Two months ago, Sony and Microsoft held their traditional mid-year video presentations to show off their biggest upcoming titles. Of course, these unveilings used to take place at the world famous Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, which was sadly went defunct after Covid. While we could have written something about it then, we decided it just wouldn't feel right to post one of these articles without all of "the big three" being represented in some way.

Thankfully, Nintendo finally decided to join the party with some new announcements of their own two weeks ago. So if you'd like to blame them instead of us for the lengthy delay of this post, that would be fantastic. Anywho, as per usual, please read on for a quick list of some of the highlights from all three (non-E3) presentations.

Throughout the second half of the 1980's, Nintendo managed to absolutely dominate the home console market with their wildly successful Nintendo Entertainment System. They also enjoyed some smaller scale success with their Game & Watch/Time-Out line of simple and relatively low-cost dedicated handheld games. Eventually, Nintendo decided to create a  a portable counterpart to the NES, with which to replace the Game & Watch line.

This new device needed to feature more complex games with better graphics and, most importantly, interchangeable game cartridges. It would be designed to closely mirror the look and feel of the Nintendo Entertainment System controller, in order to attract the millions of fans that that console had already amassed. The design team would also settle on an unlit, green-tinted super-twisted nematic monochrome screen so as to help keep power consumption and costs down.

Nintendo's portable, which would ultimately be dubbed the "Game Boy", would launch in North America, on July 31st, 1989. Despite its notable lack of light and color, the little handheld that could would somehow manage to extend Nintendo's domination into the portable segment of the market (even among rival devices that were offering those very features). And dominate, the Game Boy would - - for the better part of a decade, in fact.

Enjoying one of the lengthiest runs of any Nintendo console, the Game Boy managed to grow a pretty substantial library over the course of its life. While many of these titles may have been average or even somewhat poor in quality, there were a number of pretty incredible releases as well. In honor of the 36th anniversary of the portable's North American debut, we would like to present to you our picks for the 12 greatest titles that Nintendo's Game Boy had to offer.

Following the near decade-long, David-like success of their original monochrome Game Boy, Nintendo finally decided to release a half-hearted attempt at a colorized successor in 1998 with their markedly minimalistic follow-up, the Game Boy Color (even the device's name was phoned in). Although the system was a long time coming, Nintendo apparently realized pretty quickly that the GBC didn't constitute enough of an effort to suffice. Due to increasing competitive pressure, they decided to reveal an even better color portable, less than a year after the Game Boy Color's North American debut. It's immediate successor, the Game Boy Advance, would feature a much more powerful 32-bit processor, and dramatically
improved graphics, while still maintaining backwards compatibility with both of its predecessors.

Given the fact that the Game Boy Color was barely on store shelves a year before market attention and resources began shifting to its incoming successor, the GBC holds the unfortunate distinction of having one of the weakest libraries of any Nintendo console (not counting, of course, the absolutely massive assortment of original Game Boy titles that it could also play). Thankfully, the Game Boy Advance was around for a number of years before Nintendo decided to unveil their next portable console, so the GBA library was pretty stacked by comparison. Additionally, with hardware performance quite similar to the Super Nintendo, the Game Boy Advance was able to play host to an impressive number of classic ports from the 16-bit era, in addition to the multitude of outstanding original titles.

The incredible assortment of fantastic new and retro titles made the Game Boy Advance a particularly popular device, as it was a boon for fans and collectors of both. It's those outstanding original titles, however, that we will be focusing on today; and we have assembled a pretty respectable list (if we do say so ourselves) of some of the very best that the system had to offer. So, without further ado, here are 12 of the greatest (original) titles that the Game Boy Advance had to offer.

So it's May now and being that we're a pretty good way into 2025, we've seen several high profile releases already. Most recent of which was this past week's hotly-anticipated Doom sequel, The Dark Ages. The latest installment to id Software's legendary first-person shooter series sees the Doom Slayer adding a shield saw - - along with a variety of slower, more methodical gameplay mechanics - - to his crazy assortment of demon-death-dealing devices for the first time.

While it can't be denied that the classic run-n-gun gameplay is one of the main components that made the series so famous for so long, it also seems like it might be a good idea to try something a little different every now and again. Though based on reviews, it seems like your mileage may vary on how well the new shield saw mechanics resonate with you personally. At least there are still plenty of firepower options to choose from.

Also out in the last 3 months, the first new Fatal Fury installment in a quarter century; a beautiful-looking remaster of the outstanding 2006 Bethesda hit, the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion; and a port of the fantastic Game Boy Advance cult classic, Ninja Five-O. Become the super weapon of gods and kings, then jump past the break to see more new releases from the last 91 days.

