tier Castlevania titles. As a bonus, the two Shaman King: Master of Spirits games use the same engine as Aria of Sorrow and end up kind of feeling like Castlevania spin-offs. They're not quite as good, but they do scratch that same itch if you've already played the three GBA games, the three DS games, Symphony of the Night, and Bloodstained to death. After them, I'd say the various Final Fantasy ports, as well as Tactics Advance, are probably my favorite games on the system. The Dawn of Souls version of the original Final Fantasy is still probably my favorite way to replay that game, what with its various super bosses and wild bonus dungeons. And Dawn of Souls is also the only way I've ever been able to stomach playing through Final Fantasy II. It's actually not half bad in that version. And while the extra content in the ports of V and VI is pretty mediocre, the extras added to IV, like the option to change your end-game party, or the bonus dungeon with the super-powered final boss, really enrich that experience.
The recent scarcity of the Switch Mega Man Battle Network Collection makes me think I'm not the only one who has a soft spot for those games too. The stories were definitely targeted at children, but I loved seeing the redesigns of the classic Mega Man characters and the way the robot masters finally got some degree of personality. It was a lot of fun to see how the characters actually evolved and their relationships to Mega Man changed over the course of the series. Plus, the actual gameplay was phenomenal. The combination of twitch Mega Man action with what was functionally a collectible card game felt like it never should have worked as marvelously as it did. Similarly, the Mega Man Zero games are a great evolution of the the Mega Man X formula. I don't think I remember anything about the plot, but I definitely remember how tight the gameplay was, with its mixture of gunplay and sword combat. Every enemy and boss even has a special animation of being cut in half if you finish them with a sword strike.
Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion are both amazing games, even if they don't quite hit the heights of Super Metroid. Fusion tends to get something of a bad rap, and while the linearity is kind of disappointing, it's still a great game, and the large swaths where you are allowed to essentially wander freely feel like classic Metroid. And speaking of great shooter/platformers, the various CT Special Forces games and, oddly enough, the two Lilo & Stitch games, are among the best run-and-guns on the system. They sometimes get called Metal Slug knockoffs (Metal Slug Advance, also great!), but they're really more platformers like Mega Man or the NES G.I. Joe games.
Really, I could go on for days about great GBA games, but if I could only recommend two, they would be Astro Boy: Omega Factor and Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure. Astro Boy is a top tier Treasure title (probably my second favorite, right after Guardian Heroes), featuring everything the developer is known for: excellent sprite-work, frenetic action, and a loopy plot that maybe doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But more so than an amazing Treasure title, it's also a glorious love letter to the oeuvre of Osamu Tezuka, featuring cameos from dozens of his manga creations. Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure is a platformer/brawler that also has excellent sprite-work and fast, satisfying action. It follows Dragon Ball protagonist Goku through the first leg of his seemingly endless journey to becoming the strongest warrior in the cosmos, starting at the very beginning with his meeting with Bulma and culminating in the harrowing battle against King Piccolo. It's obviously better if you're a Dragon Ball fan, but even if you're not, it's just a very solid platformer with great level design and awesome boss fights.
