50 Fun Facts About Game Boy Advance

Metacritic's highest-rated GBA game pairs the multiplayer Four Swords with a port of which Zelda adventure?

A Link to the Past reached GBA eleven years after its Super Nintendo debut. Finishing both games on the cartridge opens a bonus dungeon inside the main quest.

Players of Boktai, a vampire-hunting GBA game, had to recharge their in-game weapon using what?

Sunlight hit a sensor built into the cartridge, so players had to step outdoors by day to load the Solar Gun. Vampires in the game cannot stand daylight either.

Which courtroom drama series began as a Japan-only GBA game before a translated port made it a worldwide hit?

Ace Attorney was first planned for the Game Boy Color until its team saw the newer handheld's screen. All three original games debuted on GBA in Japan before any was translated.

Which DreamWorks animated film was squeezed onto a single GBA Video cartridge alongside Shark Tale?

Shrek shared its cartridge with Shark Tale, and fitting two full films meant shrinking the picture to a letterbox band across the GBA's already small screen.

Which pair of Pokémon games, set in the Hoenn region, became the best-selling titles on the GBA?

Ruby and Sapphire sold over 16 million copies, yet that was a step down for the series: the original Red and Blue had sold nearly twice as many.

A blood-testing GBA add-on launched in Australia rewarded children with game points for managing which condition?

Diabetes means regular blood tests, so the Glucoboy paid out points for each one and a bonus when the reading fell within a target range. The points unlocked extra games.

Which athlete's licensed game ties a Zelda port for the highest GBA score on Metacritic?

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 reached GBA as a separate version made by Vicarious Visions, a studio that became known for shrinking the skateboarding series onto handhelds.

Which strategy series first reached the West on GBA after Marth and Roy won fans in Super Smash Bros. Melee?

Fire Emblem had stayed in Japan for six entries because of doubts that a hard, text-heavy tactics game would sell abroad. Its GBA success sent nearly every later entry overseas.

Which rival handheld tried to lure GBA players by doubling as a phone, earning the nickname "taco phone"?

N-Gage owners had to hold the device edge-on against the cheek to make a call, hence the taco jokes. In its first weeks on sale in the United States, the GBA outsold it 100 to 1.

Which classic was remade as the fourth and best-reviewed entry in Nintendo's series of Advance remakes for GBA?

Super Mario Bros. 3 returned with extra levels loaded from scannable cards, though half of the card sets were only ever sold in Japan.

In single-cartridge multiplayer on Mario Kart: Super Circuit, every player races as a recoloured version of whom?

Yoshi, in a different colour for each racer, was the only driver the handhelds could share from one cartridge, and the borrowed game offered just four tracks.

Which GBA strategy game had its Japanese and European releases delayed after the September 11 attacks?

Advance Wars reached American shops on September 10, 2001, one day before the attacks. Europe waited until 2002, and Japan until a 2004 compilation.

In Metroid Fusion, which enemy stalks Samus through the space station while she is too weak to fight back?

SA-X is a parasite mimicking Samus at her full strength, so the weakened player has to run and hide from it for most of the game.

In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, what does the witch Cackletta steal from Princess Peach?

Her voice is replaced with explosives that drop from her speech balloon whenever she talks, which sends the brothers off to the Beanbean Kingdom to get it back.

Which Castlevania game swaps the usual medieval setting for a solar eclipse in the year 2035?

Aria of Sorrow follows teenager Soma Cruz, who absorbs the powers of the monsters he defeats. Despite the future date, he still fights mostly with swords, axes and spears.

Which GBA role-playing series by Camelot has Isaac and his friends solving puzzles with a magic called Psynergy?

Golden Sun lets its spells work outside battle too: the whirlwind that hurts enemies can also blow away overgrown leaves blocking a path.

Which outside company, rather than Nintendo's own teams, developed The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap?

Capcom had started the game after finishing two earlier handheld Zelda titles, but paused it to build the Four Swords multiplayer mode for another Zelda cartridge.

Which Square role-playing classic, ported in 2006, was the last GBA game that Nintendo published?

Final Fantasy VI reached GBA with a fresh English translation and four new summoned creatures, and it sits in the system's top ten on Metacritic.

Metroid: Zero Mission, a remake of the 1986 original, adds a stealth chapter in which Samus has lost what?

Her Power Suit is destroyed after the old game's final boss, leaving her only a weak pistol that briefly stuns enemies. The new chapter introduced the blue Zero Suit.

Which successor to the GBA kept a second cartridge slot so that owners could keep playing their old games?

The DS also let owners use GBA cartridges to unlock bonus content in newer games. The slot sat beneath the touch screen and was dropped from the later DSi redesign.

The Game Boy Player add-on screwed onto the underside of which home console to put GBA games on a television?

GameCube owners got real handheld hardware inside the add-on rather than an emulator, so older Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges ran on the TV as well.

Which GBA accessory scanned paper cards printed with dot codes to load classic NES games and bonus levels?

The e-Reader relied on a barcode technology licensed from Olympus. It sold far better in Japan: it was pulled from North America for lack of popularity and never reached Europe.

Which feature, found on every earlier Game Boy, did Nintendo remove from the Game Boy Advance SP?

A headphone jack gave way to an adapter that plugged into the charging port, so owners could not charge the console and wear headphones at the same time.

Nintendo pitched the tiny Game Boy Micro as a fashion accessory thanks to which customisable feature?

Swappable faceplates let owners restyle the console in seconds, but the Micro was overshadowed by newer hardware and sold only about 2.4 million units.

The GBA became the UK's fastest-selling console in 2001 by beating the launch-week record of which rival machine?