Earlier this month, Nintendo hosted their much-anticipated Switch 2 Direct video which provided answers to many of the most pressing questions about the upcoming console. A few games were also announced, including the new Mario Kart World and a Bloodborne-esque FromSoftware exclusive titled The Duskbloods, as well as Switch 2 versions of Metroid Prime 4, Pokemon Legends: Z-A, Hades II and Cyberpunk 2077. Though there was much shown in the presentation to make the multitudes of eager Nintendo fans happy, the days and weeks following the Direct have seen a rather significant amount of fairly vocal dissatisfaction with some of Nintendo's announcements.

First and foremost, the pricing of the console, which at US $450, puts it not only pretty well above industry expert expectations, but also pretty well outside of the price range of your average children's device (which, let's be honest, is what a sizable quantity of Nintendo consoles are purchased to serve as). Not only is the console itself overpriced, but the games too, with some announced to be as high as $80. Again, well above the price of your average children's birthday party gift.

In that same Direct, Nintendo also unveiled an introductory game for the Switch 2 called Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a sort of interactive guide to the system's features not unlike Astro's Playroom for the PlayStation 5. What is unlike Astro's Playroom, which came pre-installed on every PS5 console as a free bonus, is the fact that Nintendo will be audaciously charging new Switch 2 owners $10 for their digital tour. While you could maybe try to chalk the high hardware and software prices up to the economy or it simply being a reasonable amount to ask for the type of tech that Nintendo is offering, it's extremely difficult to see them charging for an instructional guide to their hardware as anything other than straight up greed.

As per usual for this time of year, the big three gaming giants have once again cranked up their respective hype machines in order to let gamers know exactly which incoming titles they can start getting amped up about. These were all in the form of near-hour-long video presentations featuring closer looks of already somewhat-known quantities along with a few surprise reveals as well. Though the first presentation was held over 2 months ago now, we decided to wait until all three had shown their hand, which the last of them finally did this past week. So now, for your convenience and reading pleasure, please enjoy this brief roundup of some of the highlights of those presentations.

Well, we're a month and a half into 2025 now, and we've finally amassed enough notable new releases for our customary post. Of course, we also had to throw in the few remaining stand-outs for 2024 that we hadn't gotten to yet. This past week saw the release of the anticipated next installment to Sid Meier's celebrated, long-running Civilization series. Civ VII features overhauled systems, new tweaks to the classic turn-based strategy gameplay, and new and improved visuals and sound design, including narration by Game of Thrones star, Gwendoline Christie. Although your mileage may vary whether you will be fully on board with all of said tweaks or not, Civilization VII definitely sounds like it should at least be worth checking out.

Also out in the last 13 weeks, a game that quite possibly may be the first sufficiently satisfying Indiana Jones adventure to come along in decades; an HD Switch remaster of a Wii and 3DS Donkey Kong classic; and a pair of absolutely legendary arcade shoot 'em up titles. Build an empire to stand the test of time, then jump past the break to see more new releases from the last 91 days.

Happy 2025! What better way to start off the year than with a massive bombshell coming out of Nintendo? At long last, and after a fairly substantial amount of speculation and rumors, the big N has finally revealed a successor to their nearly 8-year-old outstanding original Switch console!

Featuring a larger screen, an adjustable stand, and bigger, more versatile joy-con controllers, the Switch 2 appears to be an improvement over the original in nearly every single way. ​Although no game titles have been revealed as of yet, a new Mario Kart entry was shown playing on the screen of the newly-unveiled console in the announcement video that dropped a couple weeks ago. No launch date has been given thus far either, beyond simply 2025 (sometime), but the video did inform viewers of an upcoming Nintendo Direct presentation that is scheduled for April 2nd, so presumably more information will be revealed on that date. Switch lovers start saving up your pennies now, because if history is anything to go by, Nintendo is more likely to launch the Switch 2 in the earlier part of the year, rather than the latter.

That's all the info we've got at the moment. Here's a link to Nintendo's dedicated website page for the upcoming console. You can also jump past the break to see the Switch 2 announcement video (if you haven't already).

Another year, another ridiculously late Games of the Year article. Many apologies. It took much longer than expected to get to all of the standout 2023 unboxings on our YouTube channel. We plan to have all the 2024 unboxings done within the first few months of next year, and then we will hopefully be able to focus on getting caught up with 2025 by this time next December. If it's any consolation, as a result of taking so much time to determine the winners of 2023, we're feeling extremely confident in our picks (not that we haven't for most other years). Hopefully, you will too. Please read on to find out why we chose what we chose as the 12 best titles that 2023 had to offer: