Hungry Goriya Used Acquire: Game Boy Advance

This is the sixteenth post in a series called “Hungry Goriya Used Acquire” that serves to highlight the contents of a large game collection I procured from an old high school friend of mine, Joe.  Read here for the backstory.

By now, it probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I missed out entirely on the Game Boy Advance in its prime.  In general, the concept of handheld systems is my least favourite — I get stress headaches a lot from neck muscle tension, and it really seems to flare up while I’m staring down at a tiny screen.  Did I mention my near vision is starting to go?  Getting older sucks.

Joe’s collection had quite a few games for the console, and most of them came with their boxes and manuals.  There are some excellent games to be shown in due time, but for now I will start out in my usual way with the consoles themselves.

We received two GBAs here, one normal and one modified.  Modified to do what you might be asking?  Your guess is as good as mine.  It looks like the port installed on the back of the white one was meant to allow for an alternative power source of sorts.  Before this I didn’t actually own an original GBA and had been playing some games for the system using the Game Boy Player attachment for the GameCube, so it’s definitely nice to have the real deal for the first time.

The games that we received were diverse and plentiful.  These are the games in the bunch that I probably know the least about, but it was great to see F-Zero and R-Type in there.  Those are born from solid franchises, so hopefully these games will be good as well.

The next set of games we got I would broadly classify as a mix of arcade and puzzle games.  As a fan of older systems like the Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision, etc., things like Millipede and Super Breakout excite me to no end.  I’ve also heard that Zoocube is a lot of fun!  You can’t go wrong with ports of classics most of the time.

In addition to these, we received a solid set of Castlevania games for the system.  I’ve only played a tiny little bit of any Castlevania game (it was Dracula’s Curse for the NES and I died over and over again in the Clock Tower level… ugh), but I can get behind the idea of new iterations of the foundational gothic platformer series.  I’ve heard that not all of these games are equal in quality, so I’ll be interested to be able to compare them whenever I get the chance to play through them.  I just hope that their soundtracks are as amazing as the other games in the series.

There is nothing quite like the Nintendo staples to really round out a collection of games.  I recently bought Metroid for the NES after being inspired by LightningEllen‘s  last-minute run through the game at the end of last year, so I always find it funny when I end up with doubles, or in this case, a remake of the classic so soon after buying it up.  In that same vein, I think the Zelda II here is the third iteration I have (the others being the original on NES, and the port to the GameCube on the Collector’s Edition), but nonetheless, it gives me some options when I finally do get around to playing through it again.  Obviously the Super Mario Advance is a nice thing to have as well since SMB2 is my favourite of the original trilogy, and the Game & Watch Gallery games are also a good time.  I think the original receipt was still in the box for that one, and it was something like $51 with taxes in from the mid 2000s.  Crazy!

No acquisition would be complete without a few letdowns, and unfortunately these boxes with their manuals came to me with no games in them.  Luckily I had three of the four games loose in my collection already, with the exception being Metroid Fusion.  That one is a bit expensive even loose, so it might be a while before I can track it down.  Either way, it was nice to upgrade those games to complete status.

Though I didn’t take a photo of it, an exciting thing here was the set of e-Reader cards that came with the Super Mario Advance 4 game.  They open up new levels for the game, and I can’t personally say I’ve had a chance to try them yet.  It’s so much fun to have new life breathed into a game I can beat in my sleep!  Okay, well not really.  I can make it through the original game as long as I use the cloud on the Dark World dungeon…

I didn’t know that there were so many offshoots of the Megaman franchise.  The Mega Man Battle Network games, from what I understand, are RPG/action hybrids.  This is right up my alley, as usual.  Bomberman Tournament also looks like a ton of fun, and at first I didn’t realize it had a lot of RPG elements. I never knew that Bomberman could visit towns and dungeons and get into battles!!  If I had known a game like this existed, I would’ve likely tracked it down a very, very long time ago.  So excited!

There was even more action-y fun to be had with these other games including more Mega Man.  Earthworm Jim was great on the Genesis/Sega CD, so I’m curious to know if this is another direct port of that game or if there are any significant differences to levels/gameplay.  I haven’t played any Zone of the Enders games at all, but this is the third game I now own (the others are for PS2 I believe).  I have heard a lot of praise for Dragonball Z games in general but have very little experience with the show.  Can anyone say if the games are still enjoyable if the player doesn’t have a thorough understanding of the story beforehand?

As usual, last but not least comes from the RPGs in the bunch.  Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was a game I already had in this exact condition, so it’s going to make a nice trade.  I was pretty pumped to see Kingdom Hearts.  It has literally been a decade since I’ve played the original on the Playstation 2, but it’ll likely be a great time since what little gameplay I’ve seen of the game is vastly different from the original.  Sword of Mana was also an awesome discovery.  I have the original Final Fantasy Adventure game on the Game Boy, so I’m likely to take a trip through that one first before trying out this remake.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep this for this post or for one of the last posts in this series to follow, but I got a ton of stuff for the e-Reader!  Some of it is for the GBA, but some of it is also for the GameCube (Animal Crossing cards).  I honestly couldn’t believe how many cards I got here, including some sealed ones!  I’ve never tried out the e-Reader before, so it’s definitely something I’m looking forward to sauntering through at some point in the near future.

I think I have about three more posts planned for this series before it’ll wrap up for good, so stay tuned for those.  I’m also sorry for not posting more regularly — I’ve just been assigned a huge project for work which is eating up a lot of my evening and weekend time until I can get it all under control, but hopefully I’ll be back to a more frequent posting schedule soon.  I suppose that also depends on the thrifting gods smiling down upon my lovely head…

Hope you’re all enjoying what’s left of your weekend!

Thanks for reading!

-GG