Games #55-65 - Summary Post

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.

Rating: 3/5

Game #54 Played, No Ending - Ultimate Brain Games

Ultimate Brain Games is a collection of classic board games made for the GBA.

Yup, this going to be a quick one.

Game #53 Complete - Disney's Magical Quest

Now, my list named this game as "Disney's Magical Quest", but as far as I can tell, no game with that exact name exists. Rather, there are three games with titles that are a variant of "Magical Quest Starring X & Y", all of which got GBA versions. Looking at the release date listed, I'm pretty sure the listed version is the first title, "Magical Quest starring Mickey and Minnie", so I played that.

Magical Quest is a classic 2D platformer, and a port of a SNES title. As a result, it's surprisingly tough even on normal mode.

Game #52 Abandoned After >2 Hours - Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django

Boktai 2 is the sequel to Boktai, which I've already played and reviewed in the challenge. Boktai 2 is a direct sequel picking up from where B1 left off.

Game #51 Complete - Doom II

Doom was one of the earliest first person shooters, released in 1993 for MS-DOS on the IBM PC. Pretty much all modern FPS games can trace a lineage back to Doom and its predecessor Wolfenstein 3D, both produced by id Software.

Doom II, unsurprisingly, is the sequel to Doom released in 1994. It's not revolutionary sequel and doesn't add much to the original Doom. Instead it's more of an incremental improvement and level pack. Both Doom and Doom 2 got remakes for the GBA, and both are going to be featured in the challenge. D2 came up first, so this will be the more detailed review.

Games #42-50 - Summary Post

I've been keeping up reasonably well with the challenge but I've gotten very behind with my review/write ups. So to clear the backlog, here are short reviews up to the present.

Game #41 Complete - F-Zero GP Legend

F-Zero is a series of fast and futuristic anti-gravity arcade racing games. There have been quite a few of these, starting with F-Zero on the SNES.

F-Zero GP Legend is one of 2 F-Zero titles on the GBA. It didn't get as good review scores as the other, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity.

Game #40 Complete - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is an action adventure game based on the popular Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, which, fun fact, is based on on a ride at Disneyland.

The game is not the lazy tie in you may have been expecting. In fact, it's a surprisingly good game.

Game #39 Complete - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Tony Hawk is a famous professional skater. His most well known feat is being the first person to land a 900, that is a 2.5 rotation spin on a skatboard. The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series is a big and long running series of skateboarding video games, starting on the PS1 and continuing on.

This is one of several GBA adaptations, and five of them made the list. This one, of course, adapts THPS4. The game has survived the transition reasonably well, but you'd be better off playing a home console or PC version.

Game #38 Complete - James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing

James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing is a top down Action-Adventure game, based on the media juggernaut that is James Bond. It's actually not based on a film, but is an original story made for games.

There have been good James Bond game adaptations. Goldeneye on N64 is the most famous one, being an early console FPS (and thus a lot of people's first introduction to the genre) as well as titles like Nightfire. This GBA adaptation is... not the best.

Game #37 Abandoned - Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival

Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival is, apparently, a GBA original iteration of Street Fighter. That said it is the fifth iteration of the "Street Fighter II sub-series".

Honestly I don't have a lot to say about this one. Given my knowledge of Street Fighter/2D fighting games, this is mostly indistinguishable from Street Fighter Alpha 3. Similarly I played through the main arcade mode until I hit a wall, and then packed it in. I can pretty much cut and paste my SFA3 review from here.

Game #36 Complete - Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II

Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II is a top down action RPG based on the very popular Dragon Ball Z manga/anime/general pop cultural phenomenon. DBZ was pretty much at its height when the GBA was released, and quite a few DBZ games made it onto the GBA. Only 3 made it into the challenge list: this game, Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure (an action platformer based on the original Dragon Ball i.e. young Goku's adventures), and Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors(a 2d fighting game).

As you may have guessed from the title, Legacy of Goku 2 is a sequel to another GBA title, Legacy of Goku. There was also a third game, Buu's Fury. Neither of these got good enough critical ratings to get onto the list, so it seems the Legacy of Goku 2 was a high point in the series.

Game #35 Complete - Fire Emblem

Fire Emblem is a tactics RPG, in the long running Fire Emblem series. The Fire Emblem games before FE(GBA) where not localised in the west, but the success of Super Smash Bros. and the Fire Emblem characters there lead to FE(GBA) being localised. Ironically none of the characters in this game appeared in any Smash game, but Roy from the previous unlocalised GBA title did. Speaking of which, this game is actually a prequel to that game, with some returning characters. Since the success of FE(GBA) the FE series has been localised fairly consistently, including the 3rd and final GBA title, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones which is also on the list.

This is another game that is quite close to my heart, which I attribute to getting me into turn-based tactics/strategy games, a genre which I now quite enjoy. There are a couple of other similar games on the GBA coming up too, including the well known Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and some less well known titles like Tactics Ogre, Zone of the Enders, Super Robot Taisen, and Rebelstar. This puts tactics RPG as quite a big genre on the GBA. Anyway, on to the actual review.

2017-18 Awards

Here's a little follow up to the anniversary post:

The Best Game I Played This Year: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. I'm a big fan of metroidvania games in general, and the GBA Castlevania games in particular, and AoS is the best of those. It's a decent length game for a new player, but I ended up powering through it in a (very enjoyable) evening.

