Horror on the Game Boy Advance looked nothing like horror on the big consoles. There was no room on a cartridge for foggy towns and long cutscenes, so the scares came in sprite form, with candlelit castles and vampires who hate the daylight. It was spooky the way a good Halloween special is spooky, and you could play it under the covers with a worm light clipped to the screen.
The GBA had a gothic streak from day one, since Circle of the Moon was there at launch. Hideo Kojima later turned up with a vampire hunt that needed real sunlight, and the demons of Doom made it onto the handheld too. Here are the 6 best GBA horror games.
6. Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django (2004)
Boktai 2 opens with a nasty surprise. As soon as Django arrives, a mysterious vampire steals his Gun Del Sol and uses it on him, so the hero of the first game has to start over with a sword. A new Solar Glove, the Sol de Vice, lets him enchant ordinary weapons with the power of the sun, and Solar Forging lets you combine any two weapons into one. The cartridge still carries a light sensor that measures the sunlight that hits it.
The rest is very much the first game again: a run of stealth and puzzle dungeons that end in boss fights against vampires. Players tend to recommend the two Boktai games together, as one long vampire hunt. If you liked the first one, this is more of it with a sword in your hand.
5. Doom (2001)
Doom is where a lot of us learned what a demon looks like up close. The early design was a science fiction horror concept in which scientists on the Moon open a portal to an alien invasion. In the finished game, over a series of levels, the player discovers that the aliens are demons while hell steadily infects the level design. You are a space marine fighting through hordes of undead humans and invading demons, which is about as horror as a shooter gets.
The GBA port reached North America on October 24, 2001, and Europe a few weeks later. It is small and grainy, and the dark corridors are even darker on an old unlit screen, which honestly helps the mood. Players who love Doom say the GBA version is worth having, and that a fan of the series should play it.
4. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (2002)
Harmony of Dissonance is set in 1748, fifty years after Simon Belmont vanquished Dracula's curse in Simon's Quest. You play his grandson, Juste Belmont, who walks into a monster-filled castle to rescue a kidnapped childhood friend. The twist is that there are two versions of the castle. Each has mostly the same room layout, but the monsters and items change between them, and breaking a wall in one castle can change the other.
It was the second Castlevania on the GBA, and it received positive reviews from English-language critics. It also lets you collect furniture to fill a bare room in the castle, which is the most relaxing thing anyone has ever done in Dracula's house. The castle is brighter than the one in Circle of the Moon.
3. Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand (2003)
Boktai is a vampire story with a properly bleak setup. The natural cycle of life and death has broken, and the city of Istrakan has been overrun by undead creatures called Immortals. Even the heroes who used to hunt them have fallen. Then a boy named Django turns up with the blood of a legendary vampire hunter in his veins and a weapon called the Gun Del Sol, which fires bolts of sunlight. Hideo Kojima produced and designed it.
The cartridge has a light sensor, and the game encouraged playing parts of it in direct sunlight. Run your gun dry with no sun around and you have to sneak past enemies or find a Solar Station to recharge. Players remember it as the vampire hunting game that made you go outside for real sunlight, and that still sounds made up. It was not.
2. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (2001)
Circle of the Moon was a launch title for the Game Boy Advance, and it starts with a family tragedy. A decade before the game, Nathan's parents and Morris Baldwin tried to banish Dracula. His parents died in the fight, though Dracula was sealed away. Now the vampire hunter Nathan Graves has to rescue his mentor from Dracula's clutches. Camilla, a vampiress who serves Dracula, is back from earlier games, and Morris's jealous son Hugh is never far behind.
Its Dual Set-Up System lets you mix and match magic attacks, like setting your whip on fire. It sold 500,000 units worldwide and received critical acclaim. Players still tell new GBA owners to pick it up. Its dark graphics were a problem on the unlit original GBA, and a backlit screen fixes most of that today.
1. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2003)
Aria of Sorrow is set in 2035, decades after a war ended in Dracula's permanent demise and his castle was sealed in a solar eclipse. Soma Cruz, a teenager granted occult powers, gets trapped in that eclipse, where dark figures want to inherit Dracula's power. Nearly every enemy can yield a soul for Soma to absorb, which turns the castle's monsters into your toolbox. Some souls even let him transform into mythical creatures.
Producer Koji Igarashi oversaw it, and Michiru Yamane returned to compose the music. It received universal acclaim, and some critics considered it the best Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night. Players still name it among their favourite GBA games, and it leads this list by a long way. It is the scariest castle on the handheld and also the most fun to clear out.
Which one to play
There you have it, the whole list of the best GBA horror games. None of them will keep you up at night, but every one of them is a great excuse to play in the dark.
If you are not sure where to start, play Aria of Sorrow. If you want the classic whip and a stiffer challenge, go back to Circle of the Moon. For something nobody else made, the Boktai games turn vampire hunting into a reason to go outside. Shooter fans should take Doom along on a long trip. And for a hidden pick, try Harmony of Dissonance and its two castles.
