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gba revelations

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table of content

• dracula and childhood
• lucas falling from the sky
• crude and beautiful
• so how to gba?
• gba games i love and need to replay
• afterthoughts

dracula and childhood

i still vividly remember booting up castlevania: circle of moon and playing it for hours and hours to fuckin find dracula. as a kid, the story didn't really matter. the beauty of the dungeons and brimstones spurred me forward. the way the bats zig-zagging through the thin air or the devils materializing from the crevices or the eerie creaking from the library windows -- as a kid, this felt like looking through that mirror Beast had (disney fan btw) for a glimpse elsewhere in the world. just as it was for myself...outside of beluga whales, tater-tots, and multiplcation problems

this began with my cousin's gba and yes, i eventually got my own. you know, the cute cubed silver one with much needed enhancement to the graphics and audio for my maturing self. so many games to go through and thanks to my cousin moving on to the xbox 360, i inherited the experience of pokemon, castlevania, golden and other shit games i've forgotten. too bad though, my gba adventure ended shortly after my mom gave it away to a cousin 24 hours away in vietnam. he prefered his solitude in the game cafe with fifa and maplestory though.

lucas falling from the sky

so why bring up the gba? why no? well, i recently got back into emulation as a last resort of gaming without ruining my bank account. and the fact that i can't for my fucking life save myself on league and valorant. and i was not in the mood of sleeping after losing hours and matches with friends. i prefer pacing myself with games.

first game i booted up 11 years later? mother 3, and being way older, my much smarter brain found itself awed at the magical aesthetic of gba games. so cartoony yet so honest with the portrayal of these worlds on these dogshit 90's game devices. pixelated outlines yet somehow granular shading throughout the screen. i recall the way a beautifully lacquered desk, in mother 3, would glide across a field of cleary boxy patches of grass and almost disembodied trees. that's not what i remembered noticing as a kid but even so, there was something so endearing of the graphical juxtaposition. and this wasn't exclusive to mother 3. in aria of sorrow, you can see the blood pixelating down from dracula's much more extravagant and glimering marbled trhone before you faced Julius Belmont. it was as if i've stumbled into clay stop-motion and CGI mixed together into a finale. like a stage set for the final act of a theatre play.

crude intrcate beautiful

and that's what it was. being part of a stage set where the props were so crude yet so detailed. it brought a claustophobic artistry into the gaming experience that I don't believe I've ever felt with any other game console. or even an experience. obviously, today's indie games brings such an epxerience with much less of a jarring contrast. i could experience pixels and sprites and non-Unreal Engine through these games that have cemented themselves in the round table of gaming greats. They're that fuckin good. however, it's kind of like looking through those youtube compilations of western animation from the past. the beautiful of the past is something that we all have accessibility to so why not? i can't say i don't mind playing a samus (from metroid fusion) elegantly jumping with a however, blindingly pixxelated charge beam. I could play metroid prime or for god sake, play something running on unreal engine 5 but the magic of nintendo juicing tf out of the tiny archaic gba? can't pass on that oppurtunity.

so how to gba?

if your eyes are still following this rant, try the gba out.

however, not here to "promote emulation". some other options here:

buy a gba. shtis usually $130 but honestly, $100 with today's inflation can easily slip out of your pocket anyday. or i just fuckin suck at saving money. and this is the authentic original experience.

nintendo switch online. nice that it's all online and won't take up your living space. bad that the arsenal is incomplete. the available games are iconic. it's just a small fraction of the total gba offering of ~1.5k different titles.

and yes, there are other ways to play gba games but i'm going to plead the fifth for this part.

really though. if you have the chance to try the gba, please do. maybe you're not a visual person but the music, mechanics, or stories? there's got to be something to appreciate here. look at it like dreamswork's prince of egypt movie or reading a book. the beauty of the past can be worth looking at from yourself being much older now. and why tf not? not like netflix or amazon prime isn't always available with a single log-in and remote away.

