Game Boy Advance

According to ESRB, this game contains: Fantasy Violence

Game Description: Playing Boktai requires sunlight. The solar sensor responds to the player's environment and reflects the amount of solar energy (sunlight) in the game at real time. When there is strong sunlight, solar energy charges up quickly. When weak, it charges up slowly. Sunlight is required mainly to charge energy to the solar gun which is the player's only weapon, and to fight the boss at the Pile Driver. And during moments other than these, the sensor will detect solar energy, causing the game content to change. In Boktai, with the real time clock inside the cartridge, game contents change over time from daytime to nighttime, just like actual time in our world. The Undead that are active during the night stay quiet in the dungeon during the day.

Eschewing the more popular fantasy settings of Square's Final Fantasy games and Enix's Dragon Warrior series, Phantasy Star goes for a futuristic cyberpunk feel. This alone made it intriguing to a niche group of gamers who were already falling in love with the genre. Even more impressive was the fact that the first Phantasy Star actually featured a story with relatively well-drawn characters. The first Final Fantasy game featured a party of four non-descript archetypes, and Dragon Warrior wasn't a whole lot better. In this regard, Phantasy Star was relatively ahead of the curve for what was being done in these games. This would continue in the sequels, which would feature even larger stories, more characters, and in the case of the third title, an adventure that spanned generations.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence

Game Description: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is a retelling of the venerable series' first game with a quest for up to four players—all on one cartridge. The game is a mix of action and puzzles where Link must travel between the Light and Dark worlds to rescue Princess Zelda. In the multiplayer game, Four Swords, between two to four players take on the roles of young adventurers who answer a challenge from the Triforce. They must brave the dangers of multiple dungeons in a quest to find the Master Sword. Their strength will be tested by fierce monsters, their wisdom tested by complex puzzles, and their courage tested by having to cooperate with each other to overcome obstacles.

The tough question to answer is whether these ported titles are a "good" or "bad" thing. Pretty much all of these titles are still good games in the sense that what made them enjoyable at first remains enjoyable at a later date. But does the production of these games preclude production of new games and the possibility of creating new paradigms in games based in 2-dimensional graphics?

I'm not exactly sure what to make of Ecks Versus Sever. The game seems like a major technological achievement, being one of the first games to get polygons onto the Game Boy Advance. Yet it also seems like a dinosaur, playing and looking like Doom, and using, of all things, a password save. The password save especially threw me off. I don't think I've seen a game that used password saves since the NES days.

Sadly, taking Final Fight One out for another spin proved to be a disaster and I took little joy in reenacting the old. The game is repetitive as Mike mentions, but that isn't what threw me for a loop. Even today, most contemporary games aren't as diverse as most people seem to think and repetition isn't necessarily the antithesis to engaging play.

The problem with most sequels is they're often poorly conceived—however, that's not the case with Golden Sun: The Lost Age. This follow up to 2001's Game Boy Advance (GBA) role-playing game (RPG) marks the second installment in a planned trilogy of games. As such, it picks up right where the first title left off, continuing a tale begun in that first story.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence