The Game Boy Abyss - Year 4 in Review (2025)

And here we are, at the end of another year. Four full years of doing the Game Boy Abyss, huh? Time really does fly. Welcome, once again, to my year in review, as I chat a little bit about myself, the website, and make some fun, totally serious awards regarding the games I played this year.

Also, I need some sort of picture here, so have a picture of me with the AEW World Championship.

This year, it was a grand total of twenty-one I reviewed on the website - twenty-two, if you count my review of Pokemon Odyssey which exists outside the normal continuum of GBA releases. Like last year, this was a little less than I hoped, as my big goal was to have Game #100 - my favourite game on the system, Mother 3 - will be out by the end of the year, but that didn't pan out. I probably *could* have pushed it out, but with it being my favourite, and I’m planning to open my heart a bit about this game, I’ve pushed it to January.

In regards to the games I’ve played this year, I made a decent effort to not torture myself with bottom-tier shlock (at least, on purpose), and so I was consistently looking for the six out of ten, weird b-tier games. And boy, did I find some good ones. Gem Smashers, Bruce Lee, Chobits, Dr. Sudoku… titles I’ve never really heard anyone talk about, and whilst they didn’t blow my socks off and launched into my all-timer list, so many of the games I played were interesting, regardless of quality. Am I ever going to want to touch Big Mutha Truckers again? Hell no! But am I glad I played it? Uh, I think so! I think next year I want to try and continue this kind of method to my madness, but I really am going to have to soak up some of the sludge that inundated the bottom of the barrel.

Is it time for another attempt at Madden?

Back to the reviews themselves. Whilst I’ve certainly reviewed a little less, I think I’ve developed a better understanding of my writing style, and a better sense of self-appreciation to go with it. My reviews might be longer, but I also think they have more to say. I get to really explore, describe, poke fun, or just wax poetic on some real gems, ridiculous shlock, or games that flatly aren’t for me, but are certainly for someone else, and describing that context is important in my reviews.

Ultimately, I think the healthiest thing I’ve gotten through my thick skull this year is that The Game Boy Abyss is just a hobby for me. Sometimes I’ll think little else but wanting to play and review the weirdest piece of shlock I can think of. But at the same time, there are times where my brain just isn’t in it. And this website, myself, and everyone who reads it deserves better than for me to just churn out slop for the sake of it. So, whilst I’m a little disappointed I ‘only’ played twenty games this year, and didn’t hit the #100 mark as I planned, I can’t be too hard on myself - after all, next year is another year, and I can just aim for the top once more!

I’ve mentioned this before, but a bit of housekeeping whilst y’all are here: I’m in the process of sprucing up the website and making everything just a little bit better. Examples of this are already popping up; if you take a look at my original Finding Nemo review, you’ll find everything formatted a little bit nicer, with subheadings and links leading to the next review. I plan to do that for everything, but that’ll be a long-term process. I’ve also got an RSS feed now! With seemingly every social media going to shit, I wanted to have a standalone place for people to actively be able to find my reviews - I’ll keep posting links on places like Reddit, Twitter and BlueSky, but who knows what the future may hold. So, keep an eye on that RSS feed, as it’ll be where you’ll find everything to do with the Game Boy Abyss.

And, as always, I just wanted to thank everyone for all the kind comments and emails I’ve received over the last year, and just for reading. This has always been a silly little hobby for me, but the fact that I received something in the area of 25,000 views across the entire site - comparable to around 10,000 throughout 2024 - is insane. I’d like to say I’d still be writing these reviews for the love of the game, but the fact that so many people are reading is really what keeps me going. So again, if you’ve only read one review, or all of them (I know you’re out there, you mad lads!), from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

But now we get to do one of my favourite things of the year - the awards! Take a look at the best and the worst, the surprises and the sludge! And speaking of sludge, let’s start with…

Worst Game: The Ripping Friends! World's Manliest Men!

