The Nintendo Game Boy Advance is a 32-bit handheld video game console that was first launched in 2001 and went on to become a best-seller. Ultimately selling over 80 million physical units worldwide, until its discontinuation in 2010.

The GBA, as it is affectionately known, is renowned for being both versatile and powerful. In fact, many people refer to it as a “Super Nintendo in your hands” although the technical truth is a little more complicated than that.

It is, though, a very capable games machine and over its lifetime had a multitude of classic games released for it.

The Game Boy Advance screen resolution is only 240 x 160 pixels, with 32,000 colours available on-screen at once, but many developers managed to make the machine feel bigger than it actually was. Personally, I put the GBA up into my top five games console of all-time, because it has such a fantastic library of great games.

The GBA also has backwards compatibility with the original Game Boy, and Game Boy Color, so the choice of software available for the system is pretty mind-boggling.

The GBA also had a number of variations made during its lifetime, including the Game Boy Advance SP (SP meaning “Special”) which had a clamshell (or ‘laptop’ style) folding screen, and the Game Boy Micro (a smaller, lighter version of the GBA, but without the backward compatibility).

This week I’m going to be publishing grabs and write-ups of some of my favourite Game Boy Advance games.

Here’s a list of what was published:

Advance Wars
Metroid: Zero Mission
Defender of the Crown
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
The Pinball of the Dead
Car Battler Joe
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony Of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Super Monkey Ball Jr.
Bruce Lee: Return of the Legend
Sabre Wulf
Mario vs. Donkey Kong
Mario Golf: Advance Tour
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!

I hope you enjoy,
The King of Grabs

More: Game Boy Advance on Wikipedia