Player 255

Game #55 Complete - Doom

The other Doom that made it to GBA. I found this one a bit more entertaining than Doom 2 as its levels were a bit shorter and simpler (compared to 2's mazes). Also seems to be a totally different port of the engine which is weird. Otherwise more or less the same as Doom 2, fun shooty action with design that's suffered a bit with age.

Rating: 4/5

Game #56 Played, No Ending - Super Puzzle Fighter II

A gem matching puzzle game which is inexplicably Street Fighter themed. Seemed decent enough but nothing ground breaking. I played a bit of the arcade mode for the challenge, I'm not sure if it has an end with credits but I didn't feel motivated to continue.

Rating: 3/5

Game #57 Complete - Silent Scope

Silent Scope is a port of the classic lightgun arcade game. It's a little awkward playing on the GBA with only a dpad, but it just about works. You shoot waves of bad guys on slightly badly rendered backgrounds. The game is fairly short, although it ends with a stupid final boss where you have literally one shot or you'd have to restart the game. I didn't hate it, but it wasn't particularly great.

Rating: 2/5

Game #58 Abandoned after >2 hours - Car Battler Joe

Car Battler Joe has an intriguing premise, it's a car battling RPG where you upgrade and level up your "Gun Vehicle" and fight stuff. However, it badly fails to deliver. Missions are repetitive and mostly consist of driving from point to point. The story is a bit ropey, and seem a bit badly translated. The game's interface is absolutely abysmal, with extremely shortened names like IrnFrms (Iron Frames?) and awkward one-item-at-a-time inventory management.

Rating: 2/5

Game #59 Complete - Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure

Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure is a 2D platformer based on Dragon Ball (Not Z). It follows a young Goku as he has zany comic adventures trying to obtain all the Dragon Balls. It follows the whole arc of Dragon Ball, up to the final fight with King Piccolo, before the time skip to DBZ. It's a really solid action platformer, with good gameplay. It also has a 2D Fighting Game style mode, used for some bosses, which is not amazing but not terrible. A few levels were a little annoyingly mazey, but otherwise the game is pretty great.

Rating: 4/5

Game #60 Complete - Blender Bros.

Blender Bros. is a 2D platformer in which you have to save a series of planets from some kind of evil I think. I'd actually played this before in a speed running blind race setting. It's main gimmick is the collectible little companions who give you different powers. It's an OK game generally, but with obnoxious boss fights.

Rating: 3/5

Game #61 Played, no ending - Mario Kart Super Circuit

It's Mario Kart. Not a particularly great instalment, the controls are a little twitchy and the graphics aren't amazing, but basically it's Mario Kart. I played through the cups for the challenge and then called it a day.

Rating: 3/5

Game #62 Almost Complete - Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King

This was a bit of a surprise, it's actually a Metroidvania style 2D platformer. A decent attempt, but controls were occasionally boring and most of the levels are in practise quite linear, with most of the powerups being gimmicks that get you past specific walls. Still, a surprise. The final boss turned out to be obnoxious, mainly because fighting him took so long, after I died once I gave up.

Rating: 2/5

Game #63 Complete - The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night

This is from the "bad kinda-edgy reboot" era of Spyro games, before he became a vehicle for the toys-to-life Skylanders. This is actually the second game in a trilogy, but the only one which made it onto the list with decent reviews. It's an OK action platformer, but with massively spongy enemies which take way too long to kill, padding out a relatively short game. Doesn't resemble any spyro I know.

Rating: 3/5

Game #64 Abandoned after >2 hours - Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis

An SRPG in a long-running series that's never really struck big (at least in this half of the world, not so sure about Japan). Seemed OK, but I found it unplayable due to the very slow pace of battles, because of the slow animations and repeated text prompts ("Choose where you want to move this character" on every single turn).

Rating: 2/5

Game #65 Complete - Turbo Turtle Adventure

Simple marble (turtle) rolling puzzle game. Puzzles are pretty simplistic, mostly being "find key to open door" or "find powerup to traverse corresponding obstacle". You can't get any kind of look ahead at the level, so a lot of the time you're just guessing at the correct path and have to retry when you go wrong. Gets a bit convoluted later on.