Final Fight One

When it comes to the classic beat’em-up Final Fight, the discerning gamer has many flavors to choose from. You can go for the slickness of the nearly arcade-perfect Sega CD version, with it’s arranged soundtrack and crisp graphics; or you can settle for the watered-down Super Nintendo cartridge, if you can stomach the removal of [...]

Klonoa: Empire of Dreams

With the recent release of Klonoa for Wii, a remake of the PS1 game, it reminded me that this was a pretty underrated series that I needed to spend some time with. And while the original Playstation will run you a pretty penny to find on the used market, the other games in the series [...]

Mario Pinball Land

Mario Pinball Land was the inevitable merging of Mario and pinball that was released on GBA. This game piqued my interest for a number of reasons; I’ve been a pinball fan as long as I can remember playing games in arcades, I’m a sucker for themed pinball, I’m a Mario fan, and it is the [...]

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Of all the portable Castlevania games for GBA and DS, I never got around to this one for some reason. The game seemed to disappear from store shelves and then got expensive, and eventually I forgot about it until its sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, was released. If this was a simple comparison of Aria to [...]

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

When I first got my Game Boy Advance, the two games I started with were Golden Sun and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. Both of these games are fantastic, but I liked Castlevania a little bit more, so I ended up playing that first. The GBA was a big step up from the Game Boy [...]

Wario Land 4

Released in 2001, this was one of the earlier original platformers for the Game Boy Advance. I’ve always liked the Wario games, and when I found this inexpensive used cartridge, it was too good of a deal to pass up. While this game certainly doesn’t break any new ground for the series or platformers in [...]

Drill Dozer

Game Freak, perhaps best known for developing most of the important Pokemon games, released this underrated gem for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. At its heart, Drill Dozer is a classic platformer, mixing elements of Mega Man, Kirby, and countless other platformers. The big gimmick in this game to set it apart from other [...]

Final Fantasy VI Advance

With the porting of every NES and SNES Final Fantasy, it was only a matter of time before Square-Enix released Final Fantasy VI on Nintendo’s friendly handheld device. A wonderful gaming experience awaits anyone who might have missed this treasure in the mid-nineties, or anyone who wants to relive one of the richest games [...]

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3

I think it’s an understatement to say that most gamers are well familiar with Super Mario Bros 3 by now. While Super Mario Bros reinvented the platformer and introduced us to Mario’s first platforming action game (Mario Bros and Donkey Kong notwithstanding) and Super Mario Bros 2 (US) introduced us to some crazy characters, better [...]

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

In 2004, Square-Enix decided to re-release Final Fantasy I & II a second time in the US as Dawn of Souls for Game Boy Advance (the first was the similar Final Fantasy Origins for Playstation). While the GBA version lacks the fancy cinemas of its Playstation brother, it adds new dungeons to both games to [...]