(Also Winner of: Ugliest Game)

As someone who already has disdain for Ren & Stimpy, along with everything their thrice-damned creator has made, the chances of me having a favourable opinion on The Ripping Friends was close to nil. But it’s a beat’em up - it’s pretty hard to make one that genuinely awful. Well, The Ripping Friends ripped it out of the park in the worst ways possible.

Outside of occasionally serviceable boss fights and a basic - yet bare-bones - combat, there is nothing to recommend here. Beyond being an ugly, ugly game, filled with ugly, ugly heroes and foes alike, you’ll be trapped seeing them all as you wander semi-open stages, frequently lost, and engaging in repetitive encounters with repetitively uglier foes. The story? Non-existent, and what little does exist, is just punctuated with unfunny jokes. Level design is ephemeral at best, movesets between the titular Ripping Friends are brutally thin, and the hitboxes seemingly exist somewhere between the outer bounds of your character, and the moon, with how often I was grappled out of range of enemies.

The Ripping Friends is the kind of bad game that’s made worse by having some element of competency; if everything sucked, I could just mock in good fun, but actually playing this game is one of the most miserable experiences I’ve ever had in The Game Boy Abyss. It might not even be the mechanically worst game I played this year (Peter Pan was pretty bad…) but it’s the one that made me just feel sad. Thankfully, it’s short enough that I wasn’t trapped in its clutches for too long…

Most Interesting: Sea Trader: Rise of Taipan

(Also Winner of: Least Story)

Sea Trader might be one of the most unique titles in the Game Boy Advance’s library; a true-blue economic simulator, set in the Age of Exploration. Sadly, the existence of the game is almost more interesting than playing it; after little more than a half-hour of gameplay, you’ve probably seen everything there is to offer. There’s very little variation on the concept of ‘buy low, sell high’ and whilst it’s cool you progress by unlocking sea routes around the whole world, they don’t really change much as even the various ports you visit differ little visually. Once you’ve cracked the code on how to earn the most money the fastest way possible, there’s literally no point doing anything else.

A proper scenario or campaign mode, perhaps inflicting some modifiers or restrictions on the player might’ve done something to give Sea Trader a little extra spice in its trades. But, overall, I think it’s interesting enough that the economic sim, a title more exclusively seen in the PC market at this time, is popping up in the Game Boy Advance. It’s still a really bare bones experience, but if you want to see the true reach of what the GBA had on offer, Sea Trader is certainly a port of call.

Most Likely To Return To: Chobits

(Also Winner of: Cutest Protagonist)

Despite having never watched Chobits myself, I’m well aware of it - especially with how adorable Chi is! With Chobits being one of the most recent Japanese-only titles to get a translation, I had to check it out before the big #100 - and I couldn’t have picked a better game to lead into it.

A mix of visual novel and ‘princess-maker-like’, Chobits tasks you with guiding the development of Chi, a robot girl who lacks memories and much of a personality. A massive improvement of it’s predecessor, Love Hina Advance, having some actual agency over the lead’s development makes Chobits a smashing success. Oozing charm from every crevice possible, the entire game is just in service of making you fall in love with Chi and her surrounding cast, all through a variety of adorable events, hilarious characters, and most importantly - unlocking as many cute outfits for Chi as possible!

The big caveat is that, with the game going untranslated for two decades, there is very little information on the game. Plus, the game’s mechanics surrounding levelling up Chi’s various stats, which have a huge influence on events and endings to the game, are incredibly obtuse. Ultimately, this all leads to the endgame goal of seeing a lot of the game's suites of scenes, scenarios, costumes and endings feeling a little bit random. Check out my review for a full explanation, but it’s not a dealbreaker - just be ready to be in for the longhaul. Ultimately, Chobits is just such a cute, heartwarming, and almost endlessly replayable game, that I couldn’t *not* go back to it in the near future.

I just want that damn rhythm game to go away...

Weirdest Game: Big Mutha Truckers

(Also Winner of: Most Hideous NPCs)

Okay, when I see Sea Trader was the only economic sim on the system, maybe I wasn’t being 100% truthful. Big Mutha Truckers is ostensibly, partially, in that genre, but the elements are so bare bones it barely feels relevant - hell, the game basically *tells* you which items to buy and where you need to be selling it.

