Geek Addicts - Episode 16: Talking GBA Memories!

[00:00:00] The following is a bunch of these little like old the old timey like buildings and they all like little shops in them. And we just kind of went and walked around there. They there was this big like anime manga store that they had that like was super hyped up and we got there.

[00:01:41] And you know, honestly, it was a little underwhelming.

[00:01:44] I think it's just because me and Alex are such seasoned

[00:02:42] is gonna be getting a live action movie.

[00:02:46] Apparently there is a Naruto live action movie. Oh yeah.

[00:02:47] So the director from that Shang-Chi movie

[00:02:51] is apparently directing it.

[00:02:52] So I haven't seen it,

[00:02:55] but I've heard a lot of good things about that movie.

[00:02:57] So I mean, hopefully that means good things.

[00:03:01] I hope so.

[00:03:02] Like the whole thing like with live action is like,

[00:03:06] it'll either be goodandelions. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that is me.

[00:04:20] I'm gonna go see what that is real quick.

[00:04:22] Okay.

[00:04:23] I'm gonna pause this real quick.

[00:04:26] Yeah, so, see, I don't know. I feel like if you kind of all have a bullshit with Naruto, like how One Piece is getting that treatment right now with the One Piece, like if we got like the Naruto or Naruto Kai or whatever the fuck you wanna call it,

[00:05:42] like, I don't know, I feel like it would translate

[00:05:45] really well and I think it would catch a lot of people say that that's like one of the best ways to experience the story without having to go through the whole It was rum. Like, all those things. Oh, boy. Cap is the pessimist, though. Yeah.

[00:08:20] No, everyone has their first hangover, and it's always bad.

[00:08:23] Yeah, for real.

[00:08:25] I mean, I did a podcast hungover this week if you'd like to know more. Yeah, but I guess going onto our topic now, this one kind of last minute, but I kind of like the idea of it because we're trying to branch out and not do so many anime and like manga and just certainly non-gaming focused episodes because we're supposed to be kind of an all around podcast.

[00:09:42] We haven't really covered a ton of gaming yet.

[00:09:44] Yeah, I think, I mean, you got the red SP? The red SP. It's actually not the best SP because it's a front lit version. So the screen's not amazing. But I've had this since God, what year did this thing come out?

[00:11:01] And it's the same.

[00:11:04] 2002. screen. It was a true backlit screen. And they generally just had better screens. Like this one in particular gets very washed out at times. But one fact about this handheld, this version too, it was the first one that had a rechargeable battery. Yeah, which was a serious game changer growing up. And these that point in time. And that was just like our continuous cycle all the time. You know, the one thing about the. About the SP that always bothered me, though, was that it doesn't have a headphone jack.

[00:13:42] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[00:13:43] That is to the real GBA have that it did in the micro has one.

[00:13:47] Wow.

[00:14:43] It had to have been a design oversight, but I always remember like you would be on.

[00:14:46] That's the one thing that sucks about this thing is like you can't get that awesome like stereo sound because it doesn't have a headphone jack.

[00:14:51] Hmm.

[00:14:53] I couldn't tell you the last time I wore headphones,

[00:14:55] I'm playing a handheld game, though.

[00:14:58] I do it every now and then, depending on the game,

[00:15:00] because sometimes I really like to enjoy that music.

[00:15:03] That's fair.

[00:15:04] Like if I'm playing like Vita, sometimes like say,

[00:15:06] if I'm playing like Persona 4 dancing all night

[00:16:02] drop like Tetris pieces in and make Tetrises. And turning the blocks and moving them

[00:16:05] causes the backgrounds to change.

[00:16:06] It is a wild game to play.

[00:16:10] Oh.

[00:16:11] I couldn't tell you the last time I touched a Tetris game.

[00:16:13] So I just, I don't know, I haven't caught up

[00:16:16] with all these different variations.

[00:16:19] That one's more of an experience than anything.

[00:16:21] It is on Switch.

[00:16:22] So if you ever see it on sale, I'd

[00:16:24] recommend picking it up just to experience it.

