For the past few weeks or so I find myself becoming a bit more interested in playing some of my older games. I have a decent collection of Gameboy (advance) games and still working consoles and I find myself longing for the simpler times of the Gameboy and the games it brought with it. I’m also finding myself hanging out on the Gameboy subreddit a lot, admiring people who dare mod their old Gameboys to have back or front lit screens and wishing I could do the same. I’m heavily contemplating getting a modded original Gameboy Advance, like the one shown in the above picture. I’d love to have one that has a backlit screen and that I could use to play my advance games. I remember being rather jealous when my cousins both got one of these and I was still “stuck” playing on my Gameboy Color back in the day. My dad got me an Advance SP not long after those came out but I’ve always felt a bit more love towards the one model that I never had. I remember a ton of good times playing my Gameboy and I kind of want to recapture that again.
The real issue is that I’m already swamped with my current gen games that I really need to find time to play my retro games. I would love to do a whole new playthrough of Pokémon Emerald, but my internal battery has run dry which means I don’t have any time based events anymore like regrowing berry tree or the flow of tides. I’m considering taking my cartridge to a retro gaming shop nearby and asking if they can replace the battery for me and then relive my GBA Pokémon days. I’ve also have a ton of other cool games that deserve a complete playthrough or a replay but again, I’d need to find the time.
Going through my collection is making me super nostalgic though and I wish I had someone I could share these moments with. Maybe someday, but for now I’ll need to start with finding the time to play some of my retro stuff to begin with.
Definitely the best Game Boy (and for once I can rule out nostalgia, because I had played *a lot* with friends’ classic Game Boys in the early 90s) – I bought mine in 2002 I guess and the lack of backlight was the only real annoyance 😛
Have you played Golden Sun? It was one of my favourite Game Boy games, although I never had the nerve to finish it – for some reason I liked it a lot better than Pokémon, although I didn’t hate those.
Never played Golden Sun sadly. By the time I got my GBA I was around 13 years old and actually slowly drifting away from gaming because teenage years. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Pokémon series though so I made sure I had those games and other games that I knew I would enjoy like Crash Bandicoot/Spyro, Rayman, Harry Potter and some platformers.
When the modded GBA arrives though I want to get a bit more GBA games and I’ll definitely consider Golden Sun.