I recently unearthed the Game Boy Pocket and the Game Gear from my childhood, and a friend gave me a Game Boy Advance for free. Unfortunately, I lost a number of games for the GB and GG. More accurately, my dad probably threw them away, sold them or destroyed them in the Great Videogame Purge of 2003. I’m lucky to still have what I do; my poor, brave SNES suffered a brutal death by sledgehammer in front of my very eyes, and the world may never know what happened to my PlayStation and my Dreamcast. And the GBA didn’t come with any games at all.
So help me build a handheld gaming library! Let me know–what were your favorite games for the Game Boy, GBA, and the Game Gear?
When I bought my Gameboy way back when, I really enjoyed The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I spent many nights playing this game, and when I finally beat the game, I turned around and played through it again!
If you are a fan of any of the Zelda games, then I would highly recommend this one.
Honest, the only game I ever had for GG was Sonic, and it was probably far from the best. My old-school GB (The big, huge, off-white originals) had three games. I lost them all except Kirby’s Dream World.
Those new Mario games suck, though. I played one on my nephews GB and found it ridiculous as compared to the old ones. I guess I’m a stick in the mud.
Any suggestions as to what kind of games you like?
In the meantime, my library (all GB/GBA)
Pokemon–No comments necessary really.
Pokemon Card League–Not bad, although simplistic.
Yu-Gi-Oh Dice Monsters–I enjoyed it. Nice strategy game.
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga–Freaking awesome. Great humour, neat battle system (Turn-based RPG with some timing to it). Easy for the game type, but that’s one of the things I liked about it.
Donkey Kong Land–Eh, it’s a platformer. Either you like 'em or you don’t.
Super Mario World–See above.
Tetris Plus–It’s Tetris.
Golden Sun 1&2–Good RPGs, though I found the puzzles on the hard side. Good graphics for the GBA.
Mario Kart–Yeah, so I have a lot of classics in my collection it seems…
Phantasy Star–A collection of Genesis games. I found them bland and annoying, with at least one having an auto-battle system (Blech). Don’t really recommend.
Strong RPG bent here, if you can’t tell. I think I’m missing some but I don’t have my GBA handy to see what I have for it. I do strongly recommend Superstar Saga though. If you’ve played other Mario RPG games, you already know the play-style.
I’m not as much into RPGs as I used to be when I had more time on my hands, but I can appreciate a good one. I’m big on shoot-em-ups and beat-em-ups (the latter, sadly, seems to have mostly passed with a bygone era), and I like a good platformer as much as the next guy. Action-adventure is cool (you guys are right–gotta pick up some Zelda games!), and I dig a good fighter or sports title too.
Mario’s Picross is a great puzzle game for the Gameboy if you’re into those and can find a copy. There are also some old NES and SNES Final Fantasy re-makes available.
Both of the newer Metroid games are good (especially Zero Mission) but the single best GBA game is Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. You can buy it on a double game cartridge that includes another Castlevania game that really isn’t any good. Yoshi’s island also is nice.
I dunno about the last. The vids I’ve seen for Phantom Hourglass (though rendered in 3d) are mostly in the overhead 2d style, the only noticable exception being the cannon fights while on the boat. So the gamepley style isn’t comepletely dead.
And don’t forget Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons for Game boy color. (you can play them on the gba)