30. QIX (GB)

QIX is a classic game that suffers — if it suffers at all — from being born too soon. You essentially draw lines to cordon off areas of a rectangle for points - the larger the area, the better your score. Sounds simple but it's a great deal of fun, and satisfyingly simple to learn. This is definitely a game that some will find divine, while others will be puzzled by its popularity. It's quick to learn, easy to play and impossible to truly master. We can't promise you that you'll like this game, but if the game sounds even slightly appealing to you, we'd confidently say that it's worth the risk.

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29. The Final Fantasy Legend (GB)

Makai Toushi Sa・Ga, given the Final Fantasy label in the West, is the very first game in the SaGa series. It's an incredibly complex game for its time, but often obtuse by today's standards. While its two sequels improve upon the template laid down here, RPG traditionalists will still find much to like in the original game. Although it was designed to be a shorter experience more suited to a portable machine, it’s a tough little game and still worth a look all these years later.

28. Donkey Kong Land (GB)

We remember the first time we saw Donkey Kong Country on the SNES and wondering how a 16-bit machine could pull off its 'amazing' graphics — those pre-rendered sprites felt pretty special at the time. Seeing them approximated on the lowly Game Boy hardware in Donkey Kong Land felt like actual dark magic, though. With impressive animation and detailed backgrounds, sometimes you could get disorientated for a moment as enemies blended into the backdrop, but the way DKL managed to capture the essence of its 16-bit brethren makes it a fascinating and worthy entry in the Kongpendium.

27. Tetris Attack (GB)

Known as Panel de Pon in Japan, Tetris Attack was released on Game Boy and Super Nintendo, although it’s Tetris in name only – the actual game bears almost no resemblance to the portable’s killer app. The western version also saw characters from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island co-opted in an effort to attract an audience. Despite this blatant marketing ploy, Tetris Attack is a cracking block-swapping puzzler in its own right and well worth checking out alongside its more famous Russian namesake.

26. Kirby's Dream Land (GB)

Kirby’s Dream Land was and remains an exceptionally charming platformer, although you might find that the pink puff’s debut Game Boy adventure feels a bit too elementary these days. Many years' worth of nostalgia gives us huge affection for Kirby, but looking over the top of those rose-tinted glasses for a moment reveals a slightly pedestrian title being carried by that charm, a game that was outpaced by its descendants in virtually every way.

Kirby’s genesis is strong, especially considering the hardware, but the irresistible puffball has done better since. Naturally.

25. Game Boy Camera (GB)

A wonderful, strange piece of kit that blurs the line between game and hardware. Development on the software side of the Game Boy Camera project was led by Hirokazu ‘Hip’ Tanaka and the software within is full of odd audio-visual ticks, as if the spirit of the WarioWare games somehow infected the hardware. Eccentric Game & Watch-esque minigames accompany the base photo mode which enabled you to snap 128x112 pixel shots and stamp them with tiny pictures. Owners of its sister peripheral, the Game Boy Printer, could print out their masterpieces on thermal paper and distribute them accordingly.

Japanese 64DD owners could link the camera to Mario Artist: Talent Studio to create avatars of themselves a long time before Miis existed, and we still wish Rare’s plans to enable players to import photos into Perfect Dark multiplayer had made it past Nintendo. Still, we’re very glad that something as silly as this managed to see the light of day at all. If David Lynch ever made a lo-fi digital camera, it would look something like this.

24. Final Fantasy Legend III (GB)

Final Fantasy Legend III is a fitting end for the trilogy of Game Boy games; a very solid RPG experience that features a surprising degree of depth. If you like your quests long and your combat systems very basic and traditional in design, you’ll find much to like in this release, although you might find it a little tedious if you've got used to more modern RPG trappings. However, RPG enthusiasts are old hands when it comes for flirting with tedium in classic titles, and there’s still plenty to enjoy in this game – the final in the SaGa series to carry the 'Final Fantasy' moniker in the west.

23. DuckTales 2 (GB)

Scaling down the NES sequel as the original game did, the Game Boy interpretations of Capcom's classic platformers did an excellent job of giving Ducktales fans a version of the game to keep themselves occupied in the back of the car on the weekend trip to the grandparents’ house. With solid gameplay and great music, it’s worth tracking down if you only know the NES version – the level layouts are very different and there’s a plethora of items not found in the home console game.

22. Donkey Kong Land III (GB)

Donkey Kong Land III is a handsome Game Boy title which also sounds particularly lovely and caps off the Donkey Kong Land GB trilogy in fine fashion — it's arguably the pick of the portable bunch. Lucky Japanese gamers even got a version enhanced for the Game Boy Color which looked even lovelier. This was to be Rare's final 2D platformer featuring the DK clan and Twycross' custodians of Kong certainly went out on a high.

21. Bionic Commando (GB)

Because of its complete break away from genre convention by emphasising swinging over jumping, Bionic Commando is one of those games that you either love or hate. Nothing else plays quite like it, and this portable adaptation is a surprisingly robust and polished entry in the series. It might take some time getting used to the mechanics, but once your brain has rewired to Bionic Commando's method of madness, you'll find a real Game Boy gem.