GBA Games Rock on DS!

Last night I stayed up too late and felt like a zombie today. Why? Because I just *had* to finish Gradius Galaxies, a GBA game from 2001 that I was playing on my DS. It's a pretty neat version of the classic sidescrolling shoot-em up which has more or less the same weapons, bosses and level graphics no matter what version you are playing on whatever platform It was a bit fiddly on the small screen compared to when I played Gradius IV and V on my PS2 on a 42" plasma a couple of years back! But it was still good fun, and fiendishly hard (I only played it on Medium Difficulty!). Anyway I recommend it.

I got it recently for an ultra low price because someone at BFG was selling a load of second hand games and he had a list of pretty decent GBA titles (I checked out their reviews on GameSpot to make sure none were turkeys) and I snaffled them up for myself and the kids. That's the cool thing about GBA games is that there are TONS of *really* good games out there that you can buy for next to nothing second hand. I've built up a giant wish list of them using GameSpot to filter the reviews in score order.

Some other GBA games I enjoyed over the last year were:

- Metal Slug Advance (This was classic but also fiendishly hard, I got right to the end boss and had to get on an aeroplane and haven't played it since)

- Astro Boy (A really neat platformer with some nifty moves. Was a bit strange at first but then I got really into it. Highly recommended).

I've also got Super Mario 3 sitting around waiting to be played and I bought my eldest son Pokemon Leaf Green because apart from Pokemon Pearl and Diamond all the other DS Pokemon games seem a bit rubbish.

Anyhow, I'm loving playing GBA games on DS (I missed out on having a GBA, really wanted one but bought a GameCube instead at the time, which I don't regret, it was awesome). I'll report back as I have fun with other classics.