Nintendo's Ambassador Program Concludes This Week - Revelations of GBA Games

The Game Boy Advance. It began as Nintendo's next step in portable gaming, to produce a handheld system that could reproduce the graphics of the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It ended up being a revolution in handheld gaming, one that fueled the success of the Nintendo DS and the creation of the PSP. The GBA was known for its legendary library of games, offering developers the opportunity to continue making 2D games in a console era that largely rejected them. Because of the GBA, we received the revival of Megaman, Golden Sun, Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission, the Ace Attorney series (although it would be delayed to the DS in the US), brilliant remakes of old Super Nintendo games, and many many others.


When Nintendo decided to apologize to early purchasers of the 3DS, they did so by offering the Ambassador Program, 20 free games from the NES and GBA. The first 10 games were all legends from the NES era, allowing the play of The Legend of Zelda and Balloon Fight on the go. Today, Nintendo announced the full list of GBA games that Ambassadors (like myself) will be getting for free, to be available December 16th in Japan. The NES games were never directly announced for the US, but they were all made available at the exact same time as Japan.


To recap, these are the games Nintendo previously announced:

1. Metroid Fusion
2. Mario Kart: Super Circuit
3. Mario vs. Donkey Kong
4. Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3
5. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$

By no means a stellar list, but WarioWare and Metroid Fusion were beyond excellent. The idea of including a port of a port is still questionable to some, but Yoshi's Island was still an awesome game. These are the other 5 games that will be available:

1. F-Zero: Maximum Velocity
2. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
3. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
4. Kirby & The Amazing Mirror
5. Wario Land 4

Now that's more like it. Curiously enough, with the revelation of an F-Zero game, that means that there will be 2 racing games made available.