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Join the Game Boy Player Land blog in its ongoing quest to survey the arcade-centric landscape of the Game Boy's history in this latest installment that is so creatively titled Some GBA Fighters. As you might imagine, this post is going to focus on GBA Fighters, but as usual I'd like to point out that it's not a comprehensive list of every GBA Fighter. Nor is it a Best-Of or Worst-Of list. All it really is is me talking about games that I have. So let's get it on...
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/0ZeM8l.jpg[/img]
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Dual Blades is a nice little original game that seems to pay pretty good homage to the Arcade Fighting craze of the early 90's. There's no doubt that this game borrows heavily from the Samurai Shodown series for inspiration. However it's certainly refreshing to see an original title make its name on the GBA and do something so interesting. As you can see from the screens above, the 2D graphics are spot-on and the blood flows heavily. The music is also like a soundtrack to a game you've played in an arcade, but can't put your finger on. Having said all that, the controls feel a bit clunky and awkward. I never really feel like I know what I'm doing 100% while playing this one, which brings it more into the button-mashing realm than the sort of strategy-learning-curve kind of concept that makes other classic fighting games, well... classics. I wouldn't say that this game is no fun, but it's definitely pale by comparison to some of its competition.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/nlgVJl.jpg[/img]
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King Of The Fighters EX: Neo Blood is a pretty good entry in the long-lasting King Of The Figthers series. It certainly looks and plays similar to the older 16-bit iterations, which is welcome. The roster is deep, which is something fans of SNK Fighters should come to expect at this point. It uses the tag-team style of choosing two fighters that can be swapped in and out throughout matches. How you feel about this is up to you. I've never really been of a fan of this concept myself. However, the game is a lot of fun for the most part and has a big enough roster to keep you busy for a while. My only real complaint is the visually underwhelming backgrounds and overly generic music in a lot of the stages. I suppose I just expected more, though I've heard that the sequel more than makes up for all of this. Sadly I haven't played the second installment yet myself, though as it was published by Atlus, I certainly plan to pick it up as soon as possible.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/E11k4l.jpg[/img]
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Mortal Kombat Advance is basically a port of Mortal Kombat 3. Visually and audibly, the GBA does a stunning job emulating the PS1 or similar hardware that most players were used to seeing Mortal Kombat 3 on. The characters (and there's a lot of them!), the backgrounds, the music and sound effects are all great. Sadly, there's one majorly unforgivable problem with Mortal Kombat Advance. The AI is way too fucking hard. I mean really, unbelievably, brutally hard. You will not beat anyone unless you either (A) get super lucky, (B) figure out some repetitive cheap move that sucks the fun out of the game, or (C) set it to Easy. I have no idea who the game testers were on this one, but whoever they were they ruined what could have been an amazing game. Too bad.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/EaJeal.jpg[/img]
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I should confess my bias up front on this one. Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival is most likely my favorite GBA cart of all time. So I'm definitely going to say nice things about it.
Turbo Revival does an amazing job of bringing what I loved so much about Turbo on the SNES to the GBA. Amazingly, it takes the 6-button format that Street Fighter II is so well known for and converts it quite naturally to a 4-button layout without losing any of the comfort or intuition. The character sprites, levels, music and sound effects are all wonderful. This is in my opinion one of the first carts that any new GBA owner should pick up. Trust me.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/OIQbgl.jpg[/img]
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Street Fighter Alpha 3 is incredibly impressive and shockingly ballsy. It pulls a huge roster into a GBA cart and manages to keep up quite well with it's PS1 and Dreamcast brothers. I personally never played the console editions myself, but I am a fan of Capcom Vs. SNK 2 EO which was released for the Gamecube. Incredibly this GBA port seems to hold up even against that title as well when discussing the sprites and fluidity of the controls. Although nostalgia keeps me a bigger fan of Street Fighter II, there's absolutely no denying what an incredible GBA title this one is.
[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/u9MMwl.jpg[/img]
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Tekken Advance is brilliant. Or at least Namco is. What they did was take the roster and gameplay mechanics of Tekken Tagteam Tournament which had been released on PS2 and then completely de-made it into a 2D Fighter that would work to the strengths of the GBA. The result is amazing. The characters look just as awesome as they did in their original PS1 incarnations -- again demonstrating the true 32-bit power of the GBA -- and since the game wasn't forcing the GBA to pull off any 3D trickery that it wasn't capable of, instead we get a fantastic 2D Fighter that plays perfectly. Highly recommended.
So as you can see, with the exception of the completely destroyed Mortal Kombat Advance, there are some fantastic games out there for GBA if you're a 2D Fighter fan like myself. Personally, I'd still like to find King Of The Fighters 2. Also, I'm slightly interested in how well the quasi-3D Mortal Kombat titles are. But what other GBA Fighters am I missing out on? And which are just terrible?
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I had heard MK:A was unplayable but i thought it was due to a programming error. I might be confusing it with another of the portable titles.... Tournament Edition perhaps?
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Mortal Kombat is an awesome series but it has always been known for its "what the hell were they thinking?" levels of AI in several of their games. Who hasn't been jumping in on an enemy with a kick only for them to pop up LAST SECOND with a ridiculously timed counter-kick, or my favorite...you uppercut, they IMMEDIATELY duck and uppercut you so quickly you don't have time to blink.
Tekken is indeed excellent on GBA, was totally surprised by that one. Alpha 3 is one of my favorite Street Fighters, I'll have to look into that one for some SFA3 action on the go.
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The second King of Fighters game offers 3 exclusive characters, the sound no longer resembles a bad emulation of a car alarm, and they doubled the average frames of animation per character by removing Robert.
Is it a better game? Sure.
But it feels like less of it's own game and more like an optional side story you'd unlock by beating the King of Fighters 2000. The new final boss is a literal clone of the final boss of KOF '96. He's just as cheap as before, only now you're being unfairly slaughtered by a child, and it's all non-canon.
You'll want it anyways just to own one of the best GBA fighters out there, but don't expect to be blown away by the experience. Like a lot of GBA ports, it's only a stand out among other GBA titles.
As for the other Mortal Kombat games: consider them a must. The controls translate well, the AI just wants to have fun, and unlocking everything will keep you occupied for weeks, if not months. The only glaring weakness is that the graphics don't compare well to say, Mortal Kombat 1 on the Game Gear, but that's more a fault of the cartoonish art style being translated to a low resolution screen than the '2d sprite pasted on a 3d texture' graphics engine.
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I absolutely LOVE SSFII:TR. I've played the hell out of that game growing up and even still today. Plus, it has an obnoxiously long name. 
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SSFII: TR - FTW! = D
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