GAME BOY ADVANCE GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

I've owned a GBA longer than I can remember, and though in my head it was a shovelware platform (a slightly unfair assessment owing to most of what I played on it as a kid), I want to give its library another shake more and more as time goes on. Here's what good I've found on it, or maybe what I found uniquely bad enough to talk to you about.

[#] Doom (Activision, 2001)

Max crunchy portable FPS satisfaction.

Doom was ported to a slew of consoles in the 90s, but by the 2000s, it was rather old hat. Like a lot of old hat games, though, Doom became the domain of lower-powered handheld game consoles, just beginning to be able to run something like it. Based off the Atari Jaguar port done by John Carmack himself (like most of the classic 90s console ports were), this is a highly accurate Doom that makes a few concessions in places you won't notice to stay highly playable where you will.

What makes GBA Doom so successful is that you can use the shoulder buttons to strafe left and right. Doom without dedicated strafe controls is a chore, and this right away puts it head and shoulders above even its Jaguar forefather. You get the main three episodes here, 24 levels, and aside from some simplified geometry and the removal of Nightmare difficulty (Nightmare in this port is Ultra-Violence on PC), everything, every gun, every monster, is retained. It really is Doom on the GBA.

It's an easy port to laugh at, admittedly. The graphics are chunky, all the blood has been recolored green, and the framerate can vary depending on how much is going on. You can disable all the mood lighting in the settings to massively increase the framerate, which I've done for the last two screenshots, and the increased smoothness more than makes up for the dull visuals. Seriously, quality port. It might be a little obsolete, but why are you playing Doom if you care about obsolescence?

Recommended for... those who like to concealed carry.

[#] Namco Museum (Namco, 2001)

No frills, double espresso, no foam arcade compilation.

Each new console brings new cash-in arcade conversions, and the GBA was no exception. This and sister game Pac-Man Collection are effectively GBA ports of the PS2 Namco Museum to the GBA, just with the four Pac games split into their own compilation (Ms. Pac-Man sticks around here, no doubt because a Namco Museum cart without any Pac representation would've sold like bottled Magic Johnson jizz). As threadbare as that collection was, you can forgive it a little more when it's a lil GBA instead of a wholeass PS2. That said, and while this is a nice comp, there's one flaw that I know bothers some people, and it might bother you too.

You're getting five games here, Ms. Pac-Man (in toggleable full-screen ant mode or a scrolling maze with full-sized sprites variety), Dig Dug, Galaga, Galaxian, and Pole Position. The good news is these games are highly faithful and run great. According to a developer comment I saw on YouTube, this uses decompiled ROMs of the real games with the Z80 instruction set reimplemented in C, so in English, they're pretty damn accurate. Seriously, for a way to while away some time playing Galaga in an airport or whatever (I play mine on my 3DS with a Virtual Console inject), this does exactly what it says on the tin and it does it nicely.

The big omission is the total lack of high score saving. According to that same comment, Namco figured the doubled manufacturing costs putting a battery backup onto the carts to save scores would've killed their cart margins and just went without. Given high scores are a lot of the replayability of coin-op games, that might be a dealbreaker for you--or maybe the lack of any deeper cuts (Mappy, Xevious, Bosconian, Super Pac-Man, etc.) makes you yawn. I certainly wouldn't have turned down more games. For what's here, though, I can hardly complain.

Recommended for... arcade nerds whiling away time in an airport.

[#] Pac-Man Collection (Namco, 2001)

Pac, and he fits in your hand. Duh.

This is effectively the same game as Namco Museum for the GBA, just with Pac-Man, Pac-Man Arrangement, Pac-Attack, and Pac-Mania for the game lineup. These were ported by the same team in the same way with similarly fine results, though again without high score saving. Given that these are such common carts and given how good they are for what they are, if you like arcade comps, have both on hand. Enjoy a bit of Pac-Attack on the go.

Recommended for... pill poppers and those seeing ghosts.

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