The Game Boy Advance really advanced handheld gaming in its short life, but there are plenty of games for the little purple wonder that pushed the console to its limit. Let’s start with the game Kojima probably made to prove that he is not, in fact, an ageless vampire.
Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands
You can’t talk about ambitious Game Boy Advance games without mentioning the game that literally lets you wield the power of the sun in the palm of your hands. It’s in the bloody name. Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands’ cartridge contained a photometric light sensor that could measure light exposure. As a game all about fighting vampires, you need to harness real life solar rays by playing the game outside in order to charge your weapons and defeat your foes. It sounds like a bit of a weird gimmick, though weird and inventive game design is the trademark of a Hideo Kojima game, and wouldn’t you know it? He was a designer and producer on the original Boktai.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world plagued by the Immortals, vampires composed entirely of dark matter, you control a young lad by the name of Django as he travels to Istrakan, known as the City of Death, in an attempt to save the human race once and for all. The gameplay is primarily stealth focused, with Django aiming to stun vampires from behind with his weapon, the Gun Del Sol, before either killing his foes or just escaping to a safe room. However, it’s the boss fights of Boktai that really draw on the Sun’s power, as a weapon called the Pile Driver is directly charged by sunlight, dealing more damage the sunnier it is.
Maybe Boktai didn’t take off in the UK because the sun is just a concept here, but who’s to say? It’s ambitious, and you’d never see someone lugging their PlayStation 5 outside to suck up the sun to power up their griddy in Fortnite. You know what, I’d kill to see that.
Kill.Switch
We’ve rambled on about Kill.Switch’s GBA port in the past, along with the main version of the game and how it pioneered third person cover shooting going into the mid-2000s. Trying to take that gameplay and shrink it down onto a GBA of all things seems absolutely ludicrous, even if the PSP was closing in on the horizon, but somehow, Visual Impact really attempted to make a true cover shooter on the GBA. The results are, well, they’re not as good as the big version on PS2, Xbox and PC, but sometimes that’s the price of ambition. You shoot for the moon, and sometimes all you can do is just leave the Earth’s atmosphere. It doesn’t mean that Kill Switch for the GBA isn’t incredibly impressive.
Following the same plot as the game it was ported from, Kill.Switch for the GBA features the same levels and rough overall gameplay design, just scaled down massively for the GBA. Naturally, some elements were lost in translation, particularly in regards to actual aiming, as the GBA didn’t have the buttons or d-pads necessary to support proper shooter controls, but the core functionality is there and it works surprisingly well. Sometimes, there’ll be slowdown or some other issues when there’s too much rendered on screen at any one time, but again, that’s the cost of ambition, and Kill.Switch deserves to be remembered as more than just the PS2 cover shooter game. V good stuff.
V-Rally 3
Ever heard of VD-Dev, a French development studio composed of two men, programmer Fernando Velez and the graphic designer Guillaume Dubail? These dudes do magic.
While they’d started work with 1992’s Jim Power in Mutant Planet on the Amiga, the duo would part ways until ‘96, where they’d quickly become known for pushing handheld consoles to their breaking points with their games. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color would host such impressive games like Wacky Races, Lucky Luke and the original V-Rally, which brings us to V-Rally 3. While the GBA port was originally supposed to be developed in-house, VD-Dev’s expertise was called upon, and they absolutely delivered one of the best racing games on the GBA.
Graphically, V-Rally 3 on the GBA calls to mind words like “phwoar”, “cor” and “get a load of that cockpit” and so on. It looks fantastic, and it even manages to impress with the game’s cockpit view, giving you a first person look at the rally action. Your windshield could even get damaged too, making the inner cockpit view even more risky, but that’s just part of the fun. The full career mode, along with the less rally-like head to head racing is all there, with stellar performance and fun, arcade-esque physics governing the whole thing, making V-Rally 3 a must-have for any handheld racing game fans. Expect to see VD-Dev here again, cos they are ballers.
Super Monkey Ball Jr
Trying to take a game that previously relied on full 360 degree movement and switch that gameplay over to a d-pad, which allows 8-way movement at best, was always going to be a challenge.
Apparently, developers , and Creations laughed in the face of challenge though, creating Super Monkey Ball Jr for the GBA as a result. While the absence of a proper control stick is definitely felt, the conversion to handheld platforms is pretty much faultless, with SMB Jr including levels and mini-games from the original game, only scaled down for the GBA.
Graphics are arguably Super Monkey Ball Jr’s best quality, with the game retaining the franchise’s cutesy aesthetic even while the number of polygons has drastically gone down. Somehow, SMB Jr even supported multiplayer too, with Monkey Golf and Monkey Bowling only requiring one GBA, with players taking turns playing pass the handheld. Despite the controller limitations, the core gameplay and physics still remain familiar, making Super Monkey Ball Jr the ideal game for fans to play on the go back during the glory days of Nelly, and it’s still fairly fun today, as long as you don’t mind being driven around the bend a bit.
Driver 3
What’s more impressive than making one of the best racing games on the GBA? Deciding to make a full-on open world game instead, complete with on-foot sections and played from a third person perspective.
VD-Dev gazed directly into the palantir after working on V-Rally 3, Stuntman and a secret third game we may bring up later, as they were given the unenviable task of taking the much-maligned Driver 3 and porting it to the Game Boy Advance. Considering the source material that VD-Dev were given wasn’t exactly stellar, it’s not shocking to learn that the GBA version didn’t review too well, but the amount that VD-Dev managed to push out of the GBA with their version of Driver 3 is nothing short of astonishing.