No, it's the fact that Big Mutha Truckers blends this facade of an economic sim with a racer, set in a pseudo-open world that really pushes the visuals of the Game Boy Advance to the limit. Seriously, whilst the graphics in the driving sections are invariably ill-defined and drop the frame rate consistently, there was VERY little like this in its contemporaries. Coupled with the game’s main campaign, which is fairly lengthy and large-scale, and a separate, actually decent mission mode (which is replicated beat-for-beat in the main campaign anyway, making its inclusion… odd)... It’s hard to call Big Mutha Truckers good, when even its more foundational element - its driving - is rocky at best, but it all piles together into something that’s undoubtedly ambitious, and just odd that it’s on the handheld in the first place. I was a little more negative in my review, but now that I’m a few months out from it, there’s something about it that still shines in my head.

Also, you gotta check out the NPCs in this game; truly a cavalcade of horrors. Whilst they weren’t exactly lookers in the base console versions, their various visages are not remotely done any favours by being on the tiny console that could. Maybe that’s why the game won’t leave my head. What an insane game to bring over to the GBA, but I certainly don’t hate it - I just feel I’ve seen everything it has on offer.

Biggest Surprise: Care Bears: Care Quest

(Also Winner of: Best Kids Game)

There’s not a ton for me to say here, but I just want to say that whilst it’s not a particularly amazing game, I really want to give Care Quest some props. No matter what console you’re looking at, games made for gaming’s youngest audience - ESPECIALLY for girls - are almost universally terrible. Even when you put yourself in the position of that audience, they’re almost always boring, broken, ugly or just blatantly unfun. Care Quest would never win an award, but I think back in 2003, it would score with its core audience; if Grandma bought this for little Tammy, she could be doing way, way worse.

Care Quest is a simple mini-game collection, and whilst it was unexciting to me, I could see myself giving this to a five-year old girl and it occupying their attention for a decently long car ride. The minigames are simplistic, but pretty much all of them have *something*, albeit basic, going for them. Gaming today very much feels like a teenager, young adult kind of zone, but back then it, kids were the real audience - it was just rare that actually going anything actually good. Care Quest isn’t great, but if a thirty-year old GBA blogger can get something out of it, I’m sure a little kid could, too.

Best Game: Bruce Lee: Return of the Dragon

(Also Winner of: Best Beat’em Up)

It’s crazy to think that the best game I played this year was the very first one! Honestly, I didn’t play anything that really blew my socks off this year, so it was pretty close competition for my pick. Chobits, Shantae, and Spyro were all in contention, but there’s something about the beautiful simplicity of Bruce Lee: Return of the Dragon that did it for me.

Maybe it’s the love and adherence it shows towards Bruce Lee’s fantastic body of work; maybe it’s the solid, exciting, and frequently challenging beat’em up gameplay, punctuated by the wonderful ‘WA-HAA!’s that are iconic to Lee’s performances; maybe it’s the bosses, which are pulse-pounding, brutal encounters that do good work in sending up the classic martial-art showdowns. In any case, it’s certainly not the stealth sections, which are really the only black mark on this otherwise incredibly solid game.

Maybe I’m just biased; I’m a huge beat’em up fan, a genre which feels rather short-changed in regards to new, non-port experiences, but Return of the Dragon captured me in a way few other titles I reviewed in the Game Boy Abyss did; at the very least, it’s the one with the least amount of notable flaws. Sometimes, simplicity really is best, and there are few genres as simplistic as the beat’em up, and that’s why Bruce Lee: Return of the Dragon is the best game I reviewed for The Game Boy Abyss this year.

Don’t ask me why The Ripping Friends is THAT bad, though.

I just want to say, one last time, thank you for reading the Game Boy Abyss this year. I’ll see you next year with a review of Mother 3, and then we’ll see where the future takes us. I hope y’all have a fantastic New Year, and that life treats you well.

Thanks again for reading,

Mitchell