What are the good GBA and gameboy games?

[greedostick]

I was never interested in handheld gaming until I got my DS. Now I want to get all the old gameboy, gameboy color, and gba games I have missed for my DS and GBA SP. Can anyone suggest which games are worth owning. I like all kinds of games, especially obscure rpg's and, and very hard action/platform games, and action RPG. However I will play any type of game if it's fun. Gargoyles quest, Ghost's n goblins, and Wonderboy games for example, are my types of games.

[bangtango]

About a year old but here are a ton of comments on the best Gameboy Advance games. I'll try to find a couple more old threads. Stand by for an edit.

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80009&highlight=gameboy


Then this link covers the original Gameboy and Gameboy Color:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104768&highlight=gameboy


This is for Gameboy/Gameboy Color, too:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64124&highlight=best+gameboy


Lastly, the best and worst of classic Gameboy:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35930&highlight=best+gameboy


Hope that helps!

[bangtango]

My original post was edited some, greedo, if you already saw it right off the bat.

[zektor]

The Gameboy series has spawned too many excellent titles to list, but I am always a whore for compilations myself. Sega Arcade Gallery is one of my favorites...probably because of Space Harrier mostly :) Astro Boy is awesome for the GBA, Super Mario Land and Alleyway are great GB hits...again, too many games to list.

If you really get into it, you owe it to yourself to get a Gamecube and a Gameboy Player...just so that you have the option of playing them on the big screen. Lucky for you I am selling Gameboy Players in the buy/sell forum <shameless plug> :)

[bangtango]

Greedo, aside from the threads I posted, I'll give you some general guidelines.

The best Gameboy games fall into these categories.

1. Original titles designed especially for the Gameboy (i.e. Super Mario Land 1-3, Metroid II, a few of the Ninja Turtles games, Nemesis, Operation C, Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening)

2. Games that are inspired by "classic" titles (i.e. Alleyway which was based on Breakout, plus I thought Gameboy also did decent versions of stuff like Space Invaders and Centipede)

3. Games that are direct ports or remakes of "good" 8-bit or 16-bit games (i.e. Super Mario Deluxe on Gameboy Color, the NES Classics games for Gameboy Advance like Zelda or Zelda II, the GBA version of Zelda: Link to the Past)


The worst stuff tends to fall into these categories:

1. Early Gameboy games that had a lot of action on the screen at once, they tended to get blurry.

2. Scaled down ports of hit games that appeared on the major consoles. Stuff like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2, NBA Jam, Pitfall and many of the movie licensed games (which also showed up on the consoles) are rubbish on the old Gameboy.


There are some exceptions to this but I use those rules of thumb when purchasing Gameboy stuff.