gba games i love and need to replay

castlevania: aria of sorrow

really fuckin unbelievable game. circle of moon is another gba castlevania classic but it came at the inception of the gba. aria of sorrow came near the end of the gba era so everything in this one went full cylinder. it relaly maximizees the gba's hardware capabilities and even better, the story in here is crazy (trust me, castlevania's strong point usually isn't its story). i feel like when i play hollow knight or blasphemous or any other indie metroidvania game, the similiarity to aria of sorrow is more than just coincidental. aria of sorrow, cleaving succubis and manifesting the power of god's demon-slaying cross? classic and must play.

pokemon sapphire

pretty simple here. first pokemon game i ever played. nostalgia is one fuckin powerful drug but the idea of facing that moby dick of a final boss whose power can cause the next Noah's Ark? I'd take that any day over some basic fire-spewing dragon. story is pretty braindead but like I mentioned about the stage-set-esqueness of the gba, the hoen region encompasses a huge diversity of environments that still shines among the many pokemon regions that exist. falling volcano ashes, treehouse villages, or somehow completely iced out volanic crater city? .

also, people will recommend pokemon emerald but the main boss is this flying dragon that spew fire. how many of those have you seen in games? i rest my case.

metroid fusion

now this is an interesting one. out of all the metroid games i've played, this is the most limited one explorative-wise. there is as narrator and the narrator points you to whatever spot you need to go to with no exception. legit, the fuckin narrators blocks you with doors and shit to prevent any deviation but what metroid fusion brings is an almost kafkasque horrow experience. a stripped-down samus (that shoudl be in icu) going on a solo mission that probably would be better for master chief. actually, it feels like if you were master chief venturing into flood territory. alot of death and alot of unknown beside this one enhanced alien being actively hunting you down. not only are the graphics bonita but the audio coming out of this game makes the experience way more emersive in a way that i don't know why it's in a "kids" gaming device.

shrek

if you love shrek, this is where i mean by being part of a stage set. movie scenes fully elaborated into platforming levels and the ability to cycle through playing different characters is the cherry on top for anyone that loves the franchise. warning though, the graphics here are not quite there but being able to fuck shit up as gingerbread man is something dreamswork won't be checking out for a while unless lego decides a collab game is on deck for puss n' boot or the upcoming shrek movie.

mother 3

emulation is the only path here. and i don't mind exposing myself for this. mother 3 still blows my mind to this day. a cult classic that never came to the states and may never will. but the community? they fuckin created an english translation so good that it became the golden standard for both unofficial and official game translation. you can acquire the physical game cartridge but patching the translation onto the device will only be mind-numbing for you.

back to topic though. the game itself stands as the antithesis of what makes a rpg great. quirky mechanics, mature quotes, and bubbly-looking villains that deserve to go to hell -- are all that makes mother 3 ironically the most adult-themed jrpg i've experienced. no magicial boost of family and friends, no last-minute rescues, and bo clear-cut consequential events. nothing about mother 3 will remind you of shonen anime or any happily ever after story. That is the tone of mother 3. a weirdly family yet mature story with a couple dosages of steroid that will make you feel warm yet empty on the inside.

furthermore, mother 3 came at the very last breath of the gba era. so when i'm talking about the juxtaposition of gba aesthetic, this game champions it to the max. and yes, you may have to illegaly acquire it.

i'm not here to dull you on the messages and meaning of mother 3 because that would just ruin the whole point of trying it out. i'm just here writing something to remind me what got me to write this ting in the first place. why i love mother 3 and the gba and why i should continue picking up the gba again in my free time.

perhaps i'll write more about this game later but that will be a long WIP. way too many thoughts right now to even spin up a first draft.

afterthoughts

admittedly, there are many other gaming devices from the past that we can all check out. honestly, each of these console represents different parts of what makes games great. may write about some of the other gamign devices but to finish my current train of though, please try the gba. it may be worth your time as it was for myself.

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