Date played: March 10th
Platform: GBA
Session fun rating: 9/10
I bought a GBA SP on eBay for a decent price. It came with a large lot of games, some of them great, some of them completely awful. The hardware itself is a great little piece of electronics. It has a perfect size for portability, has very long battery life, a great screen and great build quality. I tried every single game though, so here we go.
The worst game in the bunch has to be Star X. This is a little space shooter that looks a lot like a shitty version of Star Fox, except it sucks balls. To be fair, it's quite a feat that they made a fully polygonal game on a GBA... but the game is awful. It controls like crap, has a disastrous framerate and is quite boring.
Road to Wrestlemania X8 is a hilarious looking wrestling game. I've never liked any wrestling game, ever, so it's no surprise that I had no interest in this. I fought Hulk Hogan as The Rock and managed a couple of funny looking grabs, big punches, and understood nothing of the combat system.
Madden 2003 is an awful version of the famous football game. I have no idea how to play these games. I couldn't stop one person on defense and couldn't gain a single yard on offense when I quit the game.
I thought Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets would have been at least passable, but it turns out it's an unresponsive, boring mess with oddly washed out graphics. Everything looks too bright, like they turned the gamma on too high.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is a Game Boy Color game and let me tell you, it's an insult to the franchise in every way. The game is a side scroller! I couldn't figure out how to do any tricks beside grinds and the short level I played was complete and utter shit.
Cross Town Heroes is a kid's game where you control a fire truck (I think there are more vehicles later) in a small town to take out fires and rescue puppies. There was also a crazy mini game where I had to douse burning clowns in buildings and avoid the pies they threw at me! It plays well enough and while it's too simple for me, I might get my daughter to try it.
Jurassic Park III: The DNA Factor is a weird looking side scroller where a scientist collects DNA which is scattered around the island. It features two "levels" of navigation, the top path and the bottom path. I played a bit of the first level where I fought a few small dinosaurs with a knife and jumped over chasms, none of which was any fun.
Top Spin 2 is a simple tennis game that plays all right and look all right. Nothing special here folks.
Scooby-Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed is as awful as you might expect it to be. At least it controls well enough and looks pretty good. It's also very weird playing a game without a battery save...
All-Star Baseball 2004 surprised me in it's quality. It's a well made, good looking baseball game. Too bad I hate baseball video games...
I got the original Game Boy Tetris too and it's still as amazing as it ever was. Plus, I forgot that the GBA adds color to the GB games and it looks quite nice.
Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace is a pretty cool game. It's a 2D beat 'em up where everyone's favorite photographer superhero beats up thugs. I made my way through the first level, punching and kicking bad guys all over and using web shot to stun and damage them. The swinging mechanics are tons of fun and Spidey is easy to control. I got to the boss, but he promptly kicked my ass, though I wasn't playing very carefully.
Pokemon Pinball is very special for one simple reason: it has rumble. Rumble on a fucking portable platform. It's also a pretty cool pinball game. The table itself is simple, but there is a Pokemon catching mechanic some progression mechanics.
Cruis'n Velocity is a fucking mess, at least at first glance. I will give it another go, but the camera is too far away from the car, the track is ugly and boring and it controls about as well as a donkey.
Super Monkey Ball Jr. is a pretty great rendition of the popular monkey-in-a-ball-rolling-around-on-a-dangerous-platform game. I played a couple of levels and was surprised at how well it played. While this isn't the type of game I play for long periods of time, it's a great little time killer.
Bomberman Tournament surprised me. From the title, I expected....well, I expected a Bomberman Tournament! It turns out it's a weird, action/RPG hybrid... It has towns, villagers, items, and I even had a weird turn based battle using a minion I picked up. I explored a little forest, gathered some upgrades and battled deadly balloons and trees that come to life. I also built a landmine bomb. This game is pretty cool.
Spyro Orange is a sort of crossover with Crash Bandicoot. It's a well put together side-scroller that I kind of liked. I didn't play long enough to say much about it except that it controls very nicely and has good looking sprite graphics.
Namco Museum is a nice collection of retro Namco games. It includes Ms. Pac-Man, which plays well but is really hard to see on the small screen. The same can be said of Galaga and Galaxian. Dig Dug works very well on the handheld. Pole Position too. Not too shabby.
