Nintendo Switch: the arrival of Game Boy Advance games makes the additional pack essential

Game News Nintendo Switch: the arrival of Game Boy Advance games makes the additional pack essential

Finally ! Since the night of February 8 to 9, the (admittedly limited) catalogs of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance consoles have arrived on Nintendo Switch Online. They are now part of the additional pack: a subscription that gives access to additional content such as the additional circuits of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or the DLCs of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Splatoon 2. A saving addition mainly driven by the Game Boy Advance which has a very wide range of games, a configuration very suitable for playing on the Nintendo Switch and which could give ideas to its manufacturer for the future.

The Game Boy Advance, a console rich in games

This is often the most important for a console: the games. Released worldwide in 2001 (but at different intervals), the Game Boy Advance was discontinued in 2008. In seven years of existence, more than a thousand games have been released on the portable console: that’s more than the Nintendo 64 or the Super Nintendo combined.. Only its eldest, with which the GBA is backwards compatible, displays an even more colossal catalog. If some may argue that quantity does not always rhyme with quality, some Game Boy Advance games remain essential to the video game heritage that the manufacturer is leaving today.

Without being exhaustive or redoing the tests for each game in the GBA toy library, several titles come to mind when we have to reduce the console to a few games. Mario Kart: Super Circuit symbolizes the first successful portable turn for the license in 2001. Between 2003 and 2004, it was the license of turn-based tactical role-playing games Fire Emblem which carried out a similar initiative by exporting itself for the first time in Europe with FIre Emblem: Rekka No Ken: a bet that we can assure has succeeded today with the proliferation of episodes, the last of which was released on Nintendo Switch last January. This is without mentioning the success of other successful Nintendo franchises such as Pokémon (Rubis/Sapphire/Emerald and Mystery Dungeon), The Legend of Zelda (Minish Cap), Metroid (Fusion) or Mario Bros (Super Mario Advance 4).

Often considered a recycler by its detractors, Nintendo still takes risks with some of its mascots and in particular its mustachioed plumber. Released in 2004, Mario vs Donkey Kong is inspired by the principle of the Lemmings game while Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga takes up the very effective formula of Mario role-playing games in a title much more offbeat than its predecessors. It’s even Golden Sun, a brand new license, which is often mentioned as the best handheld console game and is often considered one of the best role-playing games of all time..

Golden Sun.

Nevertheless, this is the only dark point, the years have passed. Some games that have contributed to the success of the console have not all been signed Nintendo. For example, we owe the excellent Castlevania opuses to Konami, while we owe the essential Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and the remaster of the first six Final Fantasy games to Square Enix. Not sure that the latter leave to Big N the right to use them to offer them in their catalog : we want to witness the absence of Chrono Trigger from the NES catalog of Nintendo Switch Online.

In summary, the Game Boy Advance is full of nuggets of all kinds just waiting to be discovered. Some are even synonymous with taking a risk for some. The gradual integration of its catalog therefore allows more people to discover cult titles while giving new ideas to Nintendo if success follows: some might think that if enough people show their affection for, say, Golden Sun, Big N might consider a re-release of the first two episodes. Finally, it is also Mother 3 which could finally be localized in Europe via this system. Nintendo, for example, has already carried out this kind of initiative: Fire Emblem: The Shadow Dragon & The Light of Blade is the first episode of the saga and arrived on the Old Continent for the first time in 2020 through an ephemeral offer in the Nintendo eShop.

The Nintendo Switch, a console made to host GBA games

Beyond the catalog of games whose richness we have just praised, it is also by the similarities shared by the Nintendo Switch and the Game Boy Advance that this initiative makes sense. We can even consider that the first pursues the same objective as the second: to be able to play your favorite video games everywhere, all the time.. The console then embeds a 32-bit processor, making it the most powerful portable console on the market. But to be able to carry it everywhere, you have to make it small and light (14 centimeters by 8 centimeters for 140 grams) and therefore sacrifice certain technical aspects. Graphics performance is clearly set aside (there are too few 3D games) and is reserved for the Nintendo 64: the 64-bit console that revolutionized the world of video games with Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64.

If these revolutions will remain in the history books of video games, the games behind them have generally taken a wrinkle on several levels. The graphics and their playability have taken quite a bit of time, especially since Nintendo does not seem to have taken any particular care in porting them to Nintendo Switch Online: console emulation. had gamers screaming when it launched, displaying dozens of bugs and technical malfunctions. Conversely, the catalog of Game Boy Advance games seems less conducive to this kind of slag. The games were originally developed for a handheld console with the goal of providing all-time performance/smoothness for less impressive graphics. A timeless pixel-art style, as it made the charm of the first ones and continues to be used today by many independent studios. Some publishers even reissue some of their titles in a 2.5D version such as Dragon Quest III or Live a Live.

For Nintendo, what matters is entertainment before photorealism. A conviction that he may hold from his past as a manufacturer of card games but which is still observed today. If Super Mario 64 displays white hair, the gameplay offered is still effective even in 2023. In this sense, the Game Boy Advance is the very embodiment of this principle of which the Nintendo Switch is the extension.. It’s hard not to think that Nintendo didn’t believe in the arrival of the Game Boy Advance catalog when they announced the model. Lite of the Nintendo Switch: a portable only version of the hybrid console made for nomads and whose appearance is furiously reminiscent of the GBA.

In any case, the recent arrival of the GBA catalog in Nintendo Switch Online has all the qualities to make it, if not essential, a solid argument for video game enthusiasts after additions that left you wanting more. . Something it owes to the many quality Game Boy Advance games perfect for consuming on Nintendo Switch, which we hope will release at a cruising pace.