Games That Push The Limits of the Game Boy Advance 

Well, considering the size of the gba screen, it wouldn’t feel too far off from PS1.

I love seeing videos like these. Stop Skeletons from Fighting and minime are some channels that are also oddly fascinated with making the GBA do things it wasn't meant to do, so I've seen a bunch of these before - and heck, I owned a few back in the day, just for the novelty of having a fully 3D racing game or Doom on the handheld. But man, they really are pretty impressive technical achievements - especially when you can adjust the playback speed here on youtube to 1.25x or faster and see them running at even just a slightly better frame rate. It was pretty cool how you showed off the frame buffer stuff here too; never seen that before. I've seen Smashing Drive Advance before, but I don't think I've ever heard that that was running on Raylight's Blue Roses. I remember seeing that running Resident Evil 2 on GBA for their tech demo back in the day, but honestly thought they never got to use it for an actual release, let alone the two shown here. Very cool; that was an impressive little engine. If you do another one of these, make sure to look up VD-Dev's Asterix & Obelisk XXL for the GBA - it's an incredible, if limited, 3D platformer for the handheld that uses a combination of sprites and polys to keep the frame rate high. Torus' myriad FPS on the thing, like Duke Nukem Advance, are also pretty damn good too.

For me, the GBA is kind of hidden in plain sight. Everyone's heard of it but most people totally underrate it's library rarely looking beyond the obvious 1st party titles and Pokemon. Way back when, I honestly had more fun on the GBA than I ever did on its contemporaneous home console brethren. It's a proper wee powerhouse!

You know, no one ever talks about the Wing Commander: Prophecy port. Basically a complete port of that game. It's very playable and pretty fun. They do some gymnastics with the controls but they manage to fit it all in and it's a stunning achievement.

I'm always excited to see a Sharopolis upload. ALWAYS!

The gba could do some great efforts in the right hands. The final game looked awesome

GBA Asterix game is pretty amazing from technical point of view.

I'd love to see another video like this. There were a lot of games that pushed the gba's limits. Phalanx comes to mind with some overworld unique looking 3d sections, doom ii, duke nukem, maybe super monkey ball, golden sun with its proprietary and better sound engine, as well as roms like minecraft demake, a 3d game engine that runs IN the gba, etc

Well that answers it right there! The developers of Smashing Taxi channeled the evil powers of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, and that's why they named the engine Blue Roses!

If you do a follow up episode you should talk about Moto Racer Advance, it blows me away how smoothly this game runs on the system, and its really fun too.

The blocky wobbly graphics in 3D GBA games reminds me of the first rounds of 3D indie games made with engines like Game Maker, when it was a new feature and half the PCs in the world still couldn't render 3D ☺️ There's a weird charm to these super-early 3D environments

I enjoy your videos keep them coming

As far i know, there's no FPU on the ARM7TDMI in the GBA, but with 32bit precision AND a real multiply instruction, it was good enough for doing 3D stuff.

Please, do more like 6:05!!! It's fascinating! I wouldn't mind you going back to games you already covered and giving this treatment :D I've done this same thing to some of my games for MS-DOS (to much of my shame, due to massive overdrawing)

Smashing Drive still impresses me to this day for the console

7:58 A tip for Star X. The game has three cheat codes built-in (entered from the password screen) that make the game easier. GSBOOM gives you unlimited bombs, GSMAX gives you the most powerful weapon, and GSHARD gives you unlimited health.

I didn't realize the GBA was only out for 3 years between GB Color and DS! Wow! That's really not a long period of time, considering the GBA was pretty successful sales-wise... I wonder what led them to move on so quickly?

Hope you do a part 2 to this as Vrally is one of the best looking games on GBA and it's true 3D.

Gekido Advance! Man, thank you so much for mentioning this game!!! :) Played the shit out of it on my original DS, back in 2006-2008. Great game, not perfect, however the quality of what is in there is excellent! It's also a very hard game, with just a handful of levels, but exciting and such an eye candy nevertheless.

I feel when it comes the gba 3D graphics, a lot if devs really ran before they could walk. If they pushed it slowly rather than ran with the "it's ps1 level 3D" they would have gauged the 3d capabilities of gba better.

I've never seen the frame buffer explained before, very interesting. I would have prioritised frame rate, done whatever it took to maintain 20fps minimum. Blue roses stuff has a lot (relatively) on screen but it didn't even look that pleasing and runs unacceptably.