[00:16:26] Fair enough. made a bunch of games on GBA, surprisingly, like, because I because Microsoft didn't have a man tell that the time they kind of just gave rare the okay to still make stuff for the Game Boy Advance and they made a couple games and one of them was that it's like a weird sequel to Benjo. Zooey one, where like

[00:17:42] Grunty comes back is like this game is balls hard. It gets there as it goes. I remember, I had this one too. Like I wasn't even halfway through the game. I just kind of picked up wherever my save file left off. I think it was like the third like chapter or whatever. And I was, I was getting like visibly frustrated with some of these levels.

[00:19:02] It's basically just marble madness, especially like the dub versions. They they went real hard with those kinds of wicky, catchy kid friendly music stuff. Yeah, they really did. That one was fun. Did you ever play the sequel? I don't think so. I think I don't know if it was the same game or not, but it was I

[00:20:23] think I played the PlayStation. It's a port of the Super Nintendo game and it's pretty good. Not much else to say. They add some quality of life improvements. They add more story elements and then they let you save wherever you want now. The music's not as great, but for GBA standards, it still sounds pretty good.

[00:21:40] Oh, yeah, sure.

[00:21:42] Basically it's Donkey Kong Country just with a little more content. I just got my copy late. No, it was 2002. Oh, okay. Emerald came out in 2003, I want to say. Okay. Yes. So 2002. So yeah, this is my original copy of Sapphire from 2002. I played the hell out of this one back in the day. Like this was the first Pokemon game I really

[00:23:00] owned. Yeah, that was the out of those three games like playing Platinum over Pearl or Diamond so makes sense. I mean other than Wallace being the champion which is incredibly pathetic and easy to win,

[00:24:25] Emerald just is basically better in every way. way they did regular Pokemon, but the way they did it that was bizarre was like, red one was on GBA, and then the blue version was on DS. So you had like two different consoles with the same game. And I think that was part of their way of kind of playing around with the idea of like, like you could have both games in the DS and then like you could because the way that the

[00:25:45] multiplayer worked in that those games would think it's still the way it was just so unique and interesting. And like the amount of postgame content in that game was outrageous. There was so much to do. The personality of all the Pokemon. Oh yeah, for sure. And like, and the whole aspect of the personality test in the beginning. Like that determines what Pokemon you get.

[00:27:02] I cheated on that so much.

[00:27:04] Yeah, everybody does eventually.

[00:27:06] I usually like to go with just whatever, I remember you would just poke the screen and it would just give you something randomly. And I remember that being kind of cool, but at the same time, be like, oh, you can't even cheese it anymore. You just have to keep randomizing it until you get it right. Hmm. Did you, out of curiosity, did you ever see the pilot episode of the series they tried to do for this? I remember it.

[00:28:20] I remember seeing it, but it was years ago

[00:28:23] and it's extremely vague.

[00:28:27] Yeah, I remember bits and pieces of it, Yeah. Do you remember when Nickelodeon used to do that during the summer? They do that national day of play and they just cut off the airing for an entire day. It would literally go outside. Really annoyed child me. Well, they didn't think the fact that all it really did was just make kids go over to Cartoon Network or something.

[00:29:43] Yeah, they go to Cartoon Network or they poprolling 2D platformer. Huh. It's- That's interesting. It's bad. It's just, it's generally one of the worst games you'll probably ever play on GBA.

[00:31:05] That's a pretty low bar. That being mean, the later entries in that series were definitely better, but I enjoyed the game a lot as a kid when Naruto was first coming out. I was first getting into it.

[00:32:20] Yeah, I remember it,

[00:32:21] because that was like a very different time for anime too.

[00:32:23] And Naruto was kind of this weird one

[00:32:25] that just kind of came out of nowhere.

[00:33:23] Hey, I was gonna bring that one up next.

[00:33:27] Alright, so I'll put that aside then and I'll grab another one.

[00:33:30] That's fine. We can talk about it.

[00:33:33] One variety in this if you were going to talk about it anyway.

[00:33:37] OK, here we got Spyro Attack of the Rhinox.

[00:33:39] Or Rhinox.

[00:33:44] So did you ever play any of the Spyros on a GBA?

[00:33:47] You know, now that you mentioned it, I think I did play one of them.

[00:33:49] I don't remember to look at the titles to remember. The other one was Enter the Dragonfly.

[00:35:00] That might have been that one.

[00:35:02] Oh, that one's infamously bad.

