15 Best Game Boy Color Action Games

Duke Nukem reached the Game Boy Color in North America on September 2, 1999, as a side-scroller in the style of the early PC Duke games. The character first appeared in the 1991 video game Duke Nukem from Apogee Software, and back then Duke was not voiced but spoke through on-screen text. On a Game Boy cartridge there was no room for a voice anyway, so it is text boxes, a big gun and a lot of aliens.

Critics were kinder to it than you might expect. Allgame gave the PC original 3 out of 5 stars and the Game Boy Color version 4 out of 5, the handheld coming out ahead for once. It sits last here, but it got onto the list on player picks alone. Most PC shooters squeezed onto a Game Boy cannot say the same.

Mega Man Xtreme 2 is a spin-off in the Mega Man X series and a follow-up to the first Xtreme, which came out the year before. Capcom released it in Japan on July 19, 2001, and in North America that November. Something on a reploid research island is erasing the data of the reploids there, and X goes in with his partner Zero to find out who is behind it. Beat Xtreme Mode and a Boss Rush opens up with all eight Mavericks from this game and all eight from the first.

Reviewers liked the improvements over the first game, but some felt it did not try much that was new. That is a fair complaint, and also sort of the point. It is Mega Man X on a Game Boy, and in 2001 that was the dream. The first Xtreme placed higher on this list.

The World Is Not Enough is an action-adventure game based on the 1999 Bond film of the same name. It was made by 2n Productions, a studio in Redwood City, California, and published by Electronic Arts. It shows Bond from a top-down angle and sends him through eight mission-based levels.

It does not try to be GoldenEye on a handheld, and that is why it works. A small screen and a view from above suit sneaking past guards much better than a cramped first-person view would. If you grew up on the Brosnan films, you get the plot of the movie one level at a time. Perfect Dark, one place up, went top-down too.

Rare made Perfect Dark for the Game Boy Color in 2000 as a direct prequel to its Nintendo 64 shooter. Joanna Dark finishes her training at the Carrington Institute and starts digging up information on the rival corporation dataDyne. It is played from above, and you can move and shoot in eight directions. Plug the cartridge into a Transfer Pak and it unlocks cheat modes in the N64 game. That felt like a secret handshake between two consoles.

Critics at the time were mixed, calling the gameplay difficult and a bit superficial while praising the graphics. Rare was making the Game Boy Color Donkey Kong Country at the same time. You can see the studio's polish in how good this looks. There is a two-player mode as well, with deathmatch and a hostage game called Counter Force, where one player rescues the hostages and the other guards them.

Resident Evil Gaiden sends Leon Kennedy, one of the heroes of Resident Evil 2, to investigate the luxurious ocean cruiser, the Starlight, which is said to be carrying a new bio-weapon. You explore from a top-down view, and when a monster attacks, the game switches to a first-person view with a reticle sliding left and right. You press the button while the reticle is over the enemy. Fights turn into small timing tests.

Critics gave it mixed reviews, and it is not part of the official story either: the main series contradicts its plot and ignores its events. If you love the series, that matters less than you would think. Seeing Capcom fit a Resident Evil onto a Game Boy Color at all is half the fun. Capcom published it in Japan and North America, and Virgin Interactive handled Europe.

Project S-11 is a space shooter made by Paragon 5 and published by Sunsoft. It was released only in North America, on January 3, 2001. The name was meant to be a placeholder while a contest was held to name it, and yet here we are, still calling it Project S-11. Aliens are coming for Earth, and you fly one ship through eight stages, picking up four different types of power-ups along the way.

A stats panel takes up the right side of the screen, which leaves a narrow strip for the action, and the game makes the most of it. Shooters were thin on the ground on the Game Boy Color. It is the only shoot 'em up on this list, and it looks great in full color.

Enemy Below brings Jason out of retirement to drive his tank Sophia again. The game mixes side-scrolling levels, where Jason can hop out of the tank, with overhead dungeons where he goes on foot. Unlike the original Blaster Master, you can no longer skip most of the dungeons, because a key hidden in one of them is needed to fight the boss of each area. Sophia can also drive up walls and along ceilings.

GameSpot liked the password save and the extra weapons. The overhead sections were the sore spot for critics, who found the controls there difficult and frustrating. It is still the closest thing the Game Boy Color has to a full console Blaster Master. It was re-released on the 3DS Virtual Console in 2011 and on Nintendo Classics in 2023.

Mega Man Xtreme was Capcom's first go at putting Mega Man X on the Game Boy Color. A virus has hacked the peace keeping Mother Computer, and X has to fight through eight levels in cyberspace to fix it. When things get too hard, you can call in Zero to help. The ending holds no big surprise for series fans: Sigma unveils himself as the mastermind behind the hack.

