I’ve been getting into GBA games and wanna try some more shmups, ones. Sorta like invader.
Either original or homebrew, I don’t mind :3
- Boktai series: These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - It’s Castlevania. Also play Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but Aria is by far the best of the GBA installments.
- Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
- Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
- Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
- Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…
Playing the first golden sun. Can’t do boktai for hardware reasons.
Will remember this list :3
FWIW, all three Boktai games do have patches if you can’t play on original hardware.
Golden Sun is still one of my favorite RPGs!
Not a GBA game but a GB game: Solar Striker
Still have never beat it to this day.
Isn’t that the one that relied on the DMG screen for visuals?
No idea! It certainly had that screen, but I can’t recall if it was necessary. I’ll have to get my GBC out and see. It’s pretty smeary on my GBA.
I know of Gradius Galaxies and Iridian II
For homebrew shooter stuff you can check out
It’s bullet hell but pretty simple and fun
For other homebrew stuff definitely check out Apotris. One of the best Tetris clones out there.
I has apotris. Also I saw bullet gba is sorta flipped. Would it work in an sp form factor?
Ah, yeah it might be kind of rough on an SP. You could play it normally though tbh. The menus are flipped but once you’re in the game there’s not much difference playing it flipped on its side
Oki :3
You know any good places to get it and other GBA homebrew?
Sigma Star Saga is an odd RPG game where the random encounters are short side scrolling shmup segments. I really enjoyed the amount of it that I played, but you can get screwed in some encounters as it gives you a random ship each time, and some are worse than others.
Sounds goob :3
Shoot em up: Iridion 2
RPG: Mega Man Battle Network series
Racing: just Mario Kart Super Circuit lol