The Worst Game I Played This Year: CIMA: The Enemy. Everything about this game is terrible, and another 20 competing games under my belt have shown that it really is that bad.

The Spyro the Dragon Hidden Gem Award: (Game I knew nothing about which turned out good) Turok: Evolution. Based on the lack of any information, and the fact it was a portable tie in to a home console game, I assumed this was going to be a bit shit. Turned out to a decent Metal Slug-alike I had some fun with. Nothing world shattering but decent enough.

The Incontinent Cat Hidden Turd Award: (Game I knew nothing about which turned out bad) Lufia: The Ruins of Lore. I thought this was going to be a decent if unremarkable JRPG. Turned out to be an excessively slow and horribly dragged out game that demoralised me by the end. (CIMA would have been a good candidate for this too but I thought I'd avoid awarding it twice).

The Phantom Menace Award for Biggest Disappointment: (Game I knew about and thought was good) Riviera: The Promised Land. I knew a fair bit about this, and had even played the beginning before. However it turned out just kind of slow and meh in the end.

The Duke Nukem Forever Award for Biggest Hold Up: Final Fantasy V Advance. A long JRPG combined with other life stuff resulted in me putting the game down for a long hiatus.

The E.T. Award for Laziest Tie-in: Shrek: Hassle at the Castle. There was some competition for this one, but the strange platform brawler gameplay, short length, and almost identical playable characters clinched it.

1 Year Anniversary

It's been a year since my first post on here, so I thought I'd do a retrospective post.

Game #34 Complete - Rayman 3

Rayman 3 is the GBA adaptation of (unsurprisingly) the 3rd game in the Rayman series. The Rayman series hasn't had that many games but the one it has have been ported to every platform imaginable. Also on the GBA is Rayman Advance, a port of the original Rayman. Note there's no Rayman 2 on GBA.

One theory I've seen online (unsourced) is that Rayman 3 GBA was originally intended to be Rayman 2, but had a thin skin of 3 slapped on for marketing reasons. Having played the game, I believe this whole heartedly. The plot and gameplay are that of Rayman 2, with the only noticable R3 elements being the hoodlums in a few levels (but less than R2's robot pirates, which are the most common enemies). But anyway, on to the review.

Game #33 Almost Complete - Street Fighter Alpha 3

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is a GBA port of this entry in the Street Fighter series. Unlike some other "ports" on the GBA, as far as I can tell this is a pretty faithful port. The Street Fighter sequel naming scheme is very confusing so I'm not sure where exactly this fits in.

As a disclaimer, I'm not a big fighting game fan. I'm fairly bad at them. I know little about Street Fighter apart from the pop culturally well known elements (Ryu, Ken, M.Bison, Hadouken etc.).

Game #32 Complete - Turok Evolution

Turok Evolution is an instalment of the GBA entry in the Turok series, most well known as a dinosaur hunting FPS series. There also have been handheld ports of the games on the Gameboy, GBC, and now the GBA.

Turok Evolution is a side scrolling run'n'gun style platformer, a lot like Metal Slug or Contra. This entry got decent reviews but seems to be very obscure, there's not a lot of information out there on the internet.

Game #31 Abandoned after >2 hours - Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 is a proper golf simulator in the long running Tiger Woods series of golf simulators.

I played enough to get an idea of how the game played. It does have a career mode with an ending but I ended up being a bit put off and didn't want to put in effort to master the game (see below for criticism). So I moved on.

Game #30 Complete - Lufia: The Ruins of Lore

Lufia:Ruins of Lore is a JRPG in the relatively obscure (at least I hadn't heard much about it) Lufia series. The series seems to have been at its height in the SNES era, with 2 games there. Ruins of Lore is a sequel/side story to Lufia 2.

The game is fine, but a excessively long and slow. That's about the theme of this review.

Game #29 Almost Complete - Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is an action RPG in the popular Kingdom Hearts series which blends Disney and Square-Enix properties into a surreal and surprisingly serious-at-times universe. It sits between KH1 and KH2 (both originally on the PS2) in the series continuity, and has been remade as Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories for home consoles.

To avoid burying the lede: I got up to the final boss, after significant difficulties, at which point I realised actually beating her would take a lot more effort and grinding when I was already fed up. So I rage quit and moved on.

Game #28 Complete - Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament

Klonoa 2 is a platformer, in the not-particularly-big-or-successful Klonoa series*. The 2 refers to this game being the second in the GBA sub-series, but the first one didn't make the list (for some reason, possible an oversight in metacritic as it seems to have been decently reviewed).

I'd describe it as a puzzle platformer, which revolves around your ability to pick up enemies and throw them using a "wind bullet".

Game #27 Complete - Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games

Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games is a track-and-field style sports game, based on the Manga/generally cute franchise of Hamtaro, a cute hamster who has cute adventures, with his cute hamster pals.

There's another Hamtaro game on the GBA which is quite different which we'll get on to at some point.

Game #26 Complete - Super Monkey Ball Jr.

Super Monkey Ball Jr is a port of the monkey rolling game that started in arcades, and then moved on to consoles starting with the Gamecube. It's a classic marble rolling style game, where the "marbles" are monkeys in hamster balls.

Yes, it's a weird concept, but well executed.