Iridion 3D is Shin'en's first game. Recently, I played Nano Assault Neo on Wii U and it shows that this is a team that loves their schmups. Iridion 3D looks really good graphically, it controls well and was pretty fun. I died on the first boss. It's a tube shooter, which makes aiming a bit difficult on the small screen sometimes, but it generally works well.
I played a tiny bit of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 which is a technical marvel, but I think I've had my fill of Tony Hawk for a lifetime. Besides, I'd rather play OlliOlli for my portable skateboarding fix.
Lady Sia is a weird little 2D action game. Sia is a warrior equipped with a sword and a magic ring that has to battle evil. It has a very cute art style, it made me think of Scribblenauts. It controls well and is fun to play, I will definitely be back to this one.
Mech Platoon is a very interesting RTS that managed to keep my attention longer than I expected. I build a little base, little workers, little robotic vehicular combat units and upgraded stuff. It plays a bit slow, but since this is a device with four buttons and a dpad, it ends up working pretty well. I like this one a lot.
Crash Nitro Kart is an excellent kart racer with colorful graphics, a fantastic framerate, fun weapons and interesting track design. It also has a cool adventure mode that reminds me of Diddy Kong Racing quite a bit.
Mario Kart Super Circuit is a game I won't play on this machine too much, since I have it on 3DS as part of the ambassador program, but it's still an amazing game that plays like a dream. DK is still my favorite character to use in this series...
Top Gear Rally is the surprise of the day. It's a VERY good racing game, even if the GBA doesn't have great 3D graphics, bad sound and no analog stick. That didn't stop Top Gear Rally from hooking me. It's pretty deep too, with different gear ratios, tires for all kinds of surfaces, multiple brake and steering settings and challenging tracks. The best part about this game is that it controls very well.
Metroid Zero Mission is the reason I got this eBay listing instead of many others. It goes for a hefty price on it's own, hasn't been released on any other platforms and since my recent love story with Super Metroid, I was very much interested in playing it. It's technically a re-imagining of the original Metroid, but I think it's been heavily modified. I only gave it a couple of minutes, but I expect this one will get played to completion sometime soon.
Platform: GBA
Session fun rating: 9/10
I bought a GBA SP on eBay for a decent price. It came with a large lot of games, some of them great, some of them completely awful. The hardware itself is a great little piece of electronics. It has a perfect size for portability, has very long battery life, a great screen and great build quality. I tried every single game though, so here we go.
The worst game in the bunch has to be Star X. This is a little space shooter that looks a lot like a shitty version of Star Fox, except it sucks balls. To be fair, it's quite a feat that they made a fully polygonal game on a GBA... but the game is awful. It controls like crap, has a disastrous framerate and is quite boring.
Road to Wrestlemania X8 is a hilarious looking wrestling game. I've never liked any wrestling game, ever, so it's no surprise that I had no interest in this. I fought Hulk Hogan as The Rock and managed a couple of funny looking grabs, big punches, and understood nothing of the combat system.
Madden 2003 is an awful version of the famous football game. I have no idea how to play these games. I couldn't stop one person on defense and couldn't gain a single yard on offense when I quit the game.
I thought Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets would have been at least passable, but it turns out it's an unresponsive, boring mess with oddly washed out graphics. Everything looks too bright, like they turned the gamma on too high.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is a Game Boy Color game and let me tell you, it's an insult to the franchise in every way. The game is a side scroller! I couldn't figure out how to do any tricks beside grinds and the short level I played was complete and utter shit.
Cross Town Heroes is a kid's game where you control a fire truck (I think there are more vehicles later) in a small town to take out fires and rescue puppies. There was also a crazy mini game where I had to douse burning clowns in buildings and avoid the pies they threw at me! It plays well enough and while it's too simple for me, I might get my daughter to try it.
Jurassic Park III: The DNA Factor is a weird looking side scroller where a scientist collects DNA which is scattered around the island. It features two "levels" of navigation, the top path and the bottom path. I played a bit of the first level where I fought a few small dinosaurs with a knife and jumped over chasms, none of which was any fun.
Top Spin 2 is a simple tennis game that plays all right and look all right. Nothing special here folks.
Scooby-Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed is as awful as you might expect it to be. At least it controls well enough and looks pretty good. It's also very weird playing a game without a battery save...