Reviewers at the time enjoyed the familiar gameplay but grumbled about graphical issues and a high difficulty level. Both complaints are fair. It is still a proper X game in your pocket, and players rank it ahead of its own sequel. It reached the North American 3DS eShop in 2014.

Crystalis started out as an SNK game on the NES, released in Japan on April 13, 1990. Nearly ten years later, Nintendo licensed it from SNK and had Nintendo Software Technology remake it for the Game Boy Color, released on June 26, 2000. It is an action RPG seen from above, and you can move in eight directions. The handheld version got an almost completely new soundtrack and a digital voice that calls out the name of each sword when you find it.

Some cuts came with the move. The flying tower is shorter, and some story events were rewritten. It is still one of the best action RPGs on the system, and players put it above both Mega Man games on this list. If you like Zelda but want to watch some numbers go up, this is the one.

Elite Forces was the first game from Nintendo Software Technology, Nintendo's own studio in Redmond, made under license from Capcom. It is the sequel to the Game Boy Bionic Commando. You use the Bionic Claw to grapple and swing through more than 20 levels, from forests to futuristic cities, on a mission to rescue a fellow commando called Commando Joe. An assault rifle and a flame thrower help with the people shooting at you.

Europe did not get it until November 2014, when it finally came out on the 3DS Virtual Console there. That is a long wait for a game this good. Swinging is the whole game, and once it clicks, few handheld games feel as smooth.

Oracle of Seasons is one half of a pair. Capcom's Flagship team, supervised by Yoshiki Okamoto, tried porting the original Legend of Zelda to the Game Boy Color first, then started on linked Zelda games that could be played in any order. In this one, the Triforce sends Link to the land of Holodrum, where the villain Onox kidnaps Din, the Oracle of Seasons. Link uses the Rod of Seasons to control the seasons and change the land around him.

Seasons is the more action-oriented of the two, while Ages leans on puzzles. Each has eight dungeons and a large overworld. Finish one and you can link it to the other, with passwords carrying items across, and the two stories join up for an alternate ending. Seasons and Ages sold 3.99 million copies combined. If you would rather swing a sword than push blocks, start here.

Shantae is a genie girl who guards a small fishing village called Scuttle Town, and she fights by whipping her hair at enemies. When the pirate Risky Boots steals a steam engine from Shantae's uncle Mimic, she has to cross Sequin Land and get it back before Risky turns it into a weapon. WayForward had been thinking about the game since 1997 and first planned it for the SNES. It took years to find a publisher before Capcom picked it up.

It came out a year after the Game Boy Advance replaced the Game Boy Color, and it struggled to find an audience. It has since become a cult classic, and it started a whole series of sequels. Ask players for the best Game Boy Color game of its kind and plenty answer with Shantae without a second thought. It made its European debut on the 3DS Virtual Console in 2013 and reached the Switch in April 2021.

Oracle of Ages is the other half of the pair. Here the Triforce takes Link to Labrynna, where the villain Veran possesses Nayru, the Oracle of Ages, and throws the flow of time out of order. Link's key item is the Harp of Ages, which lets him travel between the past and the present. Plenty of puzzles come down to changing something in one time and walking over to see what it did in the other.

It keeps the look and the top-down view of Link's Awakening, but where Seasons is about fighting, Ages is the one that makes you think. It places above its twin on this list. The two were often credited as two of the top games for the Game Boy Color. One player called them the "Most underrated Zelda title(s)", and for games that sold millions, that is a strange thing to be true.

Konami's European branch asked Konami Computer Entertainment Japan for a portable version of Metal Gear Solid, and the studio came back with a new game instead. Ghost Babel is not a port of Metal Gear Solid. It is set in its own continuity, three years after the MSX2 game Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Snake and the guards now move in eight directions, and he can flatten himself against a wall to peek ahead or knock on it to lure a guard over.

The Japanese and European versions came with a bonus story, IdeaSpy 2.5, which later became a radio drama with Hideo Kojima himself playing the title role. Players still often call the game plain Metal Gear Solid. It got its first re-release in 2026, in Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, under its Japanese name. Only one game beat it here, and it was a close call.

Link's Awakening DX is the colorized version of the 1993 Game Boy Zelda, where Link has to work through dungeons to escape from Koholint Island. The color is more than a coat of paint. There is a new hidden dungeon, the Color Dungeon, with color-coded enemies and switches, and beating it lets you pick the Red Tunic for more attack power or the Blue Tunic to take less damage. The cartridge still runs in black and white on an original Game Boy.

It also added a photo album: a photographer turns up at twelve events in the game to take Link's picture, and you could print the photos as stickers on the Game Boy Printer. Critics loved it, and it has since been cited as one of the best games for both the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color. Players recommend it more than any other Game Boy Color action game. It is on the Switch today through the Nintendo Classics service.