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Curated playlist

Game Boy Advance games

  • Super Street Fighter II TurboIn Japan, no arcade game earned more in 1994 than Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Capcom built it for arcade cabinets as the fifth installment in the Street Fighter II sub-series, following Super Street Fighter II from 1993. Oddly, it did…
  • Street Fighter Alpha 3Thirty-nine fighters. That is how large the playable cast of Street Fighter Alpha 3 grew on its biggest portable edition. The game itself began in 1998 as a Capcom arcade title. It was the third and final installment of the Street Fighter…
  • Capcom Classics CollectionCapcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 chose the Breakout-style Block Block over Super Street Fighter II.
  • Final Fantasy VJapan asked Square not to release Final Fantasy V on a school day.
  • Super Mario Bros.Super Mario Bros., Nintendo's 1985 platform game, had only about 20 bytes of cartridge space left once its music was added. Shigeru Miyamoto spent them on a small crown. The crown appears beside the life counter, and only for players who…
  • Prince of Persia: The Sands of TimePrince of Persia: The Sands of Time reached stores in the autumn of 2003, and its central trick was a kind of mercy. Miss a jump, fall onto spikes, and the game lets the player take it back. The Prince carries a magic Dagger that can turn…
  • Doom (1993 video game)Doom crashed a university network the night it was released in 1993. Ten thousand people tried to download it at once.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics AdvanceFinal Fantasy Tactics Advance was first planned for the PlayStation 2. It ended up on the Game Boy Advance.
  • The Legend of Zelda (video game)The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo's game about a boy named Link, began, by its designer's own account, with a lake. Shigeru Miyamoto remembered it this way: "When I was a child, I went hiking and found a lake. It was quite a surprise for me to…
  • Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II replaced experience points with stats that grow by use. Its designer felt it went too far.
  • The Lost VikingsThe Lost Vikings began with hundreds of tiny Vikings, until TV screens could not show them.
  • EarthBoundEarthBound is a 1994 role-playing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and its American advertising declared, 'This game stinks.' Nintendo meant it as a joke. In Japan the game was called Mother 2, and it was led by Shigesato…
  • Super Mario WorldOn the 21st of November 1990, Super Mario World reached Japanese players under the longer title Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4. It was one of only two launch games for Nintendo's new Super Nintendo Entertainment System in Japan.…
  • Pac-ManPac-Man was first called Puck Man, until executives feared vandals would change the P to an F.
  • Final Fantasy (video game)Final Fantasy got its name because its creator planned to quit if it failed. Square was also facing bankruptcy in 1987.
  • Final Fantasy IVFinal Fantasy IV began with a Formula One race. Hiroyuki Ito saw cars pass at different speeds and got an idea.
  • Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI lets its hero fail to save the world. The story's second half is called the World of Ruin.
  • Final Fight (video game)Final Fight, Capcom's arcade brawler, began as Street Fighter '89. Operators said the name was misleading.
  • Donkey Kong CountryDonkey Kong Country made its public debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, which ran from the 23rd to the 25th of June 1994. Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln saved it for the finale of the company's presentation. He…
  • Mother 3Mother 3 is a role-playing game that took twelve years and four consoles to finish, and then never left Japan. In the run-up to its release, people who phoned the Japan Post heard the game's main theme, "Love Theme", while they waited on…
  • Space InvadersSpace Invaders sped up as aliens vanished by accident, and its designer kept the quirk.

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