Game #17 Complete - Jackie Chan Adventures

Jackie Chan Adventures is a side scrolling beat em up in the style of classic games like River City Ransom or Streets of Rage. It's based on an early 2000s cartoon named (guess what) Jackie Chan Adventures.

I have somewhat fond memories of the cartoon, but never played the game.

Game #16 Complete - Egg Mania

Egg Mania is an arcade puzzle released on the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube, and of course the GBA.

This is another one that I'd never heard of and probably never would have played outside of the challenge.

Game #15 Complete - Mega Man Zero 4

The Mega Man series is a very long running Capcom series, appearing mostly on Nintendo consoles. The Mega Man Zero sub series follows the eponymous Zero, a humanoid robot with fabulous hair who fights for a human resistance against evil "maverick" robots. I believe this all fits in with the somewhat confusing overall plot of the Mega Man series. They are side scrolling action/platformers

Mega Man Zero 4 took a long time for me to complete, but for once it was not the game's fault. Rather I was quite busy changing jobs and didn't get around to play it for a few months. Although it's the fourth game in the (sub-)series, I'm happy to play these out of order as I don't think the story's very important.

Game #14 Complete - Metal Slug Advance

Metal Slug Advance is a portable entry in the classic series of run-n-gun arcade games. The title is named after a tank that appears in every entry for the hero(es) to hop in and blast through the levels. I've never played much Metal Slug before, so I can't comment on how this fits in with the series.

Story wise, this is a spin-off, (I think) following some new recruits who start training and then find the island they are training on invaded by real enemies. At least I think that was the plot, it's not very well explained in game. Metal Slug games have never really been about the deep story though.

Game #13 Complete - Lego Star Wars

Lego Star Wars is a crazy idea for a video game. Lego games had a history of being mostly just kid friendly (although there are some gems in there). Star Wars games/movie tie ins in general had a history of being shoddy, slapped together to come out with the films and make a quick buck. Combine the two together and you get... a great game? At least on home consoles.

Not on the GBA however. This port fails to capture the magic that made the home console version a great game.

Game #12 Complete - Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

The Mario & Luigi is the smaller brother of the much more well known Paper Mario series, both descended from the original Super Mario RPG on the SNES. M&L focuses on the exploits of both Mario brothers together, as they explore new lands and go on adventures.

The story stays away from traditional Mario game tropes. The story opens as Princess Peach has lost her voice after betrayal by an ambassador from the Bean-bean kingdom and Mario and Bowser team up to go and get it back. There are some nice twists and turns in there too. The game has a great sense of humour, with running gags including the Bros' attempts to get their message across through gesturing and no one recognising this green guy who's with Mario.

Game #11 Abandoned after >2 hours/1 month - CIMA: The Enemy

I've given up on CIMA: The Enemy without finishing it, even though I don't have a really good excuse. The game is story driven etc. However, after making essentially no progress after a month and a half, I've given up on it so I can continue with the challenge. This was just because the game is really unenjoyable and I've failed to find the motivation to play it. Here's my review based on the first (roughly I think) quarter that I got through:

I'll start with the positive. CIMA: The Enemy has pretty unique gameplay, a mix of action-RPG and RTS elements. It seems like they were trying to make something original, and that's something to be admired. It's just that it was a bad idea, poorly executed. The graphics also seemed solid, with new background tilesets showing up in every dungeon.

Game #10 Partially Complete - Need for Speed Underground

Need for Speed is a series of arcade (in the sense of not being realistic simulators) street racing games. Need for Speed Underground for home consoles is a game that I personally have a lot of nostalgia for, having played it a lot on the PS2. The main features were the nice graphics (for the time), detailed car customisation, and fun career mode with a story told in pre-rendered cutscenes.

The GBA version is not up to that standard.

Game #9 Complete - Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand

Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand is an action RPG about hunting vampires with a unique gimmick: the cartridge has a light sensor used to measure sunlight in the real world, which you use to hunt the undead in the game. Boktai is the first in a series. Boktai 2 is on the challenge list, Boktai 3 was only released in Japan, and there's a spiritual successor, Lunar Knights, on the DS.

The gimmick plays out simply enough: if the cartridge light sensor picks up sunlight, it will be sunny in-game. Undead caught outside will burn up, and inside dungeons there are skylights which will provide light inside. The main character Django's attacks use sunlight energy which he stores in batteries which can be recharged in the sun. There are other ways to manage sunlight energy like items that restore it, and a "solar bank" which fills up whenever light is on the sensor and can be withdrawn from later. Playing in strong sunlight for an extended period will cause the game to overheat your gun, which seems to be a way of preventing kids from getting sunburnt.

Game #8 Complete - Riviera: The Promised Land

Riviera: The Promised Land is a JRPG in the "Dept. Heaven" series. This is a loosely connected series of games that all have unique twists on the mechanics of JRPGs and strategy/tactics games, and a norse-mythology inspired setting. Riviera was the first one released, but Yggdra Union for GBA is also in the series. It took me a long time to get through this one because, although it wasn't obviously bad in any specific area, I just felt unmotivated to play it. I only realised later this was probably due to the speed issues I'll get to later.

Riviera has some interesting and unique mechanics. In battle, characters don't have their own skills/spells that they know. Instead, everything is tied to items. For example, one character might be able to cast a particular spell if they have specific staff. There is no traditional exp/levelling either. Instead if a character can use an item, they will be able to "master" the item with repeated use. This will award them a stat boost at the end of the battle as well as unlock a powerful "overdrive" ability with that item in future battles. Items have limited durability, which means managing their use is vital.

