{"id":9015,"date":"2021-05-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=9015"},"modified":"2021-05-16T19:40:51","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T00:40:51","slug":"game-boy-advance-a-collectro-spective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=9015","title":{"rendered":"Game Boy Advance: A Collectro-spective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I was poking through my chest of forgotten video games, systems, and accessories the other day, just looking around at things. No practical reason or whatever. Just the semi-annual &#8220;maybe I&#8217;ll find my lost GBA SP this time&#8221; rooting around. During this particular adventure, I pulled out the Ziploc baggie that holds all of my GBA cartridges. Wanting to look at the beautiful collection, I spilled them out onto the floor and lined them up. What I found was nothing short of <em>shocking<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9016\" srcset=\"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_3280.jpg 2016w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Somehow, I only own nineteen Game Boy Advance games. As someone whose GBA was as good as attached to his hands, I find this very hard to believe. I know that those were days when I was poor, rentals existed, and far fewer video games were actually being made, but it still seems unreasonably light. At some point I could have sold some to lighten the load, but&#8230; these are GBA cartridges. They take up virtually no space, so there&#8217;s no big incentive to sell, other than desperation for cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Racking my brain, I came up with a few notable omissions. <strong>Mega Man Zero<\/strong> and its three sequels are not here, but I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s because I sold them off when I bought the MMZ collection cartridge for DS. There were two Ninja Turtles games and that I distinctly remember selling because they were <em>meh<\/em>, same for <strong>Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty&#8217;s Revenge<\/strong>. Here is the list of games that I know I owned, but I cannot account for why they are missing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Final Fantasy Tactics Advance<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Metroid Fusion<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Metroid Zero Mission<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Super Mario Bros. Advance<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>You could make a case for most of the list that I sold them off and just forgot about it. But it seems highly unlikely that I would have sold the Metroids, and I can&#8217;t imagine myself ever getting rid of any Zelda game. It&#8217;s possible that I let go of Metroid Fusion and Minish Cap because I got free digital copies of them on 3DS for being an early adopter of the system, but where is Zero Mission, then? <em>Where is Zero Mission!?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eagle-eyed readers may also notice that the original <strong>Mega Man Battle Network<\/strong> also appears to be missing. But it&#8217;s not. I actually never bought that one, because I did not warm up to the idea of Mega Man becoming an action-RPG about anime kids saving the internet until the second game rolled around. Nor did I ever go back to purchase <strong>Castlevania: Circle of the Moon<\/strong>. That one came out at GBA&#8217;s launch, and was much too dark to, you know, <em>see<\/em> on the original GBA&#8217;s screen. By the time the GBA SP rolled around, Aria of Sorrow was only a couple months away, so I saved my dollary-doos for the newer game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of Aria of Sorrow, I actually have <em>two<\/em> cartridges of it. The second one (not pictured), I bought on eBay when I lost the original. Turns out it was a pirated version, which I did not realized until it showed up in the mail and had the wrong artwork on the sticker. Fortunately, I did find the original cartridge when I was cleaning out my room to move out of my parents&#8217; basement. At some point it had fallen behind my bed, and got wrapped up in a rather monstrous dust bunny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And while I&#8217;m writing about games I&#8217;ve purchased twice, that copy of <strong>Mario &amp; Luigi: Superstar Saga<\/strong> is not my original copy. No, the original was lost with my beloved Game Boy Micro many years ago. I tried to replace both through the wonders of the internet, but was only able to secure the game. Second-hand Game Boy Micros were going for what seemed like a totally unreasonable $70-100 back in 2013. Of course, stupid me didn&#8217;t consider that prices were only going to inflate dramatically over time. Now you&#8217;re lucky if you can find one for $200. Whoops!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every once in a while, I&#8217;m reminded that I used to be a really big fan of the mange\/anime <em>Shaman King<\/em>. Usually it&#8217;s when I look at my half-complete collection of <em>Shaman King<\/em> manga, but this time it was when I saw the game cartridges pictured above. <strong>Shaman King: Master of Spirits<\/strong> and its sequel are Metroidvania-style games that were developed by Konami, but somehow aren&#8217;t nearly as good as the Castlevania games that sit right below them. Go figure. I didn&#8217;t finish either of them, and I think the only reason that I didn&#8217;t sell them is because to this very day, I&#8217;m convinced that eventually I will pick up at least one of them and power through to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I could probably tell individual stories about each and every one of these game cartridges, but it&#8217;s probably best to wrap this one up here. As a final note: in my humble opinion, <strong>Mega Man &amp; Bass<\/strong> isn&#8217;t very good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was poking through my chest of forgotten video games, systems, and accessories the other day, just looking around at things. No practical reason or whatever. Just the semi-annual &#8220;maybe I&#8217;ll find my lost GBA SP this time&#8221; rooting around. During this particular adventure, I pulled out the Ziploc baggie that holds all of my &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=9015\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Game Boy Advance: A Collectro-spective<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,12,13,23,20,6,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irl","category-mario","category-mega-man","category-pokemon","category-retro-gaming","category-video-games","category-zelda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9015"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9024,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9015\/revisions\/9024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}