The Gameboy Advance may have had truly advanced games that were incredible but even then, the system still managed to release some utterly horrible and disgraceful excuses of games. It is time to have a look at the broken, messy, ugly, stinky turds that were dumped on the Game Boy Advance and these are worst of them all.
10: Kong King of Atlantis
Developer: SkyRiver Studios
Would you believe that there was an animated series of King Kong but set in Atlantis? Yeah, who watched that abomination? Well apparently, SkyRiver Studios thought there were enough kids who watched that animated atrocity and decided to do a game based on that. Nothing about this game was any fun, the levels were tedious and a chore to get through, the animations were awful and the gameplay consisted of punching a few enemies as Kong or kicking things as a human while waiting a long while for the screen to scroll and it was just painfully slow. There are tons of bad King Kong games out there like the more recent Skull Island Rise of Kong but this is another Kong game best to never venture to.
9: Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball Max'd
Developer: The Whole Experience
While the two Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball games were seen as an OK paintball simulators there was also the spinoff with Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball which was also seen as an OK game, well at least on consoles. It was even brought out onto the Nintendo DS which was a below average port and then the GBA version came out after and it was a big massive disgrace of a paintball game. The controls were a mess as you can't strafe or move around properly, you are supposed to take cover and lean and peak around corners to shoot at enemies but the controls are awkward and do not work with what the game is expect for you to do. Top that off with terrible graphics and an abysmal frame rate performance then you have one of the worst paintball video game experiences being only rivalled by the Extreme Paintbrawl series of games. As it was the very last ever First-Person Shooter game ever on the Game Boy Advance it is a massive disgrace compared to the other GBA ports of FPS games aside from another one which you'll see also on this list that fared better than this rubbish and it deserves to be left in the dead box.
8: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Developer: Fluid Studios
Anybody who knows their bad games will no doubt be familiar with the Atari 2600 game E.T. The Extra Terrestrial which became the most infamous game that was rushed out in 2 weeks and 5 million copies were thrown in a new Mexican desert. Well, the idiots at Fluid Studios thought that maybe they could do a better version of that for the GBA system except not really. The Game boy Advance game has the same kind of structure as the Atari 2600 game where you go around and try to find parts to assemble the transmitter in order or E.T. to phone home but everything in the game will do anything to make that a nightmare to do. It is painfully annoying not being able to get anywhere because government agents, scientists and police officers and the levels are super confusing and make it confusing to figure out where to go. Even for a GBA game the graphics are really bad and the audio is a massive assault on the ears like seriously the audio is disgusting. All copies of this game should have also been buried under that same dessert with the Atari 2600 game.
7: Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu
Developer: Webfoot Technologies
At this point in time there are so many Dragon Ball Z fighting games to choose from and while some like Dragon Ball Z Budokai and Dragon Ball FighterZ are some of the finest and brilliantly crafted fighting games based on the anime series Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu on the Game Boy Advance on the other hand is one of the top worst of the Dragon Ball Z fighting games. The combat is terrible suffering from simplistic mechanics that make the game look like a straight up button masher, the game can easily be beaten with the simplest tactics with no depth to it. There is no story to the game like at all and the game sounds really bad and the graphics are painful to look at as in like the background, KI Blasts and character sprites look abysmal and suffer from awful animation. Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu is a truly terrible Dragon Ball Z fighter and should be avoided even for fans of the anime series.
6: Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis
Developer: Sonic Team
Sega's iconic blue hedgehog mascot has had an outstanding run on the Gameboy Advance with the excellent Sonic Advance series, alongside Sonic Pinball Party and Sonic Battle being very competent spinoff games as well. Then to celebrate the 15-year anniversary of the franchise Sega and Sonic Team released a port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game that was on the Mega Drive to the Gameboy Advance. There have been some decent conversions of popular SNES titles that while inferior to their main console counterparts still manage to play pretty well and offer up a fantastic console to handheld experience. The version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game on the Game Boy Advance however is NOT one of those games. The port looks and plays very much rushed out as the gameplay is insanely broken from the awful collision detection, terrible audio and music, lowered screen resolution making it difficult to see what is happening on the screen or when enemies are coming from and there were tons of bugs and glitches including ones that can kill you. The amount of slowdown happening was ridiculous and that's no good especially when the idea of a Sonic game is to go fast which you'll never see in this version. Needless to say, that the the Sonic the Hedgehog port on the Gameboy Advance is horrendous and it was released in a unfinished state that is almost unplayable. This version of the game was so bad that a programmer Simon "Stealth" Thomley who helped with the development of the later mobile port did his own version of Sonic the Hedgehog for the system which although it wasn't finished but it showed Sega that it could be done on the GBA as it was more playable and more stable than what Sega dumped out. If you gotta go fast, do yourself a massive favour and stay away from the GBA port.
5: Star Wars Flight of the Falcon
Developer: Pocket Studios
Doing 3D on the Game Boy Advance is something of a unique experiment in seeing what could be achieved on the handheld platform even with hardware limitations. There have been really impressive 3D games worked on by very talented developers that turned out rather good. For Star Wars Flight of the Falcon though it showcased that just because you can doesn't mean you should. The game's looked really terrible with awfully rendered graphics and animation, the stages were overly long & repetitive and the music renditions were really bad. It is with the frame rate and performance is where this game goes to the dark side as the game's abysmal frame rate and control input delay makes dodging incoming obstacles impossible and rendering the game almost unplayable. The force is strong with other better Star Wars games out there but not with this one.
