The Game Boy Advance is one of my favorite consoles of all time and part of that is in its massive library filled with stellar pick-up-and-play games of all genres. I feel I've exhausted through most of the GBA's best and most noteworthy games, but I've also discovered a ton of really hidden gems. And I mean really underground stuff, games by small developers or games that only released in a single country! So I thought I'd compile a list of my favorites of these really hidden gems. Don't expect to see stuff like Drill Dozer or Swordcraft Story here, as great as they are, I'm going even more niche with this one.
10. Blender Bros
Did you know that Hudson Soft of Mario Party and Bomberman fame made a 2.5D platformer for the GBA? Well, they did, and no one talks about it. For the most part, Blender Bros is a pretty standard but polished platformer where you jump your way through a bunch of varied planets stopping the evil Zooligans, but it's elevated by some really cool ideas. For starters, Blender Bros actually has a background layer, not to dissimilar from games like Mutant Mudds and Virtua Boy Wario Land, albeit a bit more rudamentary. Some levels require you to go into the background, and there are enemies and obstacles that exist on multiple planes, which is pretty uncommon for a GBA game. Blender Bros also brings in a system very similar to the Charaboms in Bomberman called the Mini Bros. You find Mini Bros scattered around the level, and you can bring them into levels to give you an extra ability. Some Mini Bros can even be evolved by giving them music to listen to, which makes their passive effect even stronger. The Mini Bros really make Blender Bros stand out because of how much replay value and customization they lend the game. On top of that, Blender has a pretty robust moveset, there's a bunch of side minigames you can play whenever you want, and the soundtrack is surprisingly solid, all coming together to make what could've easily been a generic platformer into something greater than the sum of its parts.
9. Racing Gears Advance
Racing Gears Advance is the debut title by Orbital Media, a small team that really only made three GBA games before dipping out. But what a first showing, Racing Gears Advance is almost shocking in how good it is. It's a confident and elegantly designed top-down racer that nails pretty much everything it's going for. The controls are tight, precise, and responsive, and drifting feels incredibly good. The 25 tracks the game offers are all immaculately designed, full of twists, turns, and a metric ton of shortcuts that are fun and satisfying to pull off. The isometric visuals are full of detail, and plenty of quality of life tweaks are made so that your view is never blocked. And there's some really engaging strategy in rationing out the money you earn through races into repairs, upgrades, and weapons, arguably moreso than the several rally games on the console. Add in a very solid DnB soundtrack and you get a damn near perfect top-down racer, quite possibly one of the best in the entire genre.
8. Go Go Beckham
Go Go Beckham is one of two GBA games made by developer Denki, who quickly established themselves with their charming Yoshi's Island inspired spritework, steel drum-heavy soundtracks, and consistently polished games before dipping to solely make stuff for the Sky Gamestar. Bit of a shame, but at least we got this game out of it. Go Go Beckham is a platformer starring the real life David Beckham (not sure how that happened) that primarily revolves around you carting a soccer ball around in the same vein of games like Soccer Kid or Glover, though it's a lot less clumsy in its execution. You essentially have to cart around a soccer ball and shoot it at a certain number of locks to activate the goal. You can roll the ball around and kick it in any direction, and your physics differ depending on whether or not you're holding the ball, so there's a lot of neat puzzles built around separating yourself from the ball. Go Go Beckham is a focused and fun platformer that does a great job at fleshing out its central concept, with tons of collectible hunting for completionists, a beautifully unique artstyle, and loads of polish. It unfortunately only came out in Europe, but I highly recommend fans of the genre check it out.
7. Maya The Bee: Sweet Gold
Now, you might be thinking: What in the world is a Maya The Bee game doing on my list of GBA hidden gems? Shin'en Multimedia is a very underrated indie dev team comprised of former demoscene creators known for making short games for Nintendo systems that push their hardware to their absolute limits. You may know them for games like Fast Racing Neo, Jett Rocket, Art Of Balance, and The Touryst, and they really got their start with the GBA. They burst onto the scene with visually-stunning launch title Iridion 3D, a psuedo-3D rail shooter, alongside the GAX Sound Engine that managed to produce crisp and clear sound from the GBA without taking up space, which they provided to other devs like Vicarious Visions. It just so happens that Shin'en made two Maya The Bee games that released exclusively in Europe, and the second one in particular, Sweet Gold, is shockingly good?
