I wish more had been done with the GBA

I always thought of the GBA as a portable SNES more or less. You have to remember that phones and other portable devices weren't really a thing back then. You couldn't just slap your collection of roms into your phone and head out the door. So taking Super Mario World on the go was pretty awesome quality to have at the time.

Should it have an exclusive Mario game? You can argue that I suppose but the ports of older Mario games had unique features at least. It also had an exclusive Mario Kart game and the first Mario and Luigi.

BlueSpark said:
I think that Yoshi's Island on GBA had some all-new levels and Mario Advance 4 (aka Mario Bros 3) had some exclusive levels that used elements from other Mario games (but unfortunately you needed an ereader to access them):
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I know on the Wii U you can buy the GBA version of Super Mario Bros 3 with the e-reader levels included. Is it available on the 3ds or Switch?
 
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One of the weirdest things the GBA has is a complete port of Lunar Silver Star Story.

Everything was redone from the character spites to the backgrounds.

Yet Lunar 2 still remains only available on the PSX/Saturn.
 
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I still use mine as the mini map for crystal chronicles. But I didn’t know anybody else with the system since they had PlayStations or an Xbox.

Just wish I had a bigger library then two games I owned.
 
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BooneHelm said:
Should it have an exclusive Mario game? You can argue that I suppose but the ports of older Mario games had unique features at least. It also had an exclusive Mario Kart game and the first Mario and Luigi.
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I think it really should have, because most of the other big Nintendo franchises had exclusive entries, so why not Mario?

The last Super Mario Advance came out in 2003, so there very easily could have been an all new GBA Mario circa 2004 or 2005.

In my mind's eye I can see an exclusive GBA Mario so clearly that it really bums me out there's no such thing.


XYZpdq said:
GBA was great for SNES ports until you noticed half the screen was missing and the audio was dogshit.
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That is why it should have been more focused on original titles and not SNES ports.
 
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Rom hacks are making up for thé Lost opportunity.


Some fire emblems,pokémon and FF tactics are very good
 
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The GBA was far more powerful than the SNES with a 32-bit processor, better layers (Selectable colour palettes for each tile, 2 layers of MODE 7), up to 32 distinct user definable affine transformations which can be applied to every sprite and far better sprite per line limits.

Most developers for the GBA were fucking retarded and didn't know how to properly mix audio to DACs

...but then you had teams like Shin'en Multimedia or AlphaDream or GameFreak or Nintendo R&D 1 who knew how to get shit done.
 
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Anyone remember those carts that had full cartoon episodes on them? They were like 120p but at the time they were awesome.

619QZ86B7GL._AC_SY400_.jpg
 
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Dom Cruise said:
I think it really should have, because most of the other big Nintendo franchises had exclusive entries, so why not Mario?

The last Super Mario Advance came out in 2003, so there very easily could have been an all new GBA Mario circa 2004 or 2005.

In my mind's eye I can see an exclusive GBA Mario so clearly that it really bums me out there's no such thing.




That is why it should have been more focused on original titles and not SNES ports.
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Really outside of Mario there were plenty of original titles, Mario's the only one I can really think of that got only ports. Also counting the E-Reader levels Mario Advance 4 has a rather good amount of new content, really think it's massively underrated, my favorite 2D Mario personally when accounting for those.
 
AsbestosFlaygon said:
Really outside of Mario there were plenty of original titles, Mario's the only one I can really think of that got only ports. Also counting the E-Reader levels Mario Advance 4 has a rather good amount of new content, really think it's massively underrated, my favorite 2D Mario personally when accounting for those.
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Yes, seems like every single other Nintendo franchise that had a presence on GBA but Mario, which is really weird when you think about it.

Here's a theory, maybe New Super Mario Bros started life as a GBA game before Nintendo decided to shift focus to the DS?
 
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Dom Cruise said:
Yes, seems like every single other Nintendo franchise that had a presence on GBA but Mario, which is really weird when you think about it.
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When you think about it's not really, with how regular ports were coming out they really didn't need to make a new Mario platformer. Sure it's fairly abnormal when every other console has some exclusive platformer, but it's understandable why they didn't do it.
Dom Cruise said:
Here's a theory, maybe New Super Mario Bros started life as a GBA game before Nintendo decided to shift focus to the DS?
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I mean it basically is a continuation of Mario Advance, keep in mind it was known as Mario Advance 5 very early on in development. With that said I doubt it was ever on GBA considering it was announced alongside the DS, and said demo clearly was either a mock up or very early development version.
 
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Ive always thought hand helds were best for j/s rpgs. Something you can really grind 80 hours killing time away from your home console. The gba delivered with fire emblem, pokemon, ff ports and tactics and its precursor Tactics Ogre (a game i played only a few years ago but adored check it out), and advance wars.

I recently uncovered my ds lite (it turned on and still had full battery) and im probably gonna buy a flash cart. I had one before when they cost $60, another $40 for a 2gb microsd that would fail after a year.
Smug Chuckler said:
Wario Land 4
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Despite what i just said, this game was my absolute shit. As a grown ass adult im upset i dont know where my copy is.
Inflatable Julay said:
Anyone remember those carts that had full cartoon episodes on them? They were like 120p but at the time they were awesome.

View attachment 1498976
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Fun fact: Chris owns all of these
 
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Marissa Moira said:
One of the weirdest things the GBA has is a complete port of Lunar Silver Star Story.

Everything was redone from the character spites to the backgrounds.

Yet Lunar 2 still remains only available on the PSX/Saturn.
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I can't find sales numbers but it is always possible the GBA version didn't sell enough in Game Art's eyes to warrant giving the second game the same treatment.
 
AsbestosFlaygon said:
When you think about it's not really, with how regular ports were coming out they really didn't need to make a new Mario platformer. Sure it's fairly abnormal when every other console has some exclusive platformer, but it's understandable why they didn't do it.

I mean it basically is a continuation of Mario Advance, keep in mind it was known as Mario Advance 5 very early on in development. With that said I doubt it was ever on GBA considering it was announced alongside the DS, and said demo clearly was either a mock up or very early development version.
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I don't think it was ever in active development, but the idea may have started as "hey, we should do an all new handheld Mario for the GBA" before it quickly shifted focus to the DS, the fact that you say it did start as Mario Advance 5 lends credence to that idea.
 
here vinny plays a bunch of GBA prototypes that usually have something to do with 3D. other ones have some sort of back story of not being released. attempts were made and some looked promising. others.... shit.
 
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AnimeGirlConnoisseur said:
As a Vita stan I find your words meaningless.
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If you have a working vita, now's the time to pick up memory cards and other shit cheap.

They're getting dumped into liquidator outlets and while the listings don't give a manufacturer, they're official vita memory cards and chargers. Sometimes they're listed as refurbished, but they never delete the data on the cards. So they're not really refurbished.


I spent 75 dollars the other month for a working first gen vita. There's certainly deals to be had.
 
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Marissa Moira said:
If you have a working vita, now's the time to pick up memory cards and other shit cheap.

They're getting dumped into liquidator outlets and while the listings don't give a manufacturer, they're official vita memory cards and chargers. Sometimes they're listed as refurbished, but they never delete the data on the cards. So they're not really refurbished.


I spent 75 dollars the other month for a working first gen vita. There's certainly deals to be had.
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Thanks, man. I didn't know about this.
 
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