Never seen that boxing game before. It looks really good.

This is so like making games on the Macintosh. You would stop the display update, spend a few frames to draw the next screen, unlock the display update, lock the display, repeat.

I guess I'm the only one who doesn't have a problem with the lower framerate of those first two titles. It's done in such a way that the jerkiness looks more like a car bumping up and down. And I actually thought the first game looked better, due to much less pixel popping. The way you described it, those games are running at less than 10fps, and yet they look like they're running faster, more like 12-15fps. If the controls are responsive enough, that can work. I played Portal at such framerates.

V-Rally 3 also has quite a lot of polygons but runs much more smoothly than the two games mentioned in the beginning. (If I remember correctly...)

I would love to see you breakdown the Neo Geo AES and the 2d games of the Sega Saturn!

I find V-Rally 3 to be the most impressive 3D game on GBA because not only it does push out textured polygons but it does so at far more playable and enjoyable frame rates. Yes the car itself isn't 3D and maybe the scenery is also less complex than the urban backdrops of those other 3D games but higher framerate does a lot to make V Rally 3 more enjoyable to play. There's just something more impressive in my book in a developer that knows which limits NOT to push so as to not make their game unenjoyable to play.

Solid list! Have you tried Dancing Sword, and Samurai Deeper Kyo? They are kind of like Gekido Advance.

Yeah, the GBA was a bit more powerful than people thought. I know we think of it as a fancy handheld SNES because of all the ports it got. But It was a bit better than that with a 32bit CPU at 16Mhz. So, it was essentially half a PS1 in your hand. Or an overclocked 3DO. It was about as basic as it got in terms of 3D gaming. We don't really give it much thought now because of how powerful our computers are but, back in the days, just getting 3D objects on a screen was very CPU intensive. While possible on weaker hardware (like Star Fox on the SNES with a custom chipset) we really don't remember 3D until the Playstation and Saturn came along with their 30ish Mhz CPU because that's essentially how powerful systems needed to be to give us a 3D game that was more fun than just a tech demo.

The 3D power of the Advance is somewhere between a SNES and a 3DO.

Do a sequel to this one. There are a bunch more good titles that could go here. By that I mean, this was freaking awesome and I demand more.

I had a review copy of star x back in the day (giant cart sticking out the back of the GBA), it was an impressive game but controlled badly, the crosshair moved way too jittery

That boxing game looked amazing!

Me watching the video: "Smashing drive framerate is low? No, I didn't notice it already! Looks fine to me .... oh wait, I'm watching the video at 2x speed."

Using 15fps animation also just looks more like how cartoons are animated "on the 2s" which would usually be 12-15 fps. Back when everything was handdrawn, it helped significantly cut down development time, and so was used in most animated TV shows, and even in many animated movies.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed that you didn't mention Lego Drome Racers or V-Rally 3.

You would like my recent GBA tech Demo! :)

GBA SP tribal (front lit, eyes, age, 0:00am gaming it is!) coming out of daddies box tomorrow. Yep, its a box, my box (even says mums and kids not allowed). Gekido ^^ never tried it, looks epic. Thank you. Honest, insightful, informative and intresting. Keep up the good work! Legend.

For a GBA that is a very impressive 3D engine. If only the Need For Speed games had used it they could have been almost as good as their home system counterparts gameplay-wise.

damn never heard of that Gekido game, it looks gorgeous

17:47 You look like a poundland version of Stuart Ashens. Keep up the good work

Remember do not underestimate the power of PlaySt ... of Game Boy Advance ! 💪😎 P.S. Thanks for mentioning my name 😄

I would like to see another video about great GBA games that are 2D. With 3D games I think it actually highlights more so the GBA limitations rather than it's strengths.

17:31 I am surprised the game Megaman and Bass wasn't on here as it's impressive with the GBA's audio power. Also the graphics for that game are a case of " impressively drawn, but needs wider display "

The boxing game would have given me motion sickness, I think.

12:50 beating up Cyberpunk's Panam lol

cool show

1:41 - The 3D looks better here than the Sega Saturn

I think it's unfair to compare a 2001 handheld system to even the PS Single. No one should expect something as good as PS2 graphics on a handheld with no 3D hardware renderer.

