I love weird games, and I especially 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:love weird ports of games. There’s something charming about cramming as much fun as you can into a tinier, less powerful package. At least, that’s the note I’ve received from people I’ve dated. But when we talk about ports and remakes, good or bad, we usually talk about them either being upscaled with new graphics and quality-of-life improvements (, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dead Space remakes) or roughly downscaled (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mortal Kombat 1 on the Switch). It’s ♈the same game, but more so. Or less so. Or, sometimes, an equal amount of so on a different machine.

But lately I’ve been playing a lot of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Boy Advance on my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Analogue Pocket. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m nostalgic for my younger days. Maybe the fact that I have 500 hours worth of newer game content I should finish before the end of the year has put me into a shame and guilt spiral from which I’ll never escape. Oh, there’s new content released for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PowerWash Simulator? I’ll get right on that after Spirittea or Coral Island or or Super Mario RPG or . Okay, to b♊e fair, I’ll probably play it before Starfield.

Here’s the obvious thing about the Game Boy💦 Advance: It had a lot of ports. And some, like Crazy Taxi or Simpsons Road Rage, are admirable attempts at trying to replicate a console experience as closely as possible within deeply limited constraints. Others, like , come closer to the original without quite reaching its heights. They’re downgrades. They’re still fun! They still play pretty well! They’re impressive in what they manage to do, however, they are downgrades.

But some ports on the Game Boy Advance went a route that would now make them look like indie darlings holding up entirely on their own. ﷽They take the limitations of the system and just, well, kind of go around them. They changed the visual perspective and tweaked the gameplay and used technical tricks to create something that looks like a game you’d buy for $15 right now. And, in the process, we received ports of games that we had absolutely no right to receive.

Let’s start with Max Payne. The original is a third-person shooter in which you get to use a still-cool-back-then Matrix-style bullet time to avoid bad guys while shooting back at them. The game was a technical marvel and even getting a port on home consoles at the time was a big deal. We lived in a different world back then. Meanwhile, Max Payne on the Game Boy Advance keeps the shooting and bullet time, but switches it to an isometric perspective with smaller animated characters. Also, it keeps the voice-over narration for a lot of the segments, which is wild for a tinℱy cartridge. The low-quality images in the cutscenes and tinny sound quality even add some grit to the experience.

If this game came out today with a totally different name but said it was “inspired” by Max Payne, we’d all be falling over ourselves to praise it. While it changes the visuals and how you play the game, it retains the feel. In fact, it’s because those things are changed that the game holds up and feels like something great a small studio would make today. Max Payne on the Game Boy Advanc🧔e doesn’t have to compete with Max Payne on PC because they feel more like♛ companion pieces. Also, I should probably reaffirm that the Max Payne on Game Boy Advance plays awesome as hell.

Or check out the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tony Hawk series on the Game Boy Advance. There was no way the Game Boy Advance could handle a regular port of Tony Hawk. Rather than try to do some mimicry with Mode-7 style graphics like Simpsons Road Rage, they once again switched to an isometric perspective with little 3D skaters. It works so well that the Game Boy Advance version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 was my favorite entry in the series for years. Playing it now makes it feel like a Steam game on a hidden gems list. While it may share stages and the concept with its console brother, it plays like it was influenced by the other rather than trying to be the other.

Breaking down two Dreamcast games might help. and Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast are both hyperfast arcade-style games with colorful worlds. We all know that, right? Fantastic. Crazy Taxi on the Game Boy Advance does its best to replicate this exact thing with the same look, resulting in an extremely admirable effo🍃rt that still runs at about 15 frames per second and controls like the game is making fun of you. Meanwhile, Jet Grind Radio - like the others - switches its perspective and makes the game feel different. As I said before, it’s not trying to mimic its older siblings, it’s trying to make it work from a figurative and literal different angle.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs on this. All these ports, good and bad, were limit😼ed by the hardware. If the Game Boy Advance could have run the regular Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 perfectly, I’m certain it would’ve had it. But the developers who tried to make their games work - not just adapt, but make them work - on the Game Boy Advance were creating something special there for a second. It wasn’t intentional. At least at tꦉhat point. You could accurately argue that a lot of modern indie games were themselves inspired by this era.

That said, I’m sad to see these ports get lost in the rearview mirror. I’d posit that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (and 3, a little bit 4, and then stop after that) on the Game Boy Advance plays and looks better now than it did in 2001 when it was released. The game feels like a cool indie title you’d pick up on the Switch. Same for Max Payne. Same for Jet Grind Radio. In between piles of failed copies and cheap swings, a few Game Boy Advance ports were so good that we’d all give ཧthem glowing reviews now. Don’t forget them.

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