10 Great Game Boy Advance Games That Are Fun from the Start

3 hours ago 2

Published Apr 9, 2026, 1:40 PM EDT

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

I wasn’t even ten years old when the Game Boy Advance first came out in 2001, so as you may expect, I wasn’t great at maintaining my attention for long stretches. I was interested in video games, but if they couldn’t grab me in a few minutes’ time, I’d get bored and wander off. I also had a bad habit of mashing through dialogue, which made it hard to enjoy JRPGs if they didn’t kick off fast, but that’s a separate matter.

The point is that, in order to get me locked in, the GBA had to deliver high-octane gameplay with a strict time constraint. Luckily, if there’s anything Nintendo and its supported third parties have ever been good at, it’s presenting kids with a lot of attractive flashing colors and addictive gameplay loops. That’s part of what made the GBA the perfect road trip companion: if you ever got bored with what you were playing, just pop the cartridge out and try something else, and there were no shortage of other games that could grab you.

10 Astro Boy: Omega Factor

Better Than it Has Any Right to Be

I know it must seem strange for a licensed game to be on a list like this. The GBA had a lot of licensed titles, and while there were some good ones, most of them were… not great. However, Astro Boy: Omega Factor isn’t like every other licensed game clogging up the GBA’s proverbial arteries. No sir, Astro Boy: Omega Factor had the golden touch of Treasure in its corner.

Astro Boy: Omega Factor is an action platformer game that kicks off right away with fast-paced, combo and projectile-centric combat. You don’t even need to know anything about Astro Boy, as the story is pretty quick and throwaway. After a quick tutorial showing you all your moves and inputs, you’re dropped right into a city to begin pummeling robots and firing lasers out of your fingers.

As the creators of gems like Dynamite Headdy and Alien Soldier, Treasure knew a thing or twelve about putting a sidescroller together, which is why Astro Boy’s action gameplay is so immediately satisfying. It’s important that it is, because otherwise, you wouldn’t stick around long enough to try the game’s awesome boss fights.

9 Gunstar Super Heroes

Treasure Never Misses

Speaking of Treasure, that developer’s most beloved, legendary game is, of course, Gunstar Heroes. With its variety of mix-and-match weapons and wild boss fights, Gunstar Heroes is still well-liked to this day, as it should be. In addition to that original classic, though, Treasure also made a slightly lesser-known sequel of comparable quality: Gunstar Super Heroes for the GBA.

Gunstar Super Heroes has the same basic vibe as its predecessor: you land in a level, and you start shooting anything and everything until you reach the end of it. Rather than the old mix-and-match shot system, the game lets you freely cycle between several shot types, building up energy for a big blast attack. It’s pretty much exactly the kind of thing a ten-year-old boy would absolutely lose his mind over.

In the same way that Gunstar Heroes used a lot of cool visual and rendering tricks to flash things up, so too does Super Heroes. The first level has an exceptionally cool sequence where you’re being watched through a thermal camera, and you just want to keep playing to see what other wild curveballs the game is going to throw at you.

8 F-Zero: Maximum Velocity

Tearing Up the Track

While Nintendo’s home consoles were going 3D, the GBA inherited the 2D spirit of the SNES, using some similar graphical processing tricks to recreate the console’s signature Mode 7 rendering. Of course, when you think of Mode 7, you think of the original F-Zero, a series which also came to the GBA in the form of F-Zero: Maximum Velocity.

Maximum Velocity is the same kind of high-speed, no-frills racing game as its predecessors, though with a greater focus on the bendy, odd-terrain tracks of the original rather than F-Zero X’s elaborate 3D tracks. Since it’s the same kind of game, it’s naturally just as easy to get into. Just hold that A button and start going really fast; it’s that simple.

Something neat about Maximum Velocity is that, in addition to its traditional link cable multiplayer, you could also do single-cart multiplayer if your friends didn’t have the game. You were limited in the tracks and machines you could play with, but it was still a fun, quick activity you could do if your friends had their GBAs with them.

7 Mario Kart: Super Circuit

Karts on the Go

Mario Kart: Super Circuit

Of course, we can’t talk about racing games on Nintendo consoles without getting on the subject of Mario Kart. Much in the same way that F-Zero: Maximum Velocity specifically carries the spirit of the SNES original, so too does Mario Kart: Super Circuit carry on the will of the original Super Mario Kart, providing that same lovable kart racing experience in a portable package.

The appeal of Mario Kart: Super Circuit is more or less the same appeal Mario Kart has on any platform: you hop in a kart, you race around the track, and you harass your friends and rivals with shells and banana peels. You’ve got the same variety of modes as in Mario Kart 64, including Grand Prix and Time Trial, as well as link cable multiplayer for connecting with friends. Anyone can play it, and anyone can enjoy it.

In hindsight, Super Circuit is something of a black sheep in the Mario Kart series, not being quite as technically-advanced or smooth-handling as its immediate predecessor or follower. In absolute fairness, though, it’s the same kind of kart racing game as Super Mario Kart; I think perhaps we were just a bit spoiled by the more elaborate presentation of Mario Kart 64.

6 Wario Land 4

When he Says, “Hurry Up,” He Means it

The original Game Boy and Game Boy Advance were arguably more Wario’s turf than Mario’s, with his first few standalone platformers releasing exclusively for them and being major departures from the standard Mario platformers. One of the most fondly-remembered of these games came to us on the GBA specifically: Wario Land 4.

