7 Best GBA Beat 'Em Ups

The GBA version of Revenge of the Sith came out on May 5, 2005, alongside the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions. Ubisoft's Montreal studio made the handheld games, and the GBA one is built around what that machine does best rather than squeezed down from the big one. The story starts with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine taken hostage, and Obi-Wan and Anakin going in to get him back. You switch between more than one hero along the way, and you get Force powers to throw at the droid army.

Movie games on the GBA were usually the thing a relative bought you because the box looked right. This one earned better than that. Players still bring it up when they list the GBA games they loved, sometimes in the same breath as TMNT, another late game from Ubisoft Montreal.

Advance Guardian Heroes is a sequel to Guardian Heroes on the Sega Saturn, developed under license from Sega. It came out in Japan on September 22, 2004, and on September 14 in North America, where Ubisoft released it. The box promises more than 20 playable characters and 160 moves, and you upgrade each fighter as you go. Unlike the Saturn game, you can use almost every character you unlock in the main story.

The story is bleak for a game this colourful. The few remaining resistance forces call on the Undead Hero once again, and one young soldier gives up his body to be its vessel. It is the most complicated game on this list, with menus and stats where the others just have fists. Players who recommend it tend to name Gunstar Super Heroes right next to it, which tells you the kind of player it wins over.

Final Fight One puts Capcom's arcade brawler on the GBA. Sun-Tec made this version, and it has all three characters plus the Industrial Area stage that was missing from the Super NES version. Two players can team up over a link cable. The Mad Gear Gang has kidnapped Jessica, the mayor's daughter, and the mayor, an ex-street fighter himself, calls in Cody and Guy to help. The mayor is Mike Haggar, a pro wrestler turned politician, so the plan for cleaning up Metro City is mostly suplexes.

The game began as a sequel to the first Street Fighter, under the working title Street Fighter '89, and became a beat 'em up after the success of Double Dragon. The arcade original was the highest-grossing arcade game of 1990 in Japan. On the GBA, players keep naming it among the games worth owning, which is a nice second life for a cabinet.

TMNT is the Game Boy Advance game of the 2007 CGI movie, developed by Ubisoft Montreal. It came out in North America on March 20, 2007, and it was one of the last games published for the GBA, at a time when the Nintendo DS was already halfway through its prime. The home versions lean on acrobatic segments in the style of Prince of Persia. The GBA one went its own way: a 2.5-D side-scrolling beat-'em-up with no three-dimensional play at all.

That choice is why it is here. Late GBA games are easy to miss, because by 2007 everyone was looking at the DS, and this one slipped past a lot of people. The players who found it recommend it without hedging and tell others they won't regret it.

Double Dragon Advance is an enhanced remake of the arcade Double Dragon, developed by Million and published by Atlus, and it pulls in pieces from the whole series. Billy and Jimmy Lee still fight a gang to rescue Marian, but now there is a Chinatown stage and a fight on top of a moving truck, both inspired by Super Double Dragon. The new enemies include the Twin Tigers and the Five Emperors, a group of rival martial artists led by Raymond.

It was designed by Muneki Ebinuma, a former Technōs employee who had worked on Super Double Dragon, so the people who knew the series best were the ones fixing it. The Japanese version came out four months after the North American one, and its credits thank Bruce Lee. Players agree that for fans of Double Dragon it gives you about everything you could want.

Advanced Adventure follows Goku's very first adventure, back when he was an ordinary boy and not yet the ultimate champion. The enemy is the Red Ribbon Army, and you fight your way through them level by level. Extra characters are hidden too: each one has a portrait tucked away in one of the levels, and you have to find it to unlock that character.

A cartoon license sitting above Double Dragon Advance and Final Fight One looks odd until you play it. Players call it a favourite GBA beat 'em up, and some say it is one of the few GBA games they still play. That is a strong showing for a game based on an anime, and a sign that people remember how it plays, not only the name on the box.

Omega Factor was co-developed by Treasure and Hitmaker, as part of a collaboration between Sega and Tezuka Productions, and it is based on Osamu Tezuka's manga and anime. It came out in Japan on December 18, 2003, but North America waited until August 17, 2004, so the release could line up with the premiere of the new Astro Boy TV series. Treasure used the delay to make some improvements to the North American version.

Astro has seven super abilities, and the game sends more than 40 characters at him, Atlas and Blue Knight among them, across an original seven-episode story. Critics praised the visuals above all, with only limited criticism of the level design. Players rate it among the best games on the GBA, licensed or not, and they recommend it far more often than anything else here.