One of the best games available for the SNES is now one of the best games available for the GBA.
User Rating: 9.5 | Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi Island + Mario Brothers GBA
Yoshi's Island was the sequel to the classic SNES title Super Mario World. Now the great SNES game has been ported to GBAs and is one of the best titles available for the protable console. You play as Yoshi. Colorful little dinosaurs who throw eggs at their foes to defeat them. The Yoshis have found a lost baby (Mario) and they must get him and his baby brother (Luigi), who has been kidnapped by Bowser's minions, back to their parents. The combat style of the game is very unique in the Mario series. As Yoshi you must gobble up enemies and press down on the d-pad to make an egg that you use as a weapon. When you press the R shoulder button an aiming cursor will move up & down in an arc motion. You then press R again to fire your egg. This aiming system is surprisingly very precise and accurate if you time your shots real well. Some enemies can still be killed by simply jumping on thier heads, but others require a deadly shot from the egg to defeat. The level designs are probably the best in any Mario game. There are plenty of challenging puzzles and mazes. There are 8 worlds and 8 levels in each one. You'll enter a castle every 4 levels. In each castle there is a humongous boss waiting at the end. Almost every boss is a giant version of a small regular enemy. Boss battles are very animated and actaully require some thinking. The graphics in Yoshi's Island are absolutely fantastic. They were superb on the SNES back in the day, but on the smaller brighter GBA screen, it looks even more fantastic. The backgrounds in the world's colorful creative levels have all sorts of beautiful crayon designs. The character models also look fantastic. Soundwise the game is great too, but at times can be a bit fuzzy. There isn't much to do after you complete the game the first time around, but if you're a video game purist you'll probably end up coming back and trying to complete each level 100%. By doing this you can unlock up to 8 secret levels. All in all one of the best games available for the SNES is now one of the best games available for the GBA. 