[00:35:04] Is it? Well, maybe it's my child, brain, not Karen.

[00:35:07] Maybe. Oh, look and GT transformations. Yes, which I actually I saw a list. It was like one of those like article list things. It was like top five hardest Dragon Ball games, which Dragon Power wasn't on the list. So I already know they didn't know what they were talking about. But GT transformations was on that list. I was like, I don't know.

[00:36:20] I mean, child me was able to beat it. So it couldn't have

[00:36:22] been that bad.

[00:36:23] That one's not even hard. It's just boring as fuck.

[00:36:26] Yeah, it's just that I wanted shit? I never played that one. I remember the Kim Possible ones though, because they were all super cheap. Well, I never played them. I just saw them all over the place. There's always a bunch of them. When you're, when you're a collector starting out and you have a lot of money,

[00:37:42] you see that GBA bargain bin, you just go like, y never told you that. So you're just running around in circles challenging everybody, which is ultimately what they wanted you to do. But it was also really hard to remember who you fought and who you hadn't. Yeah. See, I love this game too, because like it's one of the rare like, yo games that actually plays like an RPG, where you actually walk around the world map and everything.

[00:39:04] The reason I remember this one in particular, though, was like, they changed the plot of the

[00:40:06] Yeah, that sucks. It's they they like took the criticism of say of sacred cards being too easy And they just jacked up the difficulty to fucking 11. Yeah

[00:40:10] It was just way too much and when I first got it and started playing it

[00:40:15] I was all excited and but as soon as I started it too

[00:40:17] I was like, oh my god, it's just like the first one and then I realized that your life points don't go back

[00:40:23] After you finish a duel then the rule they changed all the rules and nothing makes sense anymore it wasn't a fantastic arc but it had some fun stuff in it. It had decent moments. I wasn't a fan of emo pharaoh though for a while there. Yeah well that happens. Yeah that was a weird arc. Also Joey was just important in that arc for no reason. Yeah he kicked a did it better than that. Could have like maybe sealed them or, uh, somehow made it so they don't work anymore. But no, let's just have evil and Rex bug your cute grandfather. And it's like, it's like, okay. Like the two most pathetic like duelists mug an old man.

[00:43:03] It's like, yeah.

[00:43:03] All right.

[00:43:04] That old man gets mugged a lot.

[00:43:06] And his exact words were, Oh no, not again. Huh. I thought it must have been because the game actually uses full 3D areas. So it was probably just pushing way too much on the system. Yeah. Other than that, there's not much to say. It's Duke Nukem on GBA. Fair enough. I'm trying to think. You, Hakusho, tried to attack things,

[00:44:24] which we've talked about a little bit before. Yeah, my copy that got stolen in the mail and But I actually picked up Final Fantasy 2. Picked that back up this past week. And tried to fiddle the round with it until I figured out where I left off because I when I got crisis core I put it down. I beat crisis core and almost immediately started Final Fantasy 7 remake and I just beat the base game on that like last week.

[00:45:43] So I got to a point now where I was like, okay, starters. Yeah, which was a big deal. I remember, could you get the second gen starters and? No, you had to play Coliseum. That's such stupid to play fucking Coliseum. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,

[00:47:01] we've green in particular, I played the hell out of like, I still remember like,

[00:47:06] because basically it's a better's a it's a decent action RPG It's not you know overly impressive in any particular way

[00:48:23] But they really went out of their way to try and make it look like the movies to fit on the screen. Does add some bonus content, but I guess nowadays with the Pixel remasters, there's no real reason to play advanced, but like back in the day, this was a pretty good option. I mean, it's still not a bad choice. Sometimes it's just nice to play the old cartridge games.

[00:49:40] Yeah, I mean, for me, if I'm gonna play six,

[00:49:43] I still prefer to play like the original

[00:49:45] like Final Fantasy III cartridge on Super Nintendo, like what they didn't need to need to edit everything. But it was like one of those things where it honestly surprised me with how many different like weapons and items and stuff that you could use. Cause you know, like I said, if I was messing around in a completed file, so I had everything available to me. And that's one, that's what I definitely have to go through and actually play it. I have it on my 3DS and I also have it on the

[00:51:02] Super Nintendo emulator, my, my switch.

