The Game Boy Advance is a titan among handhelds and it played a gigantic part in my childhood. I must have put damn near 200 hours into my GBA among so many games - Pokemon, Mario, Medabots, and Fire Emblem to name just a few of my favorites from growing up. Another favorite of mine was and still is Golden Sun.
I remember playing through the game over and over. I was totally in love with every little thing about the game. The characters, the music, the visuals, the djinn, and the gigantic summons that would obliterate enemies with some screen-filling blast. I played though the game so many times that I had memorized where the best loot and djinn were located and how to beat the toughest puzzles. I was seriously obsessed.
If there's one thing that I didn't like about the game, it was the big "TO BE CONTINUED" at the end. Golden Sun started development for the N64 but was instead made for the Game Boy Advance. Due to the constraints of the GBA's cartridges, the game had to be split into two. At the time, I only had Golden Sun. The second game, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, was nearly impossible for me to find near where I lived. So I had to wait nearly two years after the second was released to get my hands on a copy.
After the Xbox 360 came out, I pretty much fell off of handheld gaming and didn't revisit the game again until I discovered emulators.
I recently decided to start the playing the game again on my Anbernic RG353PS, and it is still the greatest RPG on the Game Boy Advance. The music is still incredible, the puzzles are still satisfying, the visuals are still some of the best on the system, and the combat is still meaty and chock-full of summons and spells. If there's one complaint that I have, it's that the random encounters are very frequent and annoying as heck sometimes. Luckily the game is structured incredibly well and there are no encounters during puzzle segments.
I'm about 10 hours into my playthrough of the game so far and I can't wait to get to The Lost Age. It still sucks that the game was split into two, but The Lost Age definitely has a lot going for it. The puzzles are more complex, there are way more djinn, the game world is larger, and there are even more summons and more side bosses. No wonder they couldn't fit it onto one cartridge. Even with that annoyance, I can't stop playing this game. Sure, I'm in nostalgia overload. But the game is no doubt enjoyable and there's so freaking much to love.
At the time of writing, the games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online in two days and I couldn't be more excited! More people need to play and experience these games. I'm also glad that Nintendo realizes just how loved the games are and finally brings them to modern hardware for a modern audience.
I wonder if the code that I get for beating Golden Sun on my Anbernic will work on The Lost Age on Switch. Guess I'll find out in TWO DAYS.
