Gameboy advance titles worth buying..

murphyebass

Hey guys,

I recently decided that I want to relive some of the games that I missed out on through the years due to not owning the console. I had game gear and mega drive in the day. ( pity I sold them :rolleyes: )

Anyway I own a DS Lite which I bought years ago and never played. So I went to ebay.ie and in the last week I have bought:

Mario Kart Super Circuit - £7.40 boxed (played this a few times at a mates house so looking forward to playing it through)

Super mario Advance - boxed £10.30 (ok so its not a real mario game by the sounds of it but sounds/looks interesting on youtube)

A "lot" of 4 GBA games - Mario Party Advance, Yoshis Island Super Mario Advance 3, Super Mario Advance 2 and Super Mario Advance 4+Super Mario bros 3. £23.90 All unboxed, just carts

Mario 64 (I did own a N64 but I never got to give this a proper play would ya believe so looking forward to giving it another go) - £14 boxed

Am I paying over the odds first off for these carts. I've no idea what I should be paying. Maybe someone could tell me that first off and maybe other places to buy them.
Rage on talbot street and that place on Liffey street will get a visit soon but I'm not in town that often so its ebay/amazon for the time being i'd imagine unless theres other sites Im missing.

What other titles can you suggest? I dont want to miss something obvious is all.
I'll probably pick up the zelda and metroid games from the GBA/DS in time. Just getting through Spirit Tracks at the moment. Not bad at all I must say.

Oh and I'm trying to pick up an Gameboy SP as well so I can get some old school original Gameboy stuff too so again ideas on games there would be appreciated.

I would pick up a snes and nes etc but tv time is limited unfortunately. Plus to be honest having a handheld on the go suits me a lot these days.

Cheers

PS: Meant to say as well this started when I bought Donkey Kong for the GBA, since then I have DK2 and will get DK3 once I've finished it. Sorry about that.

murphyebass

murphyebass wrote: »

Am I paying over the odds first off for these carts. I've no idea what I should be paying. Maybe someone could tell me that first off and maybe other places to buy them.

Whether you got a good deal depends on whether the games are real or counterfeit. Ebay is riddled with counterfeit GBA games.

Look into the cart from the bottom and see if it has 'Nintendo' logo on the circuit board above the pins. 95% of fakes don't. Also look for a two-digit code pressed into the cart label (not printed in ink). If you haven't got those two its fake and really they're worth nothing, you can't resell them and your collection won't feel right knowing they're fake. Its no better than a flash card tbh

If you're getting something that can play original Gameboy games then Zelda DX is brilliant.

TerrorFirmer

If you like strategy games, Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2 sucked away months of my life like no one handheld title has ever done before.

There are titles as well for the DS which are also very good, the whole franchise is just epic.

murphyebass

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If you like strategy games, Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2 sucked away months of my life like no one handheld title has ever done before.

There are titles as well for the DS which are also very good, the whole franchise is just epic.

I'm actually not a fan of strategy games to be perfectly honest. Never really got into them.

Might check it out though seens as though it'll only cost about a tenner I'd imagine. Cheers.

murphyebass

Deleted User wrote: »

Whether you got a good deal depends on whether the games are real or counterfeit. Ebay is riddled with counterfeit GBA games.

Look into the cart from the bottom and see if it has 'Nintendo' logo on the circuit board above the pins. 95% of fakes don't. Also look for a two-digit code pressed into the cart label (not printed in ink). If you haven't got those two its fake and really they're worth nothing, you can't resell them and your collection won't feel right knowing they're fake. Its no better than a flash card tbh

If you're getting something that can play original Gameboy games then Zelda DX is brilliant.

I didnt realise there was so much counterfit stuff out there tbh so cheers for that.

I'll definately be getting a GB SP so will check out Zelda DX when I get it in the next month or so.

My first lot of games arrived this morning according to the missus. Hope they're not counterfits. Really looking forward to playing Mario 3 in particular I have to say.
Have to finish Donkey Kong 2 first though as I've promised myself I'm not to play more than 2 games at once and currently I'm playing Zelda Spirit Tracks and DK 2 so have to finish one of them first. I'd imagine I'm nearly finished DK2 at this point. In the spooky levels at the moment, seems near an ending point.