[00:51:06] So at some point I'm definitely going to go Not gonna lie. This is a fucking great game. Although I prefer the DS version personally That's one of the only Sims games I ever played but I played it on Xbox So completely different game. Yeah, that's my understanding of it. This is like an RPG huh, like an adventure RPG kind of game or like you play in like

[00:52:22] You have to like do missions and like you go through like this like

[00:53:24] Hide, recharge, run up, punch, hide, recharge. The Solar Flare is your friend.

[00:53:25] It's one thing I've learned.

[00:53:26] I never really fucked with it when I was a kid, but as I got older and went back to play

[00:53:31] it again, I realized that Solar Flare just breaks the game.

[00:53:35] You don't need anything else.

[00:53:36] You don't need key blast.

[00:53:37] You don't need nothing.

[00:53:38] Just Solar Flare.

[00:53:39] That's all you need.

[00:53:40] Yeah, that's the disappointing thing about that Capsule Corp, old Gus, his name.

[00:55:01] And he goes on this whole spiel about how he worked with

[00:56:02] for Switch, Xbox.

[00:56:06] That's cool. Solid, solid little games though,

[00:56:07] completely bizarre plot lines

[00:56:09] because they're completely just original like random shit.

[00:56:14] Fun game.

[00:56:14] Yeah, I can imagine,

[00:56:15] a lot of the games that came up for GBA

[00:56:17] were very similar to that,

[00:56:18] like where they just kind of like got the freedom

[00:56:23] to just kind of make up their own thing

[00:56:24] and it always ended up coming out really weird.

[00:56:27] Yeah, it was was just, I think part of it was the aesthetics of it just looked so bad that it was really hard to find your way. Gotcha. And I remember the game being really dark for no reason, like the colors and stuff was very dark. So it was always hard to figure out where you were going. Especially on an original GBA where you couldn't see it.

[00:57:42] Yeah,

[00:59:01] I mean I have it available to me so I probably straight up the game. They didn't change anything. Yeah, I had a similar one to that. It was a worldwide edition, I think it was called. Yeah, I think when I bought Eternal Duel of Soul,

[01:00:24] I was debating whether I was going to get that one or the one you just have that card. Yeah, just make your your actual deck in game. The only thing that sucked was you couldn't do the same code more than once. So you can only get one copy of each card that way, but still there's a solid way to get a base going for a deck. Yeah, that was a fun fun. It's just a really cool idea. For sure.

[01:02:47] weird hybrid between like Mario Kart 64 and like the original Mario Kart. I remember playing the hell out of it back in the day though like I remember like Luigi was my main like always and I got

[01:02:53] through all the like stages like constantly. Yeah ever since um I don't remember if he was a character

[01:03:02] in the Mario Kart DS but I know for a long time I that color? It was both. Huh. I don't know which one I had because I know I had one of... I think it might have been the

[01:04:20] Game Boy Advance one because I feel like I remember game anymore. I get that. Yeah, because honestly, those errors went by very quick. Yeah, I mean the life cycle of the GBA wasn't very long. Yeah, I mean, its official life cycle was like 2001 to 2004 when it was the sole handheld.

[01:05:41] I think it was still going by like 2007 though.

[01:05:45] Yeah, I mean, but hey, at least it had a lasting impression.

[01:07:03] It certainly did. I mean, I definitely played it a lot. So

[01:08:03] like the straight up side scroll and classic Sonic type games. Like they tend to reuse a lot of levels and stuff and other games and things like that.

[01:08:11] Like, you know, I have Sonic Mania.

[01:08:12] I have a lot of the original Sonic games.

[01:08:14] So it's like, do I really need Advance?

[01:08:18] You know, I'd say Advance 1 and 2 are worth picking up because they have some unique ideas.

[01:08:23] Fair enough.

[01:08:24] In Advance 2, you can play as Cream the Rabbit. versions of this game. So I'm curious what the idea of Game Boy Advance 1 played like. It was a little janky. It kind of had the feeling of the old style movies where there's a car chase or something, and you know that there's just a painted background that somebody is just spinning a wheel to make it move,

[01:09:41] so it looks like they're going really fast.

[01:09:44] Yeah.

[01:09:44] That's kind of the idea that you get.