Game #7 Abandoned After >2 Hours - Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul

So, another Yu-Gi-Oh game already, name Yu-Gi-Oh: The Eternal Duellist Soul. There are only 3 in the challenge list, so this is quite unlikely. At least I'm getting them out of the way early. This is the first Yu-Gi-Oh game to be released on the GBA (apart from Dungeon Dice Monsters which doesn't really count), whereas the 2006, the other game I played, was the last to be released.

Again, I played this for over 2 hours, and tried to give it a fair shake. Ultimately though, I'm dropping it as it again doesn't have a real main story mode and I'm not enjoying it much.

Game #6 Complete - Boulder Dash Ex

Boulder Dash Ex is a remake of the classic 8-bit Atari game Boulder Dash (no surprises there). It seems to be relatively obscure, although it has quite a good metacritic score, that comes from very few reviews. There also isn't a Wikipedia page for it (although there is one for Boulder Dash, the original game).

I beat the main story mode of Boulder Dash Ex. There's also a tutorial, and a multiplayer battle mode. Finally there's a classic mode which appears to be a closer representation of the original game.

Game #5 Complete - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a side scrolling beat em up based on the beloved, and sometimes abused, franchise. Actually there are several TMNT games on the GBA. Confusingly, this one is based on the 2003 animated series. There's another, just titled TMNT (the acronym, not spelled out) released in 2007, based on the movie. But that's for another time.

At the beginning you pick your turtle from the 4, and get down to it. Initially I thought the game was insanely short after I beat the 4 acts with the first character in less than an hour. But as it turns out the 4 turtles have significantly different paths, rather than it just being a different character on the same levels, and I went through them all. There are some collectible secret crystals to find, but I didn't really bother with them.

Game #4 Complete - Spyro: Season of Ice

Spyro: Season of Ice is an isometric 3d platformer with 2d graphics. It's a sequel to the classic 3d collectathon platformer series from the Playstation 1 era. Unlike the home console series and other sequels, which have gone in some crazy directions, Season of Ice is a direct sequel to the original trilogy and sticks pretty close in terms of gameplay too. I'm a big fan of the PS1 Spyro games.

You explore isometric 3d worlds as Spyro, a juvenile purple dragon, accompanied by his faithful dragonfly pal Sparx. An Rynoc has stolen the sorceresses' spell book (from Spyro 3) and has accidentally given himself 2 heads in an attempt to become smart. He needs 100 pairs of fairy wings to brew a potion to fix himself, and so has cast another spell to encase all the fairies in ice. Spyro, being the designated hero, has to go and save them and defeat the bad guy. Standard stuff, and the main villain is pretty nonthreatening and forgettable compared to some of the characters in the original series, but it gets the job done.

Game #3 Abandoned After >2 Hours - Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters: World Championship Tournament 2006

Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters: World Championship Tournament 2006 is an adaptation of the Yu-Gi-Oh Trading/Collectible Card Game, aka Duel Monsters, one of several on the GBA (3 made it into the challenge for reference). If you really don't know anything about Yu-Gi-Oh, I suggest you look it up elsewhere (also where you living under a rock in the early 2000s?) As for my experience with the franchise, I enjoyed the anime as a child, and more recently the Abridged Series on Youtube, but was never really into the trading card game. It's also worth noting I'm not a big fan of TCGs/CCGs in general, the only one I've played much of is Hearthstone, but I've lost interest in that too.

I'm abandoning Yu-Gi-Oh. I really didn't want to, as 2 in a row right at the start of the challenge is a bad precedent, but the game has broken me. This is within the rules as the game doesn't have a traditional story mode or ending, and I've played for more than 2 hours (more like 10). This evening has hammered home that I'm not having fun. I beat the same opponent twice in a row easily, and then proceeded to lose 14 times in a row before getting the 3rd win, due to a combination of abominable luck and occasional misplays. Then I looked it up and discovered I need 5 wins, not 3, to unlock the whole of the next tier of opponents. Blargh.

Game #2 Abandoned After >2 Hours - Game & Watch Gallery 4

Game and Watch Gallery 4 is a collection of mini games. These are based on the games from the Game and Watch series, very old single-game LCD handhelds produced by Nintendo. You may have noticed that this is entry number 4 in the series. Well, the previous 3 are on Gameboy/Gameboy Colour, so this is the only one we're playing for the challenge. It also has one of the lower metacritic scores, 71, just making it into the list.

There's no story mode. I haven't "completed" the game (in terms of reaching the credits, which are in the game). I haven't unlocked all the games either. But at this point I'm not having any fun, as I just find the minigames too slow and frustrating. I've played more than 2 hours, and played all the games unlocked so far. So I'm pronouncing this as "done". I may come back to it at some point if I feel like it, as I think part of the problem is that the game isn't really designed to be played intensively towards the goal of beating it and moving on. Here's what I've got to say about what I've seen so far:

Game #1 Complete - The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Minish Cap is a pretty great game in the 2D Zelda tradition. I actually prefer the 2D Zelda games over the 3D Ocarina of Time and descendants. The game has excellent graphics and music, and mostly strong gameplay. I have played Minish Cap before, at least twice as far as I remember.

Intro to the Challenge

I'm going to play through 255 of the best games for the GBA. That's 4.9 years at a rate of 1 game/week. I'm not sure whether that's a good estimate yet.

To get the list, I took the games with >=70 score on Metacritic, filtered out some games in genres I don't enjoy (mainly sports simulators and serious racing games). That conveniently came out to 255, and since that's a significant number in gaming, I decided to make that the title/theme of the challenge. Here's the finished list.

This self-challenge was inspired by internet sites like CRPG Addict, who is playing every CRPG ever made in chronological order, and NESMania, where speedrunner "TheMexicanRunner" beat every NES game ever made. I wanted to do something similar for GBA, but (according to Wikipedia) there are over 1000 GBA games, which made playing them all a bit much. So instead I came up with my arbitrary challenge list via the method above.