Hercule

final fantasy tactics
Any of the Castlevania and Metroid games
advance wars
Fire Emblem
Golden Sun

murphyebass

Hercule wrote: »

final fantasy tactics
Any of the Castlevania and Metroid games
advance wars
Fire Emblem
Golden Sun

Cheers for that. Weirdly never got into the Castlevania games so must give them a shot.

Will youtube Fire Emblem and Golden sun games later as I dont know what they are. For some reason I think they're RPGs. I think I've heard of theem but thats about it.

murphyebass

Hercule wrote: »

final fantasy tactics
Any of the Castlevania and Metroid games
advance wars
Fire Emblem
Golden Sun

Cheers for that. Weirdly never got into the Castlevania games so must give them a shot.

Will youtube Fire Emblem and Golden sun games later as I dont know what they are. For some reason I think they're RPGs. I think I've heard of theem but thats about it.

murphyebass

murphyebass wrote: »

I'll definately be getting a GB SP so will check out Zelda DX when I get it in the next month or so.

There's two models of SP, look for the version with the brighter screen if you can.

TechnoFreek

I liked Zelda and the Minish Cap

murphyebass

Deleted User wrote: »

There's two models of SP, look for the version with the brighter screen if you can.

Yeah I saw something about that alright. How can I tell the difference?

Anything easy to spot to show the difference or is down to a serial number or something?

cheers

Mr.Saturn

murphyebass wrote: »

Yeah I saw something about that alright. How can I tell the difference?

Anything easy to spot to show the difference or is down to a serial number or something?

cheers

The standard, less-bright, frontlit one is called an AGS-001, whereas the brighter, backlit one goes by the serial number of AGS-101.

johnny_ultimate

Astro Boy Omega Factor.

A handheld masterpiece from Treasure.

OwaynOTT

Just do what the cool kids do and get a pink gameboy micro. Definitely get circle of the moon or any of the castlevania games.

CiDeRmAn

I have a mountain of the things, but I recommend Advance Wars, the Game and Watch gallery titles are cracking. Gradius Advance is brilliant too.
Mario Picross and it's Japan only sequel are a good play, Mr Driller is fantastic as are Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission.
Drill Dozer is incredible and I also really like my Sega Arcade Pack which contains Outrun and Space Harrier amongst others.

murphyebass

thanks a mil for all the responses keep them coming.

chopperbyrne

NES Classics - Legend of Zelda
NES Classics - Zelda II
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Zero Mission
Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Pokemon Emerald
Pokemon Leaf Green/ Fire Red
Final Fantasy IV, V and VI Advance
Advance Wars
Advance Wars 2
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Golden Sun
Golden Sun: The Lost Age

That should keep you going for a while.

murphyebass

So many games. I really will be busy alright.

Steve X2

I got a good quality flash cart, dumped a load of potential purchases on it and played them. Bought the ones that were decent.
Kind of dodgy I guess but it's what I do for a lot of my handhelds.
Plus you can stick emulators and what not on the carts.

Mr.Saturn

Is it taboo to ask what cart you'd recommend that doesn't involve too much fiddling?

I've also been looking into some of clone GBAs, as they come pre-installed with a lot of that jazz, and they're backlit. Useless for playing legit carts on though, apparently.

CiDeRmAn

I have an e-link cart.
It's best function is to run GB/C emulators so I can play my Gameboy and Gameboy Color titles on my, normally incompatible, GB Micro!
The cool thing is you define what games are working in the emu so I have a dedicated GB emu for the Mario Picross games for instance, which is pretty cool imho.
I own pretty much every GBA cart I want so it's not used for truly awful piracy nonsense!

