By: RJ (@rga_02)

It was 2002. My mom brought me to Target to get the Game Boy Advance. For what reason? I don’t really know and I can’t be bothered to find out why. But with that purchase solidified my love for the medium.  And I’d like to share some of the memories I have with this delightful device.

I remember at first being disappointed with the Game Boy Advance. For whatever reason as a kid, I thought it would play GameCube games. Yes, I seriously thought it would play GameCube games. I only had one game at the time, Namco Museum. I would just play Pac-Man over and over again. I was content as a kid, but still disappointed. I was jealous of my neighbor whose parents got him a copy of Ruby early from Japan. He would always show it off to me and the other kids with all the super cool Pokémon that we were still hearing rumors about through the mystical world of AOL.  

Come March of the following year and Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire released stateside. I begged my mom for a copy of Ruby. She was like, “Just go play Pac-Man.” I then asked my dad and he didn’t know what I was talking about. So being the pouty spoiled little kid I was, I asked my grandmother who eventually bought it for me so I can shut up.  

Pokémon Ruby was my summer of 2003. The neighbor kids and I would link up  and swap secret bases with each other. Generation three of Pokémon was the low point for many who grew up with the franchise. But that didn’t matter to us. All what mattered was having fun with our favorite creatures – and we all know Mudkip was the best starter. Anyone who chose Treeko or Torchic was a bunch of plebs yo.

For many, the story of the Game Boy Advance would stop with Pokémon.

Not with me however.

As I started to slow down with Ruby I wanted to play other games.  Now being a jobless 10-year-old in 2003 you’re kind of limited of what you can acquire. So for once, I decided to partake in this novel idea of saving your birthday and Christmas money and decide to splurge all out come 2004.

One game I was eyeing was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Now I’ve played Final Fantasy VIII and X and I were like, “Oh man, portable Squall! Blitzball!”

There was no Squall or Blitzball, but there were snowball fights. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was hard. Really hard. In hindsight, it’s the easiest Tactics out there, but being an impatient kid will go against you in videogames. There were times when I wanted to chuck out the Game Boy Advance out the window. The game made no sense at certain points. Like laws? Red and Yellow cards? What is this, soccer? But eventually I saw the end, and like the characters, I too was happy with myself.

Sometime in 2004, I was with my dad at a CompUSA. He told me I could get whatever I wanted so for whatever reason, I got Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride. People seemed to hate it for various reasons including from framerate drops and being empty compared to the console counter parts, but none of those things matter to you when you were a kid. It was all about having fun right? I played the heck out of the game since there was little to no car games on the handheld. Someone needed to make that crazy money.

Perhaps the biggest contribution that this handheld has given to me was solidifying my love for RPGs. While Pokémon Ruby and Emerald remain my favorites of the system, the game that cemented it all for me was Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.  

To be honest, I never liked Mario as a kid. To a small extent, I still don’t like a majority of the games within the series. But Superstar Saga was pure magic.

I was at a mall with my mom and grandmother. My grandmother was watching me while my mom was doing her shopping. There was a GameStop near the bench we were sitting at so I wandered off over there. To keep myself still in one place, my grandmother bought me a game so I can stay put. I chose Superstar Saga because hey, the box art looked cool – well to me it did.

It ended up being such a wonderful experience. Even as an 11-year-old, the game was easy to understand and pick-up. It was one of those few times when I experienced the Nintendo Magic™ without being cynical. It was just so fun switching between back and forth Mario and Luigi.

I could go on and on about how great the library of the GBA was and how it impacted me as kid and shaped by love for videogames. Enough to do at least ten follow up editorials – but I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear me ramble on. I think that shows enough of how much I love this thing.