8 Best GBA Demakes

Lumines was a PSP puzzle game, and the GBA got three homebrew answers to it. Luminesweeper came first. Its author made it to criticize the high price of the PSP and save players "the 220 USD + tax" that the system, a memory card and a game cost. It's pronounced like "luminous sweeper", it has two modes, left and right, and its source code is out under the GNU GPL.

Gleam, by AkumaATR, is a Lumines clone with eight levels of "moody and atmospheric" play. Luminous, by Smayds, is a Lumines inspired puzzler for the same handheld. Players who ask for Lumines on the GBA get pointed to these three, and all of them are free. Pick one, or play all three and decide which blocks you like falling best.

Super Mario 64 on a Game Boy Advance sounds like a joke. Players agree that real 3D on the GBA takes some serious wizardry, because the handheld was built for sprites. That has not stopped people from trying, and fans keep sharing progress videos of Mario running around in full 3D. One of them is titled "Mario 64 on GBA got WAY Better", which tells you how it has been going.

It is a proof of concept, not a game you finish on a Sunday afternoon. One skeptic called it "a cut down simulation of Super Mario 64", and that is fair. It is also the most jaw-dropping thing on this list. Watch it run once and the GBA never looks small again.

Sacred Echoes is a demake of the 3DS game Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, built on the GBA's own Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. The complete patch includes all 5 story acts, with 46 story maps, 1 gaiden chapter and 8 repeatable maps. Spells are learned by level-up and cost HP to cast, just like in Echoes. There is a world map you can explore, and the soundtrack is all-new GBA remixes of Gaiden and Echoes music.

There is also a Casual/Classic mode split, so a lost unit does not have to be gone forever. It is available in English and Chinese, with Spanish on the way. Players call it an excellent demake that looks very official and professional, and they are right. If you never had a 3DS, this is a fine way to meet Alm and Celica.

Sword and Shield are the newest games on this list to get the treatment, and fans have rebuilt them as a GBA game. It goes by Sword and Shield Ultimate, or Ultimate Plus, depending on who is recommending it. Either way you get a modern Pokémon adventure drawn like a GBA game, which is a strange and lovely thing to see.

Players who want more Pokémon on the GBA bring it up right next to the big original fan games like Unbound. They describe it as a demake of the Switch games for the GBA and keep telling each other it exists, usually with some surprise. Seeing the Switch generation on a GBA screen is reason enough to try it.

GS Chronicles is HeartGold and SoulSilver made in the GBA engine. That means the Johto adventure from the DS remakes, with the look and feel of FireRed and Emerald, on a single screen. Players describe it as a demake of the DS games.

Fans of the second generation keep putting it among the best Johto hacks you can play, and some still call it their favourite. It is older than the hack at the top of this list. Still, if you like Gold and Silver and have already played the newest Johto demake, this is the next one to load.

There are two ways to play Celeste on a GBA. The one most players mean is a port of Celeste Classic, the original Pico-8 game by Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry. It is almost a direct conversion with minor graphical alterations, and there is a GBA port of Celeste Classic 2 as well. The more ambitious project, by IsaGoodFriend, takes the award winning Celeste and demakes it for the Game Boy Advance.

Players who have tried it call the Classic port a lot of fun and really well done. Pico-8 fans who want the game on a GBA keep pointing each other to it. It is a hard platformer in a tiny package, and it will happily let you miss the same jump twelve times in a row.

Balatro GBA is a non-profit fan demake of Balatro, the card game designed and created by LocalThunk and published by Playstack. The goal is to recreate it as accurately as possible, including all the visuals that make it satisfying to play. You use the shoulder buttons to play or discard your hand, and the music was arranged from the original soundtrack by LouisF. The project is not to be sold.

It is a minimal tech-demo, intended for those who already own and know the official game. The game does not explain what each joker does, so its makers send you to the Balatro wiki. Players agree it is missing features from the full game, and they play it anyway. Somehow it is still the thing you open when you only meant to play one hand.

Heart & Soul is a demake of HeartGold and SoulSilver for the GBA, made in the engine of the GBA Pokémon games. It takes the Johto remakes from the DS and shrinks them down onto one screen, and it adds a lot of quality of life features on top. That makes it a natural fit for anyone playing on a single-screen handheld, where the DS games are awkward.

Players recommend it more than any other GBA demake. Many of them say a hack like this is now the best way to play Johto, and some prefer it to the DS originals. Once you have finished it, the rest of this list is waiting.