The GBA had a short but wonderful life. The handheld hamster made quite the mark despite only being Nintendo’s main handheld for three years before the DS released, so there are a lot of games for it that have either been forgotten, overlooked, or just left behind like these games.
Sonic Advance Trilogy
It’s honestly shocking that Sega haven’t bundled the Sonic Advance trilogy into some kind of collection or re-release yet, considering they loooove re-releasing the Golden Era of Sonic in various Mega Drive collections or bundles like Sonic Origins. It’s like a kink for them at this point. And also, they like money. Meanwhile, games like Sonic Advance 1-3, Sonic Rush for the DS and Sonic Rivals for the PSP have been lost to time or “specific” websites. If anyone from SEGA happens to be watching this, firstly: where’s the new Binary Domain you cowards? Secondly, and more importantly, can we get a Sonic Handheld Collection at some point in the future? Chuck the Game Gear games in too.
All three Sonic Advance games offered a more modern version of the classic Sonic gameplay, with an aesthetic based on Sonic Adventure and beyond. The core gameplay is basically the same, as you’re running from left to right as fast as possible, trying to collect rings and Chaos Emeralds while fighting against Eggman’s evil schemes. Each game allows you to pick from several characters, each with their own unique abilities, though Sonic Advance 3 is the most complex offering, letting players control teams of two to use both the characters’ skills. While Sonic Advance 2 has a good bit of what analysts call “annoying bollocks”, they’re all pretty good games, so we need to give Sega a pizza our mind for abandoning them.
TMNT
It’s not really surprising to learn that a movie tie-in game is still stuck on a console like the GBA, especially when that IP is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Countless developers and publishers, along with different rights-holders for the movies, TV shows and comics, have had their fingers in the TMNT pie, so it’s no wonder a bunch of them have been left behind over the years. One TMNT game that’s unsurprisingly still stuck on the Game Boy Advance is the one based on the 2007 movie, with Ubisoft deciding to launch a GBA game alongside the DS and home console release. Creating a GBA game 3 years after the release of the DS was a bold choice, but TMNT for the GBA is actually one of the best reviewed of the lot. Clearly they were on to something.
While the home console and even PSP and DS versions of TMNT were 3D brawlers that were heavily inspired by the popular (at the time) Prince of Persia series, the GBA version is simply an excellent 2.5D brawler, reminiscent of the original arcade Turtles games. The GBA wasn’t exactly bereft of brawlers, in fairness, with The Jackie Chan Adventures offering another excellent licensed beat ‘em up, but being able to play as the Turtles as they batter the Foot Clan is always fun, and the game has some very clean animations and nice sprite work to boot. If you’re enjoying the current re-emergence of modern retro brawlers, TMNT might scratch a nice throwback itch.
There’s also the TMNT game from 2003, which isn’t as good but is still decent. Lettuce move on to the next game.
Metal Slug Advance
You want some of the best experience that the run and gun genre has to offer, you want the Metal Slug series. SNK’s long-running, chaotic shooter franchise, Metal Slug has been setting the standard for run and gun games for decades now, but one entry in the series has been massively overlooked for some reason: Metal Slug Advance. In terms of core gameplay, it’s basically the same game, as you’re controlling a soldier blasting through waves of General Morden’s troops, but there’s a few key additions and changes to the overall formula that make Metal Slug Advance a different beast entirely.
Firstly, the four main Metal Slug protagonists (Marco, Tarma, Eri and Fio) have all been replaced with new recruits Walter and Tyra, but the main changes concern the actual gameplay. Lives have been replaced with a health meter, which is good news for anyone who’s sick of dying in just one hit, while a brand new card system gives players collectibles to find that unlock new concept art or even boost the player’s regular abilities. Metal Slug Advance’s card system alone makes the game a lot more replayable, while the life meter ensures players of all skill levels can enjoy this underappreciated entry in run and gun greatness.
Also, if you want more Metal Slug-esque action on the GBA, check out the Lilo & Stitch game. No, we’re serious. It’s Metal Slug under the guise of a Disney game. Quite the infiltration there.
