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I think that the GBA is great because of the kinds of games you can make for it. It is a perfect blend of having hardware limitations to inspire creativity but being powerful enough to have games with enough depth to be compelling. Golden Sun comes to mind.

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Advance Wars 2 is this game for me; I only recently discovered it and it blows my mind how much tactical depth there could be on such a tiny little screen with just a few buttons of controls.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the DS is also a treasure and expands upon AW2 quite nicely

Unfortunately the much more grim and depressing "Days of Ruin" sold poorly and the studio has seemingly drifted away from making another AW game

Competitors like Tiny Metal or WarGroove just don't scratch the same itch either unfortunately

Yeah, I played a bit of Dual Strike and enjoyed it also— my main complaint with it was that the slight 3D tilt on the gameboard mangles all that beautiful pixel art.

Have tried Wargroove (it was in a recent Humble Bundle) and it was fun, but agree that it's just not quite the same.

And... a reminder that I should go reply Golden Sun as I found my GBA SP while visiting the parents for Christmas.

Golden Sun <3

I think GS 1+2 must be the last great 2D JRPGs - nothing after the SNES era comes close in my book.

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