While their take on Driver 3 isn’t a complete port of the original game, with Istanbul dropped due to cartridge space, their October 2005 release wouldn’t have looked out of place on the DS, which was currently available. The majority of the game follows the story missions, but players are free to explore both Miami and Nice, finding collectibles and completing side missions as they go. The gameplay, driving physics and shooting might not be among the best the GBA has to offer, but as 3D GBA games go, Driver 3 was an incredible swansong for arguably Nintendo’s best pure handheld.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
It’s no secret that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was one of the biggest franchises in the late 90s and 2000s, so obviously Activision had to strike while the iron was hot and port Pro Skater to the Game Boy Advance.
Managing to distill one of the best extreme sports games of all time into a single cartridge meant for handheld consoles is a bold challenge, and yet Vicarious Visions managed to create a brilliant game that still retains a lot of the gameplay you’d expect from a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game. Functionally, THPS 2 is the same as its big brother console games in that your career mode sees players travelling across the world, completing goals in bitesize two minute sessions. That two minute limit really lends itself to a handheld game.
Instead of the usual third person camera perspective, THPS 2 on the GBA is played from an isometric perspective, but perhaps the most impressive part of this port is the fact that the levels are still broadly the same, despite the new perspective. Granted, there are still some omissions due to the storage limitations of the GBA cartridge, with no level editor, multiplayer or the ability to create your own character. The soundtrack has also been replaced with generic instrumental tracks, making it a lesser version by default, but this is still a worthwhile substitute for those who wanted to virtual skate on the go. To all 0.05% of you from France who watch this channel, your time is now.
Asterix & Obelix XXL
Potentially VD-Dev’s masterstroke on the GBA, Asterix & Obelix XXL stands among the best and most ambitious platformers on the platform. Like other VD-Dev games on the GBA, Asterix & Obelix is another port of a PS2, Xbox and Gamecube release, though this time VD-Dev probably had a bit more skin in the game this time around considering that Asterix & Obelix are a pair of French comic characters that are beloved across Europe. While the big console version of Asterix & Obelix XXL did receive an exhaustive remaster on modern platforms a few years back, the original release wasn’t beloved, but the GBA version has become renowned as a highlight of the GBA’s graphical quality.
Regarded as the only proper 3D platformer on the GBA, VD-Dev managed to make something that no one else could achieve. While the story follows the same beats, the gameplay and levels had to be developed from the ground up in order to fit in the GBA cartridge, with some of the gameplay abilities, in-game objects and even certain characters like Dogmatix being removed entirely. Despite those missing elements, the fact that a proper 3D platformer could even work on the GBA is absolutely baffling. Merely attempting it takes an incredible amount of ambition, but being able to pull it off is ridiculous, and the fact the game is pretty fun is the icing on the cake. Now here’s a licensed game that’s 10x better than the movie it’s based on.
Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever
Trying to make a first person shooter on the GBA sounds like a fool’s errand, so trying to make two FPS games for the GBA, both of which are tie-ins to a movie regarded by some to be one of the worst ever made, goes beyond ambition and circles around to straight-up lunacy.
Crawfish Interactive and BAM! Entertainment are clearly undeterred by ridiculous ventures though, as they created two GBA FPS games based on the movie Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever, with the first game being based on an early script of the film before it had even begun production, while the second game was based on the finished film, released within a week of the movie’s cinema release.
While the first Ecks Vs Sever game is notable for being one of the first FPS games available on the GBA, the sequel adds a couple of new features that make the game an even better shooter. One improvement includes the ability to unlock your crosshair by pressing the select button, allowing players to line up proper shots while in stealth instead of relying on strafing the whole time, while the graphics have been upgraded since the previous version to really make the most of the Game Boy Advance. Even the sound effects have been improved too, making Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever the most well rounded first person shooter game on the GBA. Shame about the movie though, eh?
007: Nightfire
From one first person shooter to another, at least 007 typically fares much better at the movies than Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever did, but that doesn’t mean all of the James Bond games are worth your time. Some of them are great, like GoldenEye, but then there’s 007 Legends, which we’d rather move swiftly onwards from. As for the PS2 era of games, most agree that they’re pretty decent, and some even made their way over to the GBA too.
Much like other GBA ports, 007: Nightfire features some storyline and level differences between its main console counterparts, but that’s not what makes Nightfire one of the most ambitious games on the GBA.
A lot of first person shooters on the GBA used a method known as raycasting when developing their games, which essentially was a developer friendly way of simulating the 3D experience. Ecks Vs Sever used the raycasting method, but JV Games decided to be madlads and develop a proper 3D engine for the GBA, with fully textured mapped polygons and environments. Sure, the character models are still sprites, but the environments alone are among the most impressive the GBA has to offer. The gameplay might only be decent, and the framerate tends to stutter when there’s a bit too much happening, but the ambition on offer seems unpossible, yet they managed it.
The Simpsons: Road Rage
The Simpsons: Road Rage is mainly here so we can do very blatant and on the nose Simpsons references, but that’s a problem for future us. Man, I don’t envy that guy.
Well, the future is now old man, wait I’ve crossed the streams, but you know what, Road Rage on GBA is genuinely quite the accomplishment and all in all a fairly fun game to boot.
It’s basically the home console version of Road Rage you know and probably still love if your brain hadn’t fully formed when you first played it, except shrunk down and sadly without any voice acting.
But this is a pretty decent 3D sandbox game with nice, distinct colouring where you race against the clock to deliver fares, with 15 playable characters who’ve taken their vehicles out of their carholes to earn a bit of side money to choose from. There are four districts to drive around, four different modes, and even multiplayer with Link Cable to embiggen the playtime.
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