PlayStation 2 had held the British record since its launch seven months earlier. American buyers were just as keen: half a million GBAs sold there in the first week.

What did the AGS-101 revision of the Game Boy Advance SP, released in 2005, add to the console?

A backlit screen arrived more than two years after the SP's launch, and the light switch now toggled between two brightness levels instead of simply on and off.

Which codename did Nintendo give its shelved 1990s colour handheld, whose processor plans resurfaced in the GBA?

Project Atlantis was shelved by 1997 because its team was unhappy with the result. Its colour screen went into the Game Boy Color, and its 32-bit ambitions waited for the GBA.

Which company's processor architecture runs GBA games, while a second Sharp core handles older Game Boy cartridges?

ARM designed the 32-bit core that runs GBA software, built to squeeze performance from little power, which suited a handheld running on two AA cells.

When an original Game Boy game runs on a GBA, pressing which controls stretches the picture across the wider screen?

L and R, the two shoulder buttons, switch an old game between its original proportions and a stretched full-screen view.

Which hero is sliced into four differently coloured copies of himself at the start of The Amazing Mirror?

Kirby is cut into four by Dark Meta Knight, which set up the first four-player co-op in his series. An in-game cell phone calls the other three to help.

In Pokémon Emerald, which Legendary Pokémon does the player summon from a tower to calm Groudon and Kyogre?

Rayquaza quells the pair's rage, and beating the champion afterwards opens the Battle Frontier, a set of new challenges added for this version.

Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, the first remakes in the Pokémon series, return players to which region?

Kanto gained a new post-game area, the Sevii Islands, and the remakes came with a wireless adapter in the box so friends could trade without cables.

Which celebrated Konami director produced and designed the vampire-hunting GBA adventure Boktai?

Hideo Kojima, the director behind the Metal Gear stealth series, gave Boktai's combat a focus on sneaking too, and the game earned two GBA sequels.

Friends of Mineral Town, a GBA remake of the 1999 console game Back to Nature, belongs to which series?

Harvest Moon is the older English name of the Story of Seasons series, so the GBA game's later 3D remake was sold as Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town.

Which Kingdom Hearts game, made for the GBA, swapped real-time combat for battles fought with a deck of cards?

Chain of Memories was also one of the first GBA games to squeeze in full-motion video, and critics liked those cutscenes more than the cards.

Which manga hero created by Osamu Tezuka stars in Omega Factor, a GBA beat 'em up by Treasure?

Astro Boy shares the game with characters from across Tezuka's entire body of work, and several of its plotlines are lifted from his other series.

Which studio, best known for creating Pokémon, developed the rumble-cartridge GBA platformer Drill Dozer?

Game Freak put a rumble pack inside the cartridge at Nintendo's suggestion, so the handheld shakes whenever heroine Jill's drill bites into something.

Which open-world crime series went back to a top-down view for its only GBA entry, released in 2004?

Grand Theft Auto Advance was built by an outside studio and looks like the 1990s originals, yet its story is a prequel to the 3D blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III.

Which GBA sequel to EarthBound stayed exclusive to Japan, prompting fans to release their own English translation?

Mother 3 took twelve years and four consoles to finish, having begun on the Super Famicom. The 2008 fan translation drew over 100,000 downloads in its first week.

Which music-game series began with a Japan-only GBA release that was Nintendo's last in-house game for the system?

Rhythm Heaven grew out of a pitch by the pop producer Tsunku, who took the idea to Nintendo because he believed its staff could build it better than he could.

Which WayForward character's GBA sequel was cancelled in 2004 for lack of a publisher, then finally released in 2025?

Shantae's lost sequel was completed from its original code more than twenty years on, and it went on sale as a real GBA cartridge before reaching modern machines.

ChuChu Rocket!, a GBA launch game, was the first title for Nintendo hardware published by which former rival?

Sega had decided two months earlier to stop competing on hardware after its Dreamcast underperformed, and turned to publishing for old enemies instead.

In which Zelda game could a second player join in through a linked GBA by using the Tingle Tuner?

The Wind Waker let a friend control Tingle from the handheld. When the game was remade in HD, the link feature gave way to a Tingle Bottle item.

Which life-simulation game let players visit a tropical island only by plugging a GBA into their home console?

Animal Crossing sent linked players to the island by boat with the ferryman Kapp'n, and coconuts grew there that could be found nowhere else in town.

Which Nintendo add-on turned a Game Boy Advance SP into a media player for MP3 music and video on SD cards?

Play-Yan launched in Japan and later reached Europe as the Nintendo MP3 Player, with its video feature removed. It was never sold in North America.

Which third-party kit added a front light to the original GBA, though fitting it meant soldering and cutting the case?

Afterburner kits voided the warranty, yet demand outran supply over the 2002 holiday season. Nintendo's own folding redesign arrived with a similar light soon after.

Under which brand name was the GBA sold in mainland China when it launched there in 2004?

iQue was a joint venture between Nintendo and the engineer Wei Yen, set up in 2002 to make and distribute Nintendo hardware for mainland China.

Which Tokyo studio, founded by former Square staff, created Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the GBA?

AlphaDream made the comic role-playing series its signature work across three Nintendo handhelds before filing for bankruptcy and closing in 2019.

Which Sonic character made her first appearance in Sonic Advance 2, before the console game she was designed for?

Cream the Rabbit was created for Sonic Heroes but was added to the handheld game first, as an easy character for beginners.

In the GBA platformer Wario Land 4, a newspaper article sends Wario treasure-hunting inside which kind of structure?

A pyramid found deep in the jungle is where Wario gets stuck after a fall, and the treasures inside once belonged to its cursed ruler, Princess Shokora.