I've owned a GBA longer than I can remember, and though in my head it was a shovelware platform (a slightly unfair assessment owing to most of what I played on it as a kid), I want to give its library another shake more and more as time goes on. Here's what good I've found on it, or maybe what I found uniquely bad enough to talk to you about.
[#] Doom (Activision, 2001)
Doom was ported to a slew of consoles in the 90s, but by the 2000s, it was rather old hat. Like a lot of old hat games, though, Doom became the domain of lower-powered handheld game consoles, just beginning to be able to run something like it. Based off the Atari Jaguar port done by John Carmack himself (like most of the classic 90s console ports were), this is a highly accurate Doom that makes a few concessions in places you won't notice to stay highly playable where you will.
What makes GBA Doom so successful is that you can use the shoulder buttons to strafe left and right. Doom without dedicated strafe controls is a chore, and this right away puts it head and shoulders above even its Jaguar forefather. You get the main three episodes here, 24 levels, and aside from some simplified geometry and the removal of Nightmare difficulty (Nightmare in this port is Ultra-Violence on PC), everything, every gun, every monster, is retained. It really is Doom on the GBA.
It's an easy port to laugh at, admittedly. The graphics are chunky, all the blood has been recolored green, and the framerate can vary depending on how much is going on. You can disable all the mood lighting in the settings to massively increase the framerate, which I've done for the last two screenshots, and the increased smoothness more than makes up for the dull visuals. Seriously, quality port. It might be a little obsolete, but why are you playing Doom if you care about obsolescence?
| Reviewed | My favorite part | Recommended? |
|---|---|---|
| June 20, 2023 | Precise shotgun shots | Strongly |