[01:09:46] That's kind of the For real. What do we got? Rayman three. It doesn't play like the Rayman three on consoles. It's actually a side scroller.

[01:11:01] Huh? That's bizarre.

[01:11:03] So it's like the first Rayman.

[01:11:06] Interesting.

[01:12:04] a kid back in the year, you had to really like just kind of guess and like you, you'd basically either you'd be 50 50. Like sometimes you get a winner, sometimes you would not need to have to

[01:12:08] live with your choice for the time being. That's kind of how I ended up with the GT

[01:12:13] transformations back in the day. Yeah, me too. And you beat it in a day and you're like, this sucks.

[01:12:21] It's kind of bad when you have more fun playing the Dragon Ball Evolution game,

[01:12:24] they do GT transformations. I mean, that's at least an adventure game kind of where you're running around. Does he live in Tokyo? I don't even know. I don't know. Good question. Well, they're running around whatever. Wait, no, it's not.

[01:13:40] It's like a what the hell I know they mentioned the name of the

[01:13:45] city he lives in the show. I Star is one I've heard of. So this is a compilation of Fantasy Stars one through three. Unfortunately it doesn't have four,

[01:15:00] which is an incredible bummer

[01:15:02] because four is the best one in my opinion.

[01:15:04] But one and two are worth it.

[01:15:06] Three is okay. check. So I think I have that or I have had it before I might have given it to somebody. I feel like I bought this originally and then I later got independent versions for collector's sake. Yeah, I'm very curious though. See, I think I had gotten that. ones that I've heard about constantly and never actually played. I went to go start it the other day. Oh yeah, cause they put it on a Switch. Yeah, I went to go start it the other day just to kind of like see what the hype was about.

[01:17:40] And then like I barely got into like the first bit of text

[01:17:43] and I was like, this is gonna be it.

[01:17:46] This is gonna be a lot.

[01:17:47] I probably shouldn't start this right now. I think that one's on online as well. It is and I believe they gave the full e-reader remember the e-reader guys. They gave the full e-reader version that had all the bonus unlockable levels that you could get through e-reader cards. Interesting. I think my little brother plays that one a lot.

[01:19:03] It's good.

[01:19:04] There's also Mario Advance 1 Oh, here it is. Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition. Yeah, that does look familiar. I'm trying to remember. So that one didn't have a story to it. It was just like, If it had a story, it was incredibly non-important, basically.

[01:20:20] Okay.

[01:20:21] So it was more along the lines of like, what we my buddies were going through like all the Pokemon games and trying to complete the Pokedexes. That was the only way I was able to do it on Gen three.

[01:21:42] You know, there was also a Grand Theft Auto on Game Boy Advance.

[01:21:45] That's right. I forgot about that.

[01:22:44] on Grand Theft Auto. And she was like, what the fuck are you playing? And she took the game from me.

[01:22:49] Yeah, I wasn't allowed to play them at all. Like the first Grand Theft Auto I played was

[01:22:55] actually five because that was like the first one I could actually get with my own money.

[01:22:58] Because my parents were very strict about that.

[01:23:04] My mom was I had a lot more freedom with what I stories that I already know. It's fun. Which I finished the base game up by the way. Nice. Yeah, so unfortunately we're running out of time tonight because I have to work tomorrow, which sucks, but it is what it is. So we'll probably revisit this in the future. Maybe we'll do other handhelds or systems, just

[01:24:22] go over some games we remembered. I might not do a grab bag next time. I just wish I had more like, more experience with different kinds of games. Like I tended to, to, like I said before, I would focus more on like the franchises that I was already familiar with. Like that's why I ended up playing the learning games, Pokemon games, Dragon Ball games, Yu-Gi-Oh games, you

[01:25:40] know, like that kind of thing. I ended up missing a lot of like

[01:25:44] the specific Game Boy exclusive things like Golden Sun and all Nintendo. Yeah, right. But yeah, once again, guys, though, thanks for joining us on Geek Addicts. You can find Geek Addicts on all the major podcasting platforms right in the GNC podcast feed. You can also see video versions of this show on YouTube. Usually, shortly after the episode airs, I'll post it's basically just

[01:27:03] whenever I get around to it. And then you can also follow us over