Medal of Honor: Infiltrator
Before Call of Duty became the premier first person shooter series out there, Medal Of Honor had that specific distinction, with a whole generation of 30something dudes still haunted by the opening mission in Frontline. Medal of Honor’s level of incredible success inevitably spawned spin-offs, tie-ins and everything in between. Released a year after Allied Assault and Frontlines, and the same year as Rising Sun, Medal Of Honor: Infiltrator was a new perspective for the MoH series, literally. Every game in the series up until that point had been a first person shooter, and while sure, there’s some first person on-rails turret sections here, the bulk of Infiltrator’s 15 levels consist of top-down blasting and a little bit of stealth.
As Corporal Jake Murphy, you’re essentially given a whistle-stop tour of different theaters of war during World War 2, fighting the Axis powers in Africa, France and Norway. Some missions involve you shooting absolutely everything that moves in order to take and destroy objectives, while others live up to the game’s Infiltrator subtitle by dropping you behind enemy lines, forcing you to use stealth in order to achieve your goals. You can still shoot everything obviously, but sometimes there’s just too many enemies.
If EA ever had the thought of remastering, remaking or simply re-releasing the Medal of Honor series, Infiltrator should definitely be a factor.
Astro Boy: Omega Factor
Like most retro gaming channels, we’re definitely guilty of bringing Astro Boy: Omega Factor up whenever we get the chance, along with most other Treasure games. But when it comes to excellent games that are still stuck on the Game Boy Advance, the fact that Astro Boy: Omega Factor hasn’t been ported to other platforms yet is wild. Astro Boy is one of the most recognisable and historic anime and manga of all-time, so one of his best games being left behind on the Game Boy Advance is quite the surprise.
A beat ‘em up at its heart, Astro Boy: Omega Factor sees the titular robotic lad fighting his way through various levels to deal with a conspiracy involving the rights of robots. Omega Factor shares some similarities to other Treasure run and gun shooters, like Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier, which is some pretty impressive company to be in.. The graphics are stellar too, and there’s some light RPG mechanics as you interact with characters and unlock upgrades, and even some shmup sections to change things up. This is one of the most fun games on the GBA in general, so it really does deserve a second life, but you guys don’t know how many second takes I had to do cos I kept saying Astro Bot. I am a dumb man. .
Next up, let’s talk about blue Ray William Johnson.
Karnaaj Rally
As well as spelling “carnage” like a normal person, trying to release a racing game on the Game Boy Advance must have been tough, as you were competing with some pretty big hitters. Mario Kart: Super Circuit, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity and V-Rally 3 are just a few examples of excellent GBA racing games, so if you were going to try and compete in such a tightly contested genre, you needed to do something to stand out. Karnaaj Rally certainly took that advice to heart, as their approach to standing out was to create whatever the hell this cover is. You might look at it and laugh, but which cover will you remember more out of these two?
But luckily Karnaaj Rally is also a pretty fun game too.
A top-down racer in a similar vein to the likes of Micro Machines and others, Karnaaj Rally doesn’t really break the mold too much when it comes to racing games, especially with regards to its career mode. You pick a car with a sponsor, you win races, earn money to purchase upgrades and use weapons to blast your opponents off the track. It’s simple fun, which made it perfect for a handheld release.
Now, Karnaaj Rally did get ported in 2007 as K-Rally, but it was to Symbian OS mobile devices, something that’s been discontinued since 2012-13, meaning Karnaaj Rally is back to being stuck on just the GBA. Blue Ray William Johnson’s legend deserves to live on.
Lunar Legend
People like to snipe at The Last Of Us Parts 1 and 2 or Skyrim for the amount of times they’ve been remade and re-released, but there’s arguably a worse offender from much earlier in the history of the gaming industry: enter Lunar: The Silver Star. Originally released for the SEGA CD in 1992, Lunar: The Silver Star would receive no less than 3 enhanced remakes for different platforms across the next 15 or so years. Two were Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete for the PS1 in ‘96, and Silver Star Harmony in 2008 for the PSP. There was even a remastered collection of Silver Star Complete and Lunar 2 released recently. But we’re concerned today with the second re-release, Lunar Legend in 2002.
