10 Hidden Gems for Game Boy Advance Worth Playing

Astro Boy: Omega Factor

Astro Boy: Omega Factor is a really enjoyable beat ’em up. The graphics look great, and the movement feels just as good. On Game Boy Advance, you do not often find a game that combines visuals this nice with controls this satisfying.

I especially liked the bosses. They are varied, and the fights never feel dragged out.

The catch is that you have to get through the tutorial first. And it is a slog… You would think the Game Boy Advance does not have enough buttons for an elaborate control scheme, but the developers managed to assign quite a lot of moves to them. Explaining all of that takes a while. You sit there learning what else the character can do when you already just want to start playing.

GT Advance 3: Pro Concept Racing

I tried a lot of racing games on Game Boy Advance, but GT Advance 3 impressed me the most. Its graphics are very simple, yet they still look pleasant and never become an eyesore.

There are 97 cars to unlock as you progress. You can upgrade them and even customize them a little. There are several modes and a substantial campaign, so the game is not limited to one car and a handful of races.

My main complaint is the collision physics. You almost have to make a real effort to hit another car. You can be driving right next to one and still get no proper contact. It looks strange, but it is easy enough to live with. At least, it did not stop me from enjoying the racing.

Denki Blocks!

Denki Blocks! is a puzzle game where you have to connect blocks of the same color. It is a little like 2048, or whatever that game was called.

The problem is that all the blocks move at once. You try to move one toward another, but the second one slides away too. So first you have to wedge it against something, and only then can you bring the blocks together. At the same time, you have to keep track of every other block moving around the board.

Once blocks are connected, they stick together into a single shape. Make one too large, and suddenly it will not fit between the obstacles. So what do you do with it now? Sometimes you have to pull the blocks apart across the board first so you can assemble them properly later. Some stages also require you to create a particular shape, which makes the puzzle even harder.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is basically Diablo for Game Boy Advance. Simpler, of course, and without procedurally generated areas. But the rest is there: character progression, stats and abilities, random loot, and plenty of equipment to put on your hero.

You can equip quite a lot: armor, a helmet, gloves, boots, a shield, rings, and an amulet. There are swords and bows, and some equipment is even visible on the character model. You can play as three classes—a warrior, an archer, and a mage—and they genuinely feel different in combat.

The game has an interesting story, challenging bosses, and varied enemies. There is also a Russian-language version.

The story begins with you arriving in a town and immediately getting robbed. The guards take the hero to a tavern, where the innkeeper asks you to head into the dungeon and kill all the rats. In other words, the plot gets moving right away with no wasted time. You have barely arrived, and you are already stripped of your belongings and doing jobs for the local innkeeper.

Kuru Kuru Kururin

Kuru Kuru Kururin looks simple, but it is surprisingly engaging. You guide a spinning stick through mazes while trying not to touch the walls. Since the stick never stops rotating, you cannot just point it toward the exit and move straight ahead.

In narrow passages, you have to wait until it turns to the right angle before moving on. With each level, the mazes get longer and more complicated, and clearing them becomes harder. Sometimes the route itself is obvious, but getting a rotating stick through it is much trickier than it looks.

The game also has plenty of different locations: an ocean, a jungle, a cave, a cake, a machine, and more. Compared with the many platformers where you simply run and jump with a character, controlling something like this feels pretty unusual.

Car Battler Joe

Earlier I complained about Astro Boy's tedious tutorial. I take it back. At least that one is justified: there are lots of moves, almost like in Cuphead, and the game really does need to explain what the character can do.

Car Battler Joe is where the tutorial really becomes a chore. I do not think anyone needs a dedicated lesson on how to drive a car and shoot with the R button. Worse, for a large part of the tutorial the character walks around and does things on his own while you just sit there and watch. It feels like spectator mode.

The game itself, though, turned out to be unexpectedly interesting. It is some strange mix of Mad Max in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Pokémon, and a Metroidvania, while also being an RPG. You drive around the world, fight from your car, find new parts, and gradually unlock ways to reach new places.

For example, I found a pile of junk out in the wasteland, searched it, and discovered a great engine for the car. I installed it and kept going with a new motor.