4: Mortal Kombat Advance
Developer: Virtucraft
Mortal Kombat has had a share of terrible Game Boy ports but that did not stop another developer from releasing another atrocious Game Boy Mortal Kombat game into the gaming with Mortal Kombat Advance. It is nothing more than a handheld version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 but made to work with the GBA controls and hardware except playing worse than with previous versions that came out before this. It Suffered severely from horrendous controls, faulty physics and poorly programmed AI that goes from easily countering and beating you down on easier difficulties to walking away and not reacting to your inputs on the hardest setting. Fatalities were glitched and messed up as in like the Fatalities have the opponent disappearing off screen, the graphics and animation were God awful and the music renditions were disgusting short looped tracks. You would think that having Mortal Kombat games on the go would be great but the game designers just screwing it up and you would think that with the GBA Mortal Kombat would finally get it right but they still don't. At least the Mortal Kombat handheld game finally got it right with a version of Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance showing that Mortal Kombat can be done on the Game Boy Advance platform. This is yet another lousy Mortal Kombat port that rightfully deserves a Fatality or even better a Brutality.
3: Britney's Dance Beat
Developer: Art Co., Ltd
For fans of the American singer Britney Spears The Princess of Pop who was popular back in the 2000s players got treated to the Britney Spears video game that from her popularity was an easy target for shovelware. Britney's Dance Beat is a rhythm game where you button time presses to famous songs like ''Baby One More Time'' to ''Oops!... I Did It Again''. On the Game Boy Advance version of Britney's Dance Beat the look of Britney in the game is uglified and the overall presentation is even more painful to look at compared to other versions of the game. The mechanics are even more simplified to the point that you only need to either press A or press B to the worst renditions of each of said Britney Spear's songs that will make you want to shut off the game within seconds. Although Britney Spears has had an solid music career during her prime, this Game Boy Advance will forever leave a really bad disgrace on her name alongside several personal struggles that she has been through.
2: Medal of Honor Underground
Developer: Rebellion Departments
So, the GBA platform has gotten ports of popular 2D games on the SNES as well as few popular PC First Person Shooters from the 90s like Wolfenstein 3D & Doom as well some original FPS titles on the platform which all fared quite well in terms of playability. Then Rebellion did a GBA port of the PSOne First Person Shooter Medal of Honor Underground and how it turned out was a complete and utter disaster. Every single thing about the Game Boy Advance version of Medal of Honor Underground is a disgraceful atrocity and it is worse than what game critics and reviews at the time of release even remotely make of it. Clearly this is a case where a great PSOne game literally got chewed up, digested and then pooped out into a pixelated hellhole that is tries to be like its big console brother and messing up in the most unbelievable ways. The 3D graphics are some of the worst ever on the system with very loose and faulty textures that are not even properly rendered and the character and weapon sprites are not even remotely noticeable and can be impossible to distinguish them from the background. Like the Nazis in the game don't even look anything like Nazis at all and are just a complete dreadful mash of pixels they what are they are supposed to be? It even has some of the absolute worst music audio to come out of that Game Boy Advance speaker like the music alone will make want your ears to vomit. To top it all off it even plays with the worst near unplayable slide-show frame rate that is atrociously unbearable. It is unbelievable that Rebellion of all companies would show this absolute abomination to EA and say that it is good by any standard and it is even worse when you actually the game in action for yourself.
Dishonourable Mentions:
Shrek Swamp Kart Speedway (Prolific Publishing)
March of the Penguins (Skyworks Technologies)
Spy Muppets License to Croak (Vicarious Visions)
Rock Em Sock Em Robots (Full Fat)
Mucha Lucha Mascaritas of the Lost Code (Digital Eclipse)
1: Elf Bowling 1 & 2
Developer: Ignition Entertainment
What makes this the absolute worst of the worst on the Game Boy Advance is that this started life as a freeware PC game and then some massive idiots over at Ignition Entertainment thought that it would be great to put this onto a Game Boy Advance cartridge and selling it for full price with the same fate even happening for the Nintendo DS as well. Elf Bowling 1 & 2 are nothing more than simplistic bowling games with a Christmas theme with elves used as bowling pins and unfunny humour. The Game Boy Advance version adds nothing new and doesn't have any extras to the two games and yet they get slightly worse off graphics, slightly worse off audio and bad controls making them worse off overall to play. You can literally see what these games have to offer in only 5 minutes and keep in mind that it was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2005 with nothing added or improved which makes these zero effort quality. If you had this for Christmas instead of truly established GBA classics like the Super Mario Advance games, Mario Kart Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, Zelda Minish Cap, Golden Sun or Castlevania Aria of Sorrow among many others than everyone should feel really bad for you. No one should ever be forced to play this not even the naughtiest children in the world would ever be forced to in any fashion or mindset which makes this the worst Game Boy Advance game of all time.
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