12 Most Unique Game Boy Advance Games

Sigma Star Saga stars Ian Recker, a decorated pilot who goes undercover to investigate the Krill, the aliens humanity is struggling to survive against. The longer he stays with them, the more he gets caught in a moral dilemma about whose side he is on. Battles start at random, and each one is a space shooter. Your gun is built from parts, with over 15,000 Gun Data combinations, and the story branches into four endings over 20 or more hours.

Not every critic was won over. GameZone and the Detroit Free Press complained about the pacing and the random battle interruptions. Players who stuck with it call it a weird little game in a good way, and they describe it as a shooter and an RPG at the same time.

Riviera started on the WonderSwan Color and was ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2004, with Atlus USA releasing it in North America in 2005. You play Ein, and you never walk him around with the directional buttons. The screen shows triggers, spots you can look at or move to, and you press the direction that matches one. Some triggers only appear after certain events.

In each battle you choose three fighters out of five. You can only hold sixteen items, there is no storage, and only four of them come into a fight. The same item also works differently depending on who equips it. Players describe it as a strange little arcade RPG with a very unique approach. An HD remaster came out for Windows in July 2024.

Mega Man Battle Network was a Japanese launch game for the Game Boy Advance on March 21, 2001, and it reached North America and Europe later that year. Here Mega Man is Mega Man.EXE, a program that lives in the PET of a boy named Lan. You send him into the network to fight computer viruses in real time, using Battle Chips as your attacks, with over 175 of them to collect. Producer Keiji Inafune wanted a setting that looked like the real world and play that mixed action with RPG systems.

Critics singled out the battle system, although Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com later said this first game suffered from terrible plotting. Players agree that the unique battle system is the reason to play. The series is collected in the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection from 2023.

Super Mario Advance 4 is Super Mario Bros. 3 rebuilt from the Super Mario All-Stars version, with Charles Martinet as the voices of Mario and Luigi. The strange part is the e-Reader. Nintendo sold e-Cards, and scanning one added content to the game. To do it you needed two Game Boy Advances, the e-Reader and a copy of the game, and the European version could not do it at all.

The e-Reader itself was a failure, and two of the four card series were only released in Japan. Critics found the connection clumsy, but they liked what it unlocked. Players count it among the GBA games that do something extra with hardware, from e-Card levels and power-ups to rumble on the Game Boy Player. The Wii U and Switch versions include all the e-Reader levels, the Japan-only ones too.

Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire is a sequel to the Game Boy Color Pokémon Pinball, developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo. The ball is a Poké Ball, the bumpers are Pokémon, and the goal is the same as in the main games: catch them all. There are two main tables and 200 Pokémon. Jirachi only appears in a bonus mode where you have thirty seconds to catch it, and that is the only way to add it to your Pokédex.

It sold over 1 million copies, and IGN named it Game Boy Advance Game of the Month for August 2003. Some reviewers, TechTV and The Guardian among them, thought it was weaker as a pinball game. Players point out an extra the cartridge hides: play it through the Game Boy Player and the GameCube controller rumbles.

Kuru Kuru Kururin was a launch game for the Game Boy Advance in Europe and Australia on June 22, 2001. North America first got it on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2016. You pilot the Helirin, a stick-shaped helicopter with a slow-spinning propeller, around corners and past objects to dodge while Kururin looks for his lost brothers and sisters. Director Masato Toyoshima got the idea from a memory of moving furniture between apartments, which anyone who has turned a sofa through a doorway will understand.

Beginners can play on Easy mode, where the stick is half its usual size. Critics called it addictive, and two sequels followed, both only in Japan. Players call it weird in the best way, in how it looks and in how it plays.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga opens with the witch Cackletta and her henchman Fawful stealing Princess Peach's voice. In its place they leave explosives, which drop from her speech balloon when she talks. Mario and Luigi fly to the Beanbean Kingdom to get it back on Bowser's new airship, the Koopa Cruiser, with Bowser himself on the team. You move both brothers at once, one following the other, and battles put the weight on timing and on big attacks called Action Commands.

It was the first game in the Mario & Luigi series. Reviewers praised the writing and the tone, and it sold over 2 million copies. Players call it quirky and unique for an RPG, and some found a hidden extra: on the Game Boy Player, it rumbles.

Yoshi Topsy-Turvy is a game about gravity. Tilt the Game Boy Advance left or right and the whole level tilts with it, so enemies and other objects slide around as the direction of gravity changes. Each world asks you to master the buttons and the tilt together. The story ends with Yoshi locking Bowser away, which is how he convinces Hongo to release the rest of the island.

Reviews were mixed. Critics liked the look and the premise, argued about the tilt controls, and found it short and repetitive next to other Yoshi games. Players are kinder. They file it with the GBA's gyroscope games, with the motion sensor built into the cartridge, and they call it fun and quirky.

Wario Land 4 sends Wario into the Pyramid of Gold, because he read about the treasure inside and wants all of it. He is no longer immortal this time. He gets stung by bees, zombified, bitten by bats and set on fire, and he has over twenty enormous stages to get through. You hunt down CDs along the way and collect treasure to spend on items for the boss fights.

It came out in Japan in August 2001 and everywhere else in November. It sold 2.2 million copies, and Nintendo R&D1 later used its engine to build Metroid Fusion. Players call it creative and weird, a platformer unlike the other 2D platformers they have played, and some say there is nothing else like it today.

WarioWare: Twisted! has a gyro sensor in the cartridge, a piezoelectric gyroscope developed by NEC. You turn the whole Game Boy Advance left and right to play more than 200 minigames, and each one lasts only a few seconds. In the story, Wario sees the motion-sensing idea as a selling point and gets his friends to design games around it. It is also one of only two GBA games with force feedback.

It came out in Japan on October 14, 2004 and in North America on May 23, 2005, after the Nintendo DS had launched. It was the last Wario game on a Game Boy system. Reviewers called the gyro sensor innovative, and it won awards. Players praise the twisting as a unique control scheme that still holds up.

Boktai is Hideo Kojima's vampire-hunting game, and the cartridge has a sun sensor built into it. The amount of sunlight outside decides how much sunlight there is in the game. Your gun is fueled by sunlight too, so the more sun you get, the stronger you are. Kojima, the man behind Metal Gear Solid, made a Game Boy game that wants you to go outside. You fight the Immortals, dark creatures made of Dark Matter, and both GBA sequels kept the solar sensor.

A fourth game came out on the Nintendo DS, called Lunar Knights outside Japan. Players call Boktai the most unique GBA game of them all. Many of them play it today on a flash cart with a patch that fakes the solar sensor, which also helps if you live somewhere grey.

Drill Dozer was made by Game Freak and directed by Ken Sugimori, the first game he directed since Pulseman in 1994. You play Jill, daughter of the leader of the Red Dozers gang, chasing the rival gang that stole her family's heirloom. She does it in the Drill Dozer, a mech with a large drill. The shoulder buttons spin the drill, one clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, and you use it to fight enemies, drill into certain surfaces and screw objects. Sugimori wanted an action game without the usual kind of combat, and the cartridge has force feedback built in.

Artist Hironobu Yoshida had trouble drawing Jill until he based her hair on roll cakes, with his wife holding one on each side of her head. It sold poorly, which writers blame on poor marketing and on the Nintendo DS coming out at the same time. Europe only got it on the Wii U in 2016. Players named it more than any other game on this list, and they call it one of the most unique games on the system, rumble cart and all.