I remember to play crazy taxi I cannot understand the game but it's fun

Damn I played the hell out of smashing drive on Xbox when I was little, I remember it having some insane visuals but overall nostalgic for me

This makes me want to buy a gameboy advance again

No Driver? Asterix and Obelix? American Idol (It has oddly good voice work for a gba title)?

Astrix XXL did push the consoles limits with being a 3D platformer.

I wonder how good the GBA was at 3D compared to something like the Jaguar, 3DO, and 32x?

Really surprised StarX got shown off, but stuff like Wing Commander Prophecy which accurately copied the PC game got excluded. Or the V3D engine from V-Rally 3 on the starting end to a Croc like experience with Asterix & Obelix XXL got left out.

3:47 for KANSEI DORIFTO (bizzarely spelled as "kensei" for some reason)

14:50 What does Giovanni's Barack ambulance mean?

Meanwhile in 2022 Tomb Raider on the GBA via OpenLara. Well sort of, it's not finished yet but you have the first 2 levels and Lara's Home working.

There was no floating point support on the GBA, cpu running at just over 16MHz, so not exactly speedy :). That 3D engine is exceptional!

I remember how disappointedi was once i discovered that the snes could not do sprite scaling on it’s own and how it could not do everything atonce,and i still just don’t understand why nintendo didn’t implanted sprite scaling into their snes since memory was expensive back then unlike in those gba day’s lator on.

The ARM7TDMI doesn't have floating point.

7:30 not anymore.. OpenLara even though is not complete yet(mansion, lv1, and lv2 fully playable), positioned itself no.1 ..boasting the best 3D graphics for GBA with little to no frame drop. the GBA will never stop to amaze me.

The graphics on Smash Drive on GBA remind me of 3DO graphics!

Greco-Belgian Alliance - I've only just got that 😁

I love your accent.

As long as the hardware will be much stronger to be 32 bit then the gba will be a handheld ps1 or basically the Nintendo playstation 1 portable or Nintendo Psp 1

So the gba is like a handheld jaguar or 3do

You mean the NEED FOR SPEED formula.

No Asterix and obelisk?

Gba is gb mock 5 not 3 (1 dmg, 2 pocket, 3 light, 4 color. Then 5 gba)

Boi, did you jinx it on the price of that last game. LOL

Games That Push The Limits of the Purple fun slab advanced

>no VD-Dev [Derek SSFF disliked that]

uau , is most beautifull. gba

Hmm... I think this would have better been named in the usual way about pushing a system beyond its limits. I don't think any of these games were particularly great looking.

Do the DS.

Sorry but it is managed to get the very first tomb raider game running on the GBA. Just look it up and you will know what I am talking about

That's NOT over the shoulder that is FIRST PERSON.Over the shoulder you would see your characters back.

game & watch gallery 4 is a limit-pushing game as it has 5 base games + 14 unlockable games

Smash and Drive, Me: What's wrong with that? Street Racing Syndicate, Me: Oh this is just gratuitous and unnecessary… Apparently my inner 16 year old is better behaved than my inner 6 year old.

STILL LOOKS BETTER THAN SWORD AND SHIELD

A lot of Gekido's sprites are traced from SNK characters

Smashing drive looks like it was made with microsoft 3d movie maker 😂😂

Gba was brilliant. Felt like a bigger leap than the ds or even switch.,great though they are.

Funny I was thinking it exactly reminded me of the garbage graphics of the first Playstation. Massively jaggy and dithered with tons of texture warping. Oh wait, the GBA has less texture warping than the Playstation.

If you read all the comments, prove it! Reply!

i don't think you understand what kind of optimisations these rasterisers went under to render real time 3d so well. If you ran those games on device and not on your massive emulator screen, it would look as good as ps1. This video annoyed me and I usually enjoy your videos.

Interesting video mate. May I recommend a green screen for your head shots. Your ghetto wallpaper makes it look like you're filming this in prison 😁

Not a single example using hblank effects? Lame. Look at the Sonic Advance games, they knew how to use hblank well.

12:36 she's cheating. she has extra padding inside that shirt.

'The worst ps1 game on the worst ps1 emulator'...what a trite comment, you realise these games aren't meant to be displayed so large yeah? And they look a lot better and seem to run faster?

CRONCH

is it Donald Trump in the audience at 12:09? 😂

Nope. It looks like garbage.