Retro Boy Advance

Now that Retronauts is firmly back and comfortable with its new call-in format, I can rest easily that my need for retro gaming chatter is easily satiated every time a new episode goes up. The most recent episode was about the Game Boy Advance, one of my favourite handhelds as you may know, and while it was a good episode on the whole, with mentions of the Gamecube attachment, Game Boy Player, (thanks to our friend noiseredux from Game Boy Player Land ), the three Castlevania games, Riviera, Super Mario Advance, the tendency of the GBA to mostly get 16-bit console ports, Mother 3 and even Rhythm Tengoku, I was slightly disappointed that the Game Boy Micro got no love (despite the Famicom limited edition being the image for the episode) and neither did Advance Wars. For shame. If only I had a skype headset, fast internet and a time machine, I could fix this. Still, it's not all doom and gloom! It's actually a good episode, despite my complaints. This is the internet, after a...

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Game Boy Advance, my favourite little handheld that could, and boy did it do it oh so well. I've mentioned before that I bought my indigo GBA near the Japanese launch and the only games I could get at the time were Japanese ones so I opted to get Super Mario Advance and F-Zero. Both totally awesome experiences, especially F-Zero, which made me feel like I finally had a Super NES... IN MY HAND. And the GBA was that essentially. A GBA in your hand. It would later go on to inherit the legacy of the Super NES as an all round awesome 2D graphics handheld portable gaming device (phew! That was a mouthful) by being the place for awesome 2D RPGs. The GBA would be home to a series of some of the greatest Castlevania games ever, two great Metroid games, great (but not perfect) remakes of Super NES RPGs as well as many other great games. Unfortunately this awesome little thing had one big great flaw. While it did allow you to play awesome games, ...

This morning on the commute to work, I spent the whole train ride trying to defeat the most difficult boss in Mother 3 I have encountered so far. My train ride lasts about 40 minutes, and the whole time I was just fighting him. Victory never felt so sweet as when the train pulled in to my stop, the boss finally succumbed. To say it felt marvelous is an understatement. I then saved the game, switched my DS off and promptly walked to my office. However, during my lunch break, I found to my extreme horror that the save file had disappeared . I checked my last save backup I made and it was early in the chapter I was at. The boss I defeated this morning was at the end of the chapter. This particular chapter happens to the longest chapter in Mother 3. So yeah, I'm feeling a wee bit frustrated with the game now. I really wanted to finish it, but it looks like I won't be revisiting it anytime soon. I don't feel like replaying a whole chapter. As far as I'm concerned, I am...

So I registered a new URL for my little blog: http://www.retroboyadvance.com I can't believe I was able to snag this domain name. Did no one else thought to register it? Anyways, Blogger is smart enough to reroute the old URL to the new one, but update your bookmarks anyway! In other news, I am still slowly making my way through Mother 3. I am in the penultimate chapter (I think) so not long now till the end.

I've been a bit busy at work lately so I haven't had the time to update this blog as frequently as I wanted to. There's a bit of a lull right now so I'm taking this chance to throw together some random, maybe unrelated thoughts on this blog. After finishing Aria of Sorrow last month, I've been at a lost as to what long-term game I was going to concentrate on next. I was adamant this time I would not play yet another Metroidvania, so I've gravitated towards several games, some new to me, some old yet haven't received much attention. I had bought a GBA around the time of its launch in 2002 and I thought I wanted to revisit the games I had bought back then - Japanese versions of Super Mario Advance and F-Zero (known as F-Zero: Maximum Velocity in the West). I still have the boxes of both games but the carts have long disappeared, thanks to a brother who doesn't know how to keep things properly. (Yes, I'm bitter over it.) Loaded the roms onto a fl...