Game Boy Advance

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence

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.

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.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence

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.

Jon is right in saying that Sonic Advance brings the series back to its 2D roots, but something seems different this time around. All the familiar elements are there: the loops, the speed, Dr. Robotnik. Yet all these elements don't seem to click as well they used to.

Even with a predictable commercial stigma that 10-year olds can see coming a mile away, the game delights and triumphs as an irresistible pass-time. Nintendo hasn't forgotten how to engage a gamer and at its core, Sapphire/Ruby, no matter how familiar it looks, sounds and still feels like a good game.