Rather than Wario Land 2 and 3’s semi-open world design, Wario Land 4 is a more strictly linear game, with segmented stages in which you need to collect treasure to progress. The game’s first level, which is also the tutorial, moves you along at a steady pace, particularly when you first hit the end switch and trigger a “Hurry Up,” forcing you to run all the way back to the start. You also get the game’s first boss fight right after this, so it’s pretty upfront with what you’ll be in for.

I Think Nintendo Is Letting One Of Its Wildest, Weirdest Characters Fade Away, And I Hate It

Yes, I'm a WarioWare enjoyer, but this isn't all that the character used to be. A new Wario Land, anyone?

Fun fact, Wario Land 4 was the chief inspiration for newer games like Pizza Tower and Antonblast, both of which have a similar emphasis on speedy platforming and exploration. If it inspired those particular games, you know it’s got speed in its DNA.

5 Sonic Advance 3

Two Heads are Better Than One

Speaking of speed, Sonic the Hedgehog had a fairly healthy presence on the GBA, including retro titles like his original adventure and… interesting experimental titles like Sonic Battle. The main Sonic-centric draw on the platform, though, was the Sonic Advance series, the best of which being Sonic Advance 3.

Sonic Advance 3 is a 2D, high-speed platformer in the same vein as the classic Sega Genesis games, but with one major twist: rather than a single character, you form a tandem team of two from the game’s five playable characters. You control one character primarily, while the sidekick offers various handy abilities like flying and smashing stuff. In addition to the baseline thrill of running fast, you can pull off all kinds of wild maneuvers pretty much immediately.

All the Sonic Advance games are good, but I like 3 the most because the tag ability system gives you more gameplay flexibility from the start, and the difficulty curve is a little more reasonable than 2’s was.

4 Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3

Old Dog, New Tricks

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3

While the GBA, unfortunately, didn’t receive a new traditional Mario platformer all its own during its tenure, it did receive nifty ports of several of Mario’s greatest hits from the NES and SNES. These games were presented as the Super Mario Advance series, and all of them are just as fun and addicting as they originally were, but if I had to pick a favorite, it’d be Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3.

Super Mario Bros. 3 remains one of the quintessential Mario games, and Super Mario Advance 4 does a good job of conveying its strong points. It’s got the same mechanics and level layouts, albeit with a streamlined presentation and some cute details like little voiced Mario callouts, but it was pretty much perfect the first time around, and still remained just as instantly fun on the GBA.

Super Mario Advance 4 was also one of the few games compatible with the Nintendo e-Reader, which could scan cards to add extra content to the game. Specifically, you’d unlock extra levels that weren’t in the original, which was a smart way to feed your addiction after finishing the game proper.

3 Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land

He Came Right Back At Ya

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land

Back in the early 2000s, I kind of got the impression that Nintendo didn’t really know what to do with Kirby, at least in the United States. For those who got on the bandwagon with the N64, our only frame of reference was Kirby 64, which was great, but not exactly a broad test case. Coincidentally, around that time, the Kirby anime was airing in English on FoxBox, so Nintendo decided to amp up the branding by releasing Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land.

Nightmare in Dream Land is a then-modern remake of the NES platformer classic, Kirby’s Adventure, with improved graphics and some gameplay fixes and additions. Much like Kirby’s Adventure, Nightmare in Dream Land is a very simple, straightforward platformer, perfect for younger, newer gamers to sink their teeth into without getting stopped by a high difficulty curve.

The base game is just as fun as the NES original, thanks as usual to Kirby’s Copy Abilities, though Nightmare in Dream Land also adds several post-game modes like a hard mode and a Meta-Knight mode, plus new sub-games like Bomb Rally and Air Grind, which give you a little more bang for your buck.

2 Metroid Fusion

Introduced a Generation to Metroid

To an even greater extent than Kirby, if you got into gaming with the N64, you completely missed the boat with Metroid. I didn’t even know who Samus was the first time I played the original Super Smash Bros. Thankfully, this was remedied in the following generation in a big way: not only did we get Metroid Prime on the GameCube, but on literally the same day that game was released, we also got Metroid Fusion on the GBA.

Compared to its predecessor, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion is a slightly more linear affair, with Samus being more overtly guided to specific waypoints on the map between major plot beats. While you could argue that this went against the spirit of the genre, it did help to get you quickly engaged and invested with the game, which was still just as fun to jump around and shoot stuff in as always.

Metroid Fusion was the first traditional Metroid game for many young players in the early 2000s, and it did an excellent job of illustrating what people liked about this series while lessening the possibility of getting hilariously lost.

1 WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

“Fast” is What this Series Does

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!

If the whole “hurry up” thing from before didn’t tip you off, Wario has never been portrayed as a very patient man. If there’s anything he can do to make the quickest buck possible, he’ll do it. It’s thematically appropriate, then, that WarioWare Inc. focuses on incredibly simple games that only take a few seconds to complete, though that, in turn, makes it the ultimate pick-up game.

Every stage in WarioWare Inc. follows the same concept: you’ve got four lives to clear a series of microgames, each of which only last for a few seconds, with the overall speed increasing after every few. It sounds strange and oversimplified on paper, and I certainly didn’t know what to make of it back in the day, but the first time I tried it, I was hooked almost instantly.

WarioWare Inc. is to regular games what TikTok is to YouTube: short, fast-paced, and horrendously addicting and replayable. While the initial run of each stage has a fixed endpoint, subsequent plays challenge you to rack up as high a score as possible, with speeds getting absolutely ridiculous. Either playing it yourself or watching someone else play it is an experience everyone should have.