GBA Reviews, Game Boy Advance Reviews

The dynamic duo go portable

When we at Nintendo Life think of Rare’s masterpieces from the Nintendo 64 era, we think of expansive and adventurous games like Donkey Kong 64, Jet Force Gemini, and of course the beloved Banjo-Kazooie series. Off-the-wall characters, exuberant locales, and an epic sense of scope added to the hook of what made these...

Wahoo!

Starting life on the PlayStation in 1997, at a time when Super Mario 64 had just brought the gaming world triple-jumping headlong into the era of 3D platforming, Namco's Klonoa series has always done things differently. Klonoa's first outing, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, was a pioneering foray into 2.5D, mixing polygonal backgrounds with...

Once more, to arms!

For such a long-running series, it's hard to believe Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones was only the second game to leave Japan after GBA predecessor Fire Emblem. Since then the series has had a far bigger presence in the West, a fact underlined by Sacred Stones' status as a 3DS Ambassador title. If Sacred Stones is your first Fire...

Drawing you in

Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island joined a Nintendo tradition of re-releasing classic titles for a new audience. Bringing an iconic Super Nintendo platformer to the Game Boy Advance seemed perfectly apt, with the handheld more than capable of 16-bit standard visuals. The question remains, is this port worth playing today?...

No time to catch your breath

Nintendo has made its name in the games industry by providing tightly focused and highly polished experiences for over 20 years. Its games are always regarded as some of the best in their respective genres, so what to do when it's conquered all charted territory? Invent new ones, of course. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega...

A worthy successor

The Mario vs. Donkey Kong series has been going for quite a while now, with four entries under its belt. If you've never played the original, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's not much more than a fun Lemmings clone, but that's actually not true. In fact, Mario vs. Donkey Kong is closer to the Game Boy version of Donkey...

Oh, Kirby, you blowhard...

We have to hand this much to Kirby & The Amazing Mirror: it certainly isn't afraid of trying new things. We might not be totally convinced of the necessity of those things, of course, but it's always nice to see a series attempt to expand its boundaries somewhat. The story forges no new ground whatsoever, though, as...

A treasure

Wario is pretty good, for a bad guy. To look at him you wouldn’t think he’d have a heroic streak at all; he’s got the squiggly moustache of a pantomime villain and a nose that would put any alcoholic to shame. Despite all this he’s secretly a sweetheart: considering that the rotund treasure hunter started life as an antagonist to...

Gotta go fast

F-Zero has always been Nintendo’s way of flaunting how on the cutting-edge of technology it can be when it so chooses. Like a bat out of Hell, the original F-Zero launched alongside the Super NES to draw a clear distinction between where 16-bit Nintendid and SEGagged. Later on N64, F-Zero X boasted 30 on-screen polygonal racers and...

Short circuit

It’s hard to believe that the Mario Kart franchise has been around for nearly 20 years and appeared on eight different consoles. Mario Kart: Super Circuit may have been first released in 2001, but now it’s back for a whole new generation of players ten years after release through the 3DS Ambassador program. There are four cups to...

Like cold fusion, only cooler

Metroid Fusion slipped out of the airlock between two behemoths, simultaneously having to live up to the legacy of its predecessor Super Metroid, which is a big Power Suit to fill, and keep the advancing Metroid Prime at arm cannon's length. It would have been easy for Fusion to have become lost in the vacuum created by...

Small but mighty

Those poor Hylians just can't have any fun, can they? Just when everything seems to be all well and good, some creep with bad skin comes along, unleashes a whirlwind of evil and shrouds the land in darkness. It's tough for us to feel too bad for them, though. Because as history has shown, bad news for Hyrule means great news for...

A flipping good time?

Our beloved hero Mario has starred in a multitude of sports throughout his long career: golf, tennis, hockey, soccer, basketball, go-karts, etc. It seems there’s hardly anything the famous plumber can’t do — even going so far as winning a gold medal at the Olympics against his long-time rival, Sonic the Hedgehog. Nintendo...

Spin-tendo

One of the few good things about being old is that sometimes you can glean satisfaction from being in the right place at the right time, where you were lucky enough to have first-hand experience of something special. Nostalgia is the bread-and-butter of retro gaming and throughout its history there will always be moments that stick in a...

A fun but flawed port

1991's Street Fighter II is a game that got people very excited and led to a surge of interest in the fighting genre. It's also a game that got updated a lot — new moves, new characters, new speeds... — while also being ported to numerous home consoles and computers. When the 10th anniversary year arrived Capcom decided it was the Game Boy Advance's turn to get a version..

Will this get our seal of approval?

Released on the Famicom in 1990, the Japan-only Fire Emblem was a slice of strategy role playing heaven, but despite building up a loyal army of followers in its native Japan the series didn’t make it over to the Western world until Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance took up the sword in 2003. By this time the...

Choose your own survival horror

A popular release for the Playstation in 1999, Silent Hill saw players take control of Harry Mason – following a car accident, he awakens to find that his daughter, Cheryl, has disappeared. Naturally, Harry sets off to find her, but it soon becomes apparent that there's something strange about the surrounding town. This is also the set-up here, but as the name..

Some things, it seems, never change

In Japan in 1996 a craze started; by the turn of the century, it had worked its way around the world capturing the hearts and minds of gamers as easily as a level 3 Rattata is caught in a Master Ball. That craze was Pokémon: Nintendo’s pocket monster catching/training/battling powerhouse. The two Game Boy...

From zero to hero

First things first, Metroid: Zero Mission is not a straight remake of the original NES Metroid with GBA quality graphics. It's a complete retelling and retooling of Samus' first 2D space adventure, including remixed areas, new power-ups and over a decade of refinements added to the formula. Nintendo has freshened the experience...