For starters, Maya The Bee: Sweet Gold is a gorgeous-looking game. Shin'en went for a sketchy style of pixelart akin to Yoshi's Island, and it just looks so cute and colorful. There's a whopping 54 levels in Sweet Gold and nearly all of them have a unique background or foreground, and there's tons of great usage of sprite rotation like branches and bridges that shift as you stand on them. Some stages even have lighting effects like sun rays and glows from fireflies and I'm just stunned at how they even pulled this off! The soundtrack by Manfred Linzner (basically the Tim Follin of Nintendo handhelds) is also incredible, filled with tons of catchy tunes that sound super clear thanks to the GAX Sound Engine. On the gameplay front, Sweet Gold is a pretty standard platformer where you run around, jump on enemies, and flutter ala Bee Mario, but it's elevated by that fantastic presentation and some really solid level design. The game constantly adds new enemy and platform types to keep things fresh, there's a good balance of vertical and horizontal platforming, there's a world map with a bit of nonlinear progression and some secret exits, and each world caps off with a pretty fun flying stage. As you'd probably expect from a Maya The Bee game, Sweet Gold isn't super complex or demanding, but it's an incredibly polished and well-designed platformer filled with replay value that Shin'en did not need to put this much effort into. But really, you just need to play it for those visuals alone.
6. Hatena Satena
Picross has always been one of my favorite puzzle games, and the absence of a proper Picross game on the GBA felt pretty noticeable, especially compared to the DS and original Game Boy. However, leave it to Hudson Soft to make the next best thing. The Japanese-exclusive Hatena Satena is a unique take on color Picross where you need to color in an entire board. Unlike in Picross, the entire board must be filled in but the order of the colors isn't made clear, requiring a different strategy than you might be used to. This game also has an absolute ton of puzzles. There's several story campaigns each starring a unique character, a group of standalone puzzles, and even more puzzle sets hidden away in the title screen. It's all wrapped up in a very pleasing Y2K-esque pop art style that helps Hatena Satena stand out as one of the most interesting puzzle games on the system. And being a puzzle game, it doesn't really require a translation, even if you may end up missing out on some of the story.
5. Sutakomi: Star Communicator
So, one day, I was browsing through a list of GBA games when I suddenly saw a screenshot of this game, Sutakomi: Star Communicator. I thought it looked cute so I tried to look more into it and found pretty much nothing... outside of this one blog. From there, I learned that Sutakomi was a blend of pet simulator and messaging software that only released in Japan. The bulk of the game had you raising one of several pets, and you could feed it items that you find floating around in space or raise its stats by playing certain minigames. There's also a full-on email system where you can send messages to friends and share your pets, even letting them marry if they choose. Despite this game being entirely in Japanese, my curiosity was peaked enough so I decided to check it out for myself. I started off really struggling, with my new cat friend, Kokichi, seemingly hating me. I spent a bit of time cross-referencing with the blog, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and slowly learning the nuances of the game. Kokichi, as it turns out, does not like being pet when you first met him, so I let off for a bit. And after a few in-game days of figuring out the right things to feed him and using Google Translate liberally to parse out what he's trying to tell me, I finally managed to get a content smile out of Kokichi, and it was one of the most satisfying and rewarding moments I had playing a video game last year.
Sutakomi was a game that really stuck with me, not solely because of the game itself, but because of the experience I had learning about it. Playing an incredibly niche game that hardly anyone else seems to have played, in a language you don't understand, with only a single resource to help you out is an experience I would easily recommend to anyone. It reminded me why I play video games in the first place, to have fun and discover new things. That's not to say Sutakomi isn't still a fun time on its own merits, though. It's a polished and charming pet simulator with top-tier character design and a lot of neat and ambitious ideas, and I'd recommend it to those who like pet sims and silly creatures, and are willing to go through a bit of a learning curve.
4. Slime Mori Mori
Rocket Slime is one of my favorite games of all time, but did you know it got a prequel on the GBA that only released in Japan? On surface level, Slime Mori Mori seems almost like an inferior prototype of what Rocket Slime would become. It's very similar in terms of its story, environments, and music, but there's no tanks, so it's automatically worse, right? Well, not necessarily. While I do think Rocket Slime is better, Slime Mori Mori simply has its priorities somewhere else.
Slime Mori Mori very much feels like more of a straightforward adventure game. You trek through eight unique dungeons saving Slimes along the way, and defeating the boss at the end to progress further in the story. There's a far greater focus on combat here than in Rocket Slime, with more enemy encounters, way more interesting boss fights, and a stronger emphasis on using various items and even other slimes as projectiles. The day/night cycle also feels like it has more of a purpose since you have to leave the area before nightfall or else the enemies will get too aggressive, giving the game a Pikmin-esque time management aspect. But my favorite thing about Slime Mori Mori is the town building aspects. Rocket Slime did have light town building elements, but it feels more fleshed out here, since you can use resources you gather to build various projects ranging from remodeling jobs to shortcuts to minigames to buildings. Like with Rocket Slime, all of Slime Mori Mori's collectibles are very well laid-out in the menus making getting 100% an absolute joy. The colorful and charming spritework and upbeat music is as effective as it is in the sequel, and despite only being in Japanese, the whole game should be quite easy to figure out if you've played Rocket Slime. As a whole, Slime Mori Mori is every bit as satisfying and well-crafted of an adventure game as its sequels are and I definitely don't think it should be discounted or forgotten.
3. Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue
Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue is far and away the least niche game on this list. It's a Hamtaro game that came out at the peak of the series' popularity in between the uber successful Ham Ham Heartbreak and Ham Ham Games, and was developed by Alphadream and published by Nintendo. That being said, I was willing to be generous because Rainbow Rescue was not released in America for some reason! And that's a real shame because even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of the Ham Chat games by Pax Softnica, Rainbow Rescue is a stellar adventure title dripping with charm. The main premise is that you have to travel across the town to find objects of all the colors of the rainbow to help your new friend Prince Bo return home. Rainbow Rescue is far more linear than the previous games, but it makes up for that by offering up a lot more minigames and setpieces that change up the gameplay, the ability to play as practically the entire Hamtaro cast (often at the same time), and sprawling level design with a great sense of scale.
The writing is as charming and silly as you'd expect from a Hamtaro game, and the environments perfectly toe the line between being varied while all consistently feeling like large human locations repurposed for the Ham Hams. The spritework is also absolutely gorgeous, super detailed and incredibly animated, just as you'd expect from the legends at Alphadream. And with a ton of stickers and coloring books to find, as well as a postgame that lets you loose to explore the entire world, Rainbow Rescue is also a quite beefy game with a ton of replay value. If you're a fan of Hamtaro or simply like charming adventure games, you're guaranteed to have a good time with Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue.
2. Guru Logi Champ
Guru Logi Champ is one of Compile's last games before they went under, and it shows that even in their last years, they never lost the knack for making stellar puzzle games. Guru Logi Champ has an incredibly simple but effective premise executed with the utmost confident and polish. You polite a cannon which can shoot and suck in a limited number of blocks, which only stop moving when they hit another block. You have to fill in the image by rotating it and strategically shooting blocks out of your cannon. It's hard to really express how engaging Guru Logi Champ is as a puzzle game unless you play it yourself. It's so easy to grasp but so full of depth. There's a ton of puzzles here and the difficulty curve is perfect, with each one giving you that satisfying "ah-ha!" moment once you've figured it out. Guru Logi Champ is a Japanese only title, but being a puzzle game, it's light on text and most of the story bits can be easily understood through some very charming and wacky animations. It's a bit hard for me to really articulate how good Guru Logi Champ is, so just take my word that it's a masterfully done puzzle game that easily ranks as the best the console has to offer.
1. Iridion II
Welcome back, Shin'en! If I hadn't made it clear by now, I am a big fan of these guys, and Iridion II may very well be their magnum opus. The first Iridion was a solid tech showcase but pretty light in terms of substance, but Iridion II shows Shin'en using everything they've learned to make the best shmup on the console, hands down. Iridion II is a beefy vertical shooter with an impressive 15 stages, six weapons to pick from, tons of varied and fun boss fights, and even a bunch of neat stage gimmicks like gates you can shoot open. The controls are tight and precise, the difficulty is perfectly balanced, and there's tons of unlockable modes and features for those who want to get a bit more out of the game. Mechanically, it's just really damn solid from start to finish.
But like with Maya The Bee, what really elevates Iridion II is that presentation. Iridion II's visuals are pretty much entirely prerendered, but the models and compositing work is so clean that it's hard to even tell. It's so convincing that when I'm in the heat of the gameplay, I often forget Iridion II isn't actually a fully 3D rendered game, it could genuinely look like a PSP or 3DS game with a bit of cleaning up. And while Iridion 3D had a bit of depth perception issues due to its super ambitious visuals, Iridion II is still incredibly easy to read while also being visually impressive. And the soundtrack, holy crap. Manfred Linzner pushed the GAX Sound Engine as far as it could go with this one, Iridion II's 80s-infused headbanger of a score easily stands as one of the GBA's best and clearest soundtracks. It's hard to believe it's even able to come out of the GBA speakers. Check out some of the tracks like Two Years Gone, Cloudy Stairway, and See The Sun Burn, I promise you won't be disappointed.
If I had to liken Iridion II to any other game, I'd say it's the Game Boy Advance's Thunder Force IV. It's a gargantuan, ambitious, and console-pushing shooter that actually manages to live up to all of its potential and then some, it's a stone-cold GBA classic in my eyes and more people need to know about it.
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