In some ways, Lunar Legend is a scaled back retelling of the events of the original game, as due to the storage restrictions imposed by the GBA cartridge, features like voice acting and the full video cutscenes had to be removed entirely. However, Lunar Legend did also change what would have been a decade-old story at that point, altering some dialog pieces to essentially tell a more compact version of a JRPG classic. Is Lunar Legend a definitive version of this game? Maybe not, but it did introduce Limit Break-style special attacks that’d be used in the PSP release, making it a key part of Lunar’s evolution. Also, the sprite work is nothing short of phenomenal, so it basically being forgotten is a shame.
Right, that’s the Ender this entry.
Zone Of The Enders: The Fist Of Mars
Just like how “bullet time is always fun time”, we have another saying: “mech game is always bechst game”. One mech series that’s become a cult favourite over the years is Zone of the Enders, with the Hideo Kojima produced series offering some of the best mech combat gameplay on the PS2, or PS3 and Xbox 360 if you picked up the HD Collection just for that Metal Gear Rising demo.
What was unfortunately missing from that HD Collection was The Fist of Mars, a semi-sequel/side story to the original game that explores the ongoing war between the forces of Earth and Mars. As a young boy, Cage Midwell, who gets caught up in an attack, you find a mysterious LEV and use it to join a rebel group called Born In Space. Unlike the real-time combat of the main series, The Fist of Mars is a tactical RPG played in a similar manner to Super Robot Wars. The whole game is given an anime-style presentation and episodic structure, and the strategy gameplay and objectives ensure you’re entertained throughout all 26 episodes.
It’s all a bit easy, but when you can have fun mecha action in the palm of your hand, it’s easy to get ogre that.
Tactics Ogre: The Knight Of Lodis
Despite being one of the forefathers of the tactical RPG genre, we don’t see much from the Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre series these days. Square did release a port of the PSP remake of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, titled simply Tactics Ogre: Reborn, for PC and most modern consoles in November 2022, but aside from that, it’s been radio silence. Maybe we’ll get some kind of Octopath Traveler-esque remake out of them in the future,, have been doing, but they shouldn’t forget about Tactics Ogre: The Knight Of Lodis on the GBA in the process.
A prequel story to the events of the rest of Tactics Ogre, the game follows the titular Knight of Lodis, Alphonse, who begins to learn first hand about the violence and oppression Lodis is inflicting on the neighbouring country of Ovis. Not the bread. Like other Tactics Ogre games, you manage multiple units of soldiers, each of them with their own race, class and alignments that affect how they perform in battle, with each side taking it in turns to try and wipe each other out. The mission based structure made Tactics Ogre a handheld dream, while the sheer amount of choices and requirements needed for the various endings help to keep this one easy to pick up and get lost in even today.
Speaking of things that got lost:
Mother 3
The mythical white whale of all Nintendo games, Earthbound/Mother fans have been asking for an English localisation of Mother 3 for about as long as people have been asking for Half-Life 3, if not longer. It’s not surprising, since it took Nintendo about 25 years or so to release an actual English port of the original Mother, despite bringing the second game to the West as Earthbound, but it didn’t erase the hurt caused by games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl including Mother 3 characters and stages when the game wasn’t even available over here. And look, before anyone says anything, we know that Nintendo did re-release Mother 3 for Wii U and Switch in Japan alone, but as far as we’re concerned, this is still a stuck GBA game. It’s just stuck in one region instead of on one platform.
A top-down RPG like previous entries in the series, Mother 3 follows new kid Lucas as he deals with the rampaging Pigmask Army, gathering a crew of like-minded party members in the process. While the RPG combat is mostly the same as other games, Mother 3 did introduce a rhythm-action inspired element to the combat, as players can string together attacks in time with the background music to deal additional damage. Throw in some incredibly charming and loveable characters and it’s no wonder that people have been begging and pleading for that Mother 3 localisation. What makes this worse is that the game is on Nintendo Switch Online in Japan right now. Nintendo you tarts.
READ NEXT: Ambitious GBA Games That Pushed the Handheld
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