Steve X2

On my GBA and Micro I use the "Super Card Mini SD".
Works very well for me and has some nice features and upgradable firmware etc.
http://eng.supercard.sc/manual/minisd_jj.htm

On my DS Lite(my favourite and weapon of choice of the DS family) I use a combo of the AceKard 2i in the DS slot and a ezflash V in slot 2(GBA games/extra RAM/Rumble pack etc).

Here's the GBA card(gotta keep my rep up so it's x2):


The main thing is to get the carts from a decent source and make sure they're not crappy copies of the real flash carts.

CiDeRmAn

Loving the entirely relevant picture of Boba Fett on the front of the flashcart....

Steve X2

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Loving the entirely relevant picture of Boba Fett on the front of the flashcart....

Yeah, I don't quite get why they went with that pic but it was probably designed and made in China and they have a habit of putting completely non relevant images on their dodgy DVD's and merchandise.

Steve X2

Well, seeing as I had the flash carts out I just updated the acekard firmware and the loader software.
Runs a little quicker now and has a load of fixes for the more recent games that didn't load properly.

megaten

If your going with proper carts it's a bit expensive but I really recommendatory Summon Knight Swordcraft story. A mix between dungeon crawling with 2D combat simple crafting. The dialogue is hilarious too. If you ever play it make sure you pick the female main character and sugar as your guardian beast.
It's probably my favourite GBA game.

o1s1n

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Loving the entirely relevant picture of Boba Fett on the front of the flashcart....

For some strange reason, my one of them has Darth Vader on it. There's even a Vader wallpaper on the menu (which I cant change! :mad:)

murphyebass

o1s1n wrote: »

For some strange reason, my one of them has Darth Vader on it. There's even a Vader wallpaper on the menu (which I cant change! :mad:)

I had a flash card but lost it somewhere. Tbh it was for the best I found that I was hardly playing each game. I personally need to invest the money to invest the time I think. I end up just collecting titles with those emulators which for me isn't fun.

Myrddin

murphyebass wrote: »

I had a flash card but lost it somewhere. Tbh it was for the best I found that I was hardly playing each game. I personally need to invest the money to invest the time I think. I end up just collecting titles with those emulators which for me isn't fun.

Agreed, you end up having no value on anything & don't invest time on roms I find. They are good for trying out games to see if you'd like them as Steve says, but I'd inevitably end up filling it up with roms & playing none of them properly

Mr.Saturn

EnterNow wrote: »

Agreed, you end up having no value on anything & don't invest time on roms I find. They are good for trying out games to see if you'd like them as Steve says, but I'd inevitably end up filling it up with roms & playing none of them properly

Handy for fan-translations too, Mother 3 being an example. The only way to play it on a a proper console in English is to use a flash-cart, unless you want to sprinkle some of your modding-magic over that one.*

*Watch your toes, there's hints a-droppin'.

Myrddin

Mr.Saturn wrote: »

Handy for fan-translations too, Mother 3 being an example. The only way to play it on a a proper console in English is to use a flash-cart, unless you want to sprinkle some of your modding-magic over that one.*

*Watch your toes, there's hints a-droppin'.

Yeah good point, I forgot about fan tranlations like that. Given there are fake GBA carts out there, I'd suggest its possible to do something similar with Mother 3 yeah

ghostchant

I think I remember reading that there already are unofficial English-language Mother 3 carts, I think they were considering making a batch to sell at one point.

Mr.Saturn

ghostchant wrote: »

I think I remember reading that there already are unofficial English-language Mother 3 carts, I think they were considering making a batch to sell at one point.

I've seen a few, mostly Aus or US based. Tend to get somewhat decked on shipping, and a lot of them are the work of folk who're just in it for a quick few quid, and don't give a toss about the actual game, which is fine, but I've read of many cases of folk getting wonky carts that corrupt randomly, if they even save at all.

Having a local, reputable modder/seller would be ideal.*

*It's literally raining hints.

Myrddin

Mr.Saturn wrote: »

Having a local, reputable modder/seller would be ideal.*

*It's literally raining hints.

Well, at least it's not Retr0's favorite song, 'Its Raining Men'. Joking aside, a Mother 3 project is definitely on the cards at some stage