All-Star Baseball 2004 surprised me in it's quality. It's a well made, good looking baseball game. Too bad I hate baseball video games...
I got the original Game Boy Tetris too and it's still as amazing as it ever was. Plus, I forgot that the GBA adds color to the GB games and it looks quite nice.
Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace is a pretty cool game. It's a 2D beat 'em up where everyone's favorite photographer superhero beats up thugs. I made my way through the first level, punching and kicking bad guys all over and using web shot to stun and damage them. The swinging mechanics are tons of fun and Spidey is easy to control. I got to the boss, but he promptly kicked my ass, though I wasn't playing very carefully.
Pokemon Pinball is very special for one simple reason: it has rumble. Rumble on a fucking portable platform. It's also a pretty cool pinball game. The table itself is simple, but there is a Pokemon catching mechanic some progression mechanics.
Cruis'n Velocity is a fucking mess, at least at first glance. I will give it another go, but the camera is too far away from the car, the track is ugly and boring and it controls about as well as a donkey.
Super Monkey Ball Jr. is a pretty great rendition of the popular monkey-in-a-ball-rolling-around-on-a-dangerous-platform game. I played a couple of levels and was surprised at how well it played. While this isn't the type of game I play for long periods of time, it's a great little time killer.
Bomberman Tournament surprised me. From the title, I expected....well, I expected a Bomberman Tournament! It turns out it's a weird, action/RPG hybrid... It has towns, villagers, items, and I even had a weird turn based battle using a minion I picked up. I explored a little forest, gathered some upgrades and battled deadly balloons and trees that come to life. I also built a landmine bomb. This game is pretty cool.
Spyro Orange is a sort of crossover with Crash Bandicoot. It's a well put together side-scroller that I kind of liked. I didn't play long enough to say much about it except that it controls very nicely and has good looking sprite graphics.
Namco Museum is a nice collection of retro Namco games. It includes Ms. Pac-Man, which plays well but is really hard to see on the small screen. The same can be said of Galaga and Galaxian. Dig Dug works very well on the handheld. Pole Position too. Not too shabby.
Iridion 3D is Shin'en's first game. Recently, I played Nano Assault Neo on Wii U and it shows that this is a team that loves their schmups. Iridion 3D looks really good graphically, it controls well and was pretty fun. I died on the first boss. It's a tube shooter, which makes aiming a bit difficult on the small screen sometimes, but it generally works well.
I played a tiny bit of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 which is a technical marvel, but I think I've had my fill of Tony Hawk for a lifetime. Besides, I'd rather play OlliOlli for my portable skateboarding fix.
Lady Sia is a weird little 2D action game. Sia is a warrior equipped with a sword and a magic ring that has to battle evil. It has a very cute art style, it made me think of Scribblenauts. It controls well and is fun to play, I will definitely be back to this one.
Mech Platoon is a very interesting RTS that managed to keep my attention longer than I expected. I build a little base, little workers, little robotic vehicular combat units and upgraded stuff. It plays a bit slow, but since this is a device with four buttons and a dpad, it ends up working pretty well. I like this one a lot.
Crash Nitro Kart is an excellent kart racer with colorful graphics, a fantastic framerate, fun weapons and interesting track design. It also has a cool adventure mode that reminds me of Diddy Kong Racing quite a bit.
Mario Kart Super Circuit is a game I won't play on this machine too much, since I have it on 3DS as part of the ambassador program, but it's still an amazing game that plays like a dream. DK is still my favorite character to use in this series...
Top Gear Rally is the surprise of the day. It's a VERY good racing game, even if the GBA doesn't have great 3D graphics, bad sound and no analog stick. That didn't stop Top Gear Rally from hooking me. It's pretty deep too, with different gear ratios, tires for all kinds of surfaces, multiple brake and steering settings and challenging tracks. The best part about this game is that it controls very well.
Metroid Zero Mission is the reason I got this eBay listing instead of many others. It goes for a hefty price on it's own, hasn't been released on any other platforms and since my recent love story with Super Metroid, I was very much interested in playing it. It's technically a re-imagining of the original Metroid, but I think it's been heavily modified. I only gave it a couple of minutes, but I expect this one will get played to completion sometime soon.
