The 10 Best Game Boy and Game Boy Color Games on Nintendo Switch, Plus 5 We’d Like to See – SwitchArcade Special

For our next dive into the retro games available on Switch, we’re going all the way back to 1989. Er, and then to 1998. We’re heading back to the old monochrome beast and its colorful successor: the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

While there is a robust selection of games from these handhelds in the Nintendo Switch Online app, we’re instead looking at those games that dare to exist in the wilds of the Switch eShop. We’ve got ten of our favorites here, plus five more games that we’d like to see. No particular order, of course.

Time to Play It Loud! 99) Once a genuine scarcity that would cost you hundreds of dollars to get your hands on in any legal capacity, Shantae is now quite readily available in digital form. This game is considerably rougher than its sequels, but it pushes the Game Boy Color hardware in a lot of interesting ways, providing a platformer with a bit more to it than the average Game Boy hop-and-bop.

Wow, I haven’t seen the term “hop-and-bop" in something like twenty-five years. Well, there you go. Shantae : it’s pretty good fun.

99) Here’s another game that would have cost you a pretty penny to play officially until very recently. Trip World is an interesting platformer from Sunsoft that offers up a short but sweet experience. This release of the game does a full-on colorization job while also including a number of extras to dig into.

It’s an excellent way to play this quirky, charming tale. 99) Time to wade into the compilations, and we’ll start with one that is all Game Boy games: Collection of SaGa . You get all three games in the Final Fantasy Legend series here, and they’re all really good handheld RPGs.

I’m picking out Final Fantasy Legend II to highlight here, simply because I think it’s the best of the three. It has plenty of the weird mechanics that make SaGa games so interesting, but feels more well-rounded and approachable than the first game. Probably the best turn-based RPG on the system pre- Pokemon .

99) Going hand in hand with the Final Fantasy Legend games, Final Fantasy Adventure is the game that kicked off the long-running Mana series. As such, you’ll find it in the Collection of Mana with the two Super NES follow-ups. Again, all games worth playing.

This action-RPG provided an excellent alternative to the superb Link’s Awakening on the system, with a snappy pace and some surprisingly ambitious storytelling. It’s been remade a couple of times, but there’s nothing quite like the original. 99) Konami did some great Game Boy games, and it has made a handful of them available through its various collections.