The Game Boy Advance was a worthy successor to the Game Boy, taking handheld gaming and bringing it to the next level. Pulling together some of their most iconic games, Nintendo put forth their best efforts into making the GBA the must-have console for children everywhere. Due to its popularity, there were a lot of developers who wanted a piece of the GBA pie. Unfortunately, that often went one of two ways. The first was a company would rush out a game that was either poorly-made or just a shameless attempt at cashing in on a property.
Either way, the results were less than impressive. Needless to say, there are plenty of great GBA games that never got a fair chance in the spotlight. Many of them becoming cult classics or hidden gems, they will forever be remembered as such. Another mistake made was that the sprites were too big, making the area of visibility small, which made it easier to perish in an already difficult game.
It was a port that needed much more effort before its release. When it comes to the various Nintendo franchises that never got a fair chance in the spotlight, Golden Sun is often at the top of the list.
Mortal Kombat is one of the most beloved fighting game franchises of all time, with the first three entries bringing in a lot of fans. It was that bad. Mortal Kombat Advance tries to carry over the systems of the console games to a handheld, but without the benefit of the tighter directional inputs of a full controller.
Mega Man: Battle Network was unlike anything the franchise had seen beforehand. Where the games were typically tough-as-nails platformers, Battle Network was focused on more adventure-esque, RPG elements.
Each battle took place on a grid that had to be managed with attacks and movement. After finishing both games, you can then unlock the main story. This mini-series originally was going to be three separate games, but eventually, they had to shrink it to basically 2. The series was a very successful one as both games sold 4 million copies each. This was deserving as many fans share the opinion that these were the best games on the Game Boy Color.
Both of these games took advantage of the use of color more than any Game Boy game before them, thus being two of the most visually pleasing games to ever release on the system. Seasons notably took advantage of this as you can change the color design based on the seasons. Remember the days when Mario Party was actually a decent spinoff series in the Super Mario universe? It feels like those long multiplayer nights of the Nintendo 64 days are over. After the Nintendo 64 games, Mario Party as a series took quite a dip, featuring less interesting mini-games, rule changes to the board games that made it less exciting, and during the GameCube era, releasing a new Mario Party every single year made the series very stale.
Among the many GameCube games was one that Nintendo decided to put on the Game Boy Advance , simply titled Mario Party Advance , and that game took the series to a new low.
Mario Party Advance focused more on a single player experience oddly enough. The mini-games ranged from extremely basic memory games or platforming games that were all done before. It lacked a whole lot of creativity that was seen in the earlier games.
The single player didn't include the traditional coins and stars rules, it was more like, keep winning to keep playing. Single player games would often end in just a few turns if you either lose a mini-game or just had bad luck on the dice roll.
This worst entry is more about the unfortunate reality falling on one of the best racing franchises out there. F-Zero: GP Legend wasn't exactly a bad game. It featured intense races, a large selection of race machines to chose from, and looked visually pleasing.
However, this game completely tanked in sales. What is extra shameful about that is that Nintendo even had an animated series that debuted on regular TV around the time the game released in They must have been hoping to boost the series popularity similar to what happened with the Kirby series in Kirby: Right Back At Ya. However, in North America, the animated series only lasted 15 episodes before being canceled. It would conclude its first and only season 51 episodes in Japan, ending the series on a cliffhanger, but it wasn't even accepted well there.
There was a rumor that Nintendo approached the Need For Speed developers in hope to create a game on Wii U, but it never happened. Even to this day you will still see a good number of fans hoping for a brand new F-Zero every year, even a port of F-Zero: GX one of, if not, the greatest racing game ever would suffice.
It was developed by Intelligent Systems. It didn't take until the 7th game in the series to finally make it's debut internationally in Fire Emblem featured a deep strategy RPG experience with tons of characters and different classes. While the main complaint about the game was that Lyn's story would basically be a huge tutorial, it can still be a very challenging experience.
Players had to be very careful with their decisions because if an ally falls in battle, they are gone in that save file for good. It also featured fantastic music and a great storyline that is one of the best in the series. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is actually a prequel to the previous entry that featured Roy, who was famous for appearing alongside Marth in Super Smash Bros: Melee before the series was localized.
As of today, it has still yet to be officially localized in other regions. This was a major moment for not only the Game Boy Advance but for the series as well. Despite some dark times that nearly ended the series for good, Fire Emblem has emerged as one of Nintendo's top series in popularity.
Yoshi Topsy Turvy , also known as Yoshi Universal Gravitation outside of North America, is a unique game on Game Boy Advance where the game cartridge itself features a built-in gyro sensor. A large part of this game's gameplay revolves around tilting the Game Boy Advance system itself either left or right. Tilting the system results in the world being tilted as well. Certain platforms would come closer to you, or changing the gravity to allow a spherical object to roll to a certain point.
What made this game so bad was that, despite the unique play style and similar look to the great Yoshi's Island, it didn't play anything like you would hope a Yoshi game would play like.
The tilting was a bit clunky, it wasn't a perfect one-to-one motion; Either extreme to the left or extreme to the right, making it difficult to maintain normal balance. It was a very short game with a very silly story.
Of course, just about every Yoshi game has a story revolving around happiness, but it doesn't help when you have to bear with it while playing a poorly designed game. In , Rare would release what would be the last game from the famed Banjo-Kazooie series on a Nintendo system.
This game was actually in development before Rare was bought out by Microsoft. The sum of all our fears is what this game represents. Ubisoft Red Storm based this game on a movie in which Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman starred — actually pretty good -. It is an adaptation of the excellent PC game, which unfortunately does not work at all on the Nintendo GameCube. Unlike the original version, The Sum of All Fears for the GameCube is only playable in first person, which is rare considering the gameplay is slow and inaccurate.
The graphics are horrible compared to the PC title, and the sound is the worst. The music is repetitive, the sound of the weapons effects appear to have been recorded underwater, and the voices through a walkie-talkie. It is a shame because you can tell that the idea for The Sum of All Fears is excellent; the problem is the execution.
The plot of Trigger Man is similar to what we would find in a Godfather movie or an episode of The Soprano. The gameplay is so identical to Hitman that it could almost be a sequel — poorly done.
Characters are lousy designed and lacking in personality. Enemies do not drop weapons when killed, which is problematic thanks to the limited number of items the player can carry. Also, the graphics are squared, more like what we would find in a Nintendo 64 game. Also, the game is very short. You can finish it in an entire afternoon — which I suppose is good, considering how painful it is for the players to finish it.
The biggest problem of Trigger Man is how generic it is since it is nothing original. Considering the Catwoman movie with Halle Berry was horrible, it should come as no surprise that the adaptation to the video game is just as bad. The controls are lousy; moving Catwoman is nearly impossible.
The graphics are weak, and the camera is the worst. It moves too much, it never positions itself where it should be, and it despairs more than anything else. Additionally, to all of the above, the game is short; it ends quickly, but the taste in your mouth is very unpleasant. Where Larry can't get a girl into bed to save his life, Lula is a pornographic actress, so her adventures cut straight to the bedroom. As such, nudity levels in Lula 3D are sky high, but the games lack of fun is rivaled only by its lack of respectable clothing.
The story of Lula 3D has the heroine trying to save her kidnapped co-stars so she can make her own porno movie, but the objectives make little to no sense. Go into the bedroom and host a webcam show, that'll get your friends back!
Wait, now the game shifts into a cover-based first-person shooter, so shoot your way out! Also, basic movement is mouse to turn and keyboard to move, but doing both at the same time can crash the game. Basic movement can crash the game! Not even the cheap thrills can save Lula and her pals. Originally planned to commemorate SEGA's mascots' 15th anniversary, Sonic turned out to represent the terrible monster the franchise had become.
Here, the once proud king of fast action platforming personified how far the mighty do fall were talking Spinal Tap proportions. A terribly jumpy camera, lousy collision, and an uninspired and downright creepy story are three things that Triple-A titles should avoid at all costs.
The real culprit here, though, is the fact that Sonic just isn't fun. If the litany of Sonic titles from the past ten years or so doesn't convince you, playing only an hour of Sonic will be reason enough to be wary of the character from now on. Japanese RPGs get a lot of flak these days. People call them linear, obtuse slogs through redundant settings in which you grind out levels so as to figure out a baroque combat system used to finish an excessively insipid plot with obnoxious characters.
People these days are dumb; they were talking about this ten years ago with Unlimited SaGa. More or less a board game for exploration with slot machine-like combat, Unlimited SaGas name must have come from the infinite amounts of tedium that players could expect. These unlucky or equally dumb players didn't move around dungeons or towns in the traditional sense more than they just chose locations and NPCs to talk to, and battles were just as much about lousy luck as they were about stat building and smart tactics.
There may not be one definitive cause for JRPG decline in the West, but this might be as close as we can to pinpointing it. Video games can be great teachers; they can offer a glimpse into sports you've never tried, worlds you've never seen.
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