The controls are a little odd, though. To drive backward, you have to hold the accelerator and press backward on the D-pad at the same time. At least the car moves forward on its own, so you do not have to keep holding forward constantly.

ChuChu Rocket!

ChuChu Rocket! has an extremely simple goal: get the mice to the rocket. Cats and other obstacles get in your way, and the only way to steer the mice is by placing arrows. In puzzle mode, you get very few of them.

The mice run on their own. You place arrows and watch where they end up. You have to plan for turns and obstacles in advance, while also making sure the mice do not run into a cat along the way. If you do not have enough arrows for every turn, you need to find a different route.

It is an excellent puzzle game with lots of levels and several modes. You can even play with four people. Then you are competing for the mice, trying to steer them toward your own rocket while everyone else does the same.

Wade Hixton's Counter Punch

Wade Hixton's Counter Punch is basically a clone of Punch-Out!! on the NES, except it also has a proper story and a cast of entertaining characters.

You play a broke boxer whose car dies just outside town. After leaving it at the repair shop, the hero heads to a bar and immediately sits on the wrong stump. A big guy shows up, one thing leads to another, tempers flare—and the fight begins.

The core gameplay is about dodging punches and learning how to avoid each opponent's especially powerful attack. Then you have to pick the right moment and hit back. You cannot just mash the buttons nonstop: every opponent has their own pattern you need to figure out.

Despite how simple it looks, the game is very engaging. Every new opponent means learning their movements all over again and figuring out when they are about to strike. And because the fighters have distinct looks and personalities, each bout also feels different.

The Lost Vikings

The Lost Vikings is another puzzle game, this time from the company that would later become Blizzard. When the original game came out, the studio was still called Silicon & Synapse. The Game Boy Advance received a port of it.

You control three Vikings: Erik, Olaf, and Baleog. At the start of the game, the villain Tomator kidnaps them and drags them onto his spaceship to add them to his collection of intelligent—and not-so-intelligent—creatures. That ship is where the adventure begins.

Each Viking has different abilities. Erik can run and jump, Olaf uses a shield, and Baleog fights with a sword and bow. To clear a level, you have to switch between them and make use of all three characters. One Viking cannot do everything alone.

Over the course of the game, you visit different worlds and time periods: prehistoric times, Egyptian pyramids, a factory, and a bizarre world. The GBA version has 35 levels in total.

The game does demand both puzzle-solving skills and a certain amount of dexterity. It is not enough to figure out who needs to go where. You still have to make the right Viking jump, block, or deal with an enemy at the right moment, then get the remaining characters through as well.

The Tower SP

The Tower SP actually took first place in my old video ranking. It is an economic strategy game where you build a tower. The final goal is to raise its population to two thousand people and earn TOWER status. And that is much harder than it sounds.

Something is always happening. One moment there is an inspection, the next a cockroach infestation. People are constantly unhappy: they want toilets, restaurants, and shops; they need garages, security guards, and cleaners. You cannot just add a few floors and forget about them.

Elevators are a problem of their own. Huge lines of unhappy people build up in front of them because the small cars cannot carry many passengers. Large elevators help move people between lobbies, but they do not stop on every floor. So you have to plan transfers and spread regular elevators across different parts of the building.

For example, on the twentieth floor you can build a sky lobby and start constructing a new section of the tower. Passengers travel to that lobby, transfer, and continue upward. The taller the building gets, the more time you spend managing its elevators.

As the tower develops, it earns more stars, which unlock additional options. You can add a subway station to the building and construct a cathedral on the roof.

Overall, it is a really good economic strategy game, especially considering that it runs on Game Boy Advance. You do not exactly expect a small handheld console to make you deal with cockroach infestations, elevator queues, and unhappy tenants.

More Games to Try on GBA

Game Boy Advance discussions usually narrow down pretty quickly to a few Nintendo series and well-known Konami games. Yet even this list managed to include a car-based RPG, skyscraper construction, and three Vikings who cannot clear a level without one another.

So if the usual games have started to feel stale, try something from this list. And if you know another GBA game that rarely gets mentioned, share it. Maybe there will eventually be enough material for another collection.