Handheld entries that felt as great as home console ones

[Ikagura]

Whether they're spinoffs or just a smaller budget entry that ended up being still grandiose and could easily rivalise with the AAA on more powerful hardware.

The first one that comes to mind is MGS: Peace Walker which is on the same level of quality as what we got on the PS2. The second one is probably Kirby Planet Robobot (although the series is principally on handhelds) which is easily as good as Return to Dreamland.

 

[lestagio]

Nintendo has a pretty damn solid track record on their handhelds. The Castlevania GBA trilogy as well as the 3ds games, Metroid Fusion, Superstar Saga, New Super Mario Bros, Minish Cap...

And if we're talking about remakes, OOT3D is superior to its N64 counterpart, and many of the Super Mario Advance games are great. Really the only thing that holds back games on handhelds is that... they're on a handheld.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

Mega Man World 5 rivalizes with the NES games since is a completely original game well executed on the Game Boy

 

[Ikagura]

Nintendo has a pretty damn solid track record on their handhelds. The Castlevania GBA trilogy as well as the 3ds games, Metroid Fusion, Superstar Saga, New Super Mario Bros, Minish Cap...

Yeah, even if Castlevania was made by Konami they managed to translate the SotN gameplay pretty well on a smaller screen resolution.

Zero Mission is not only a good remake but also made Metroid 1 to be almost as good as Super Metroid. ALBW was a bit easier than ALTTP but managed to be a great entry for a top down Zelda game.

I'll add 3D Land which felt original and had fun levels.

And if we're talking about remakes, OOT3D is superior to its N64 counterpart, and many of the Super Mario Advance games are great. Really the only thing that holds back games on handhelds is that... they're on a handheld.

SMA had screen crunch but I didn't mind too much.

Mega Man World 5 rivalizes with the NES games since is a completely original game well executed on the Game Boy

World I-III were a lesser scaled version of their respective NES counterparts but IV was really nice and V was impressive for the hardware.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

The Mario games on GBA are just... top-notch, man.

Even better than the originals.

 

[ThunderBoy]

Super Mario Land 2

Metroid Fusion

Wipeout Pure

Luigi's Mansion 2

 

[PSVitaForever]

KILLZONE MERCENARY on PSVita immediately comes to mind

Killzone: Mercenary (USA) VITA ROM – The Repo

Doesn't work on vita3k at the time of posting.

retrogametalk.com

 

[MorriganW0lf]

Lord Of Arcana on my beloved PSP, it's a very good looking rpg, with a good character creation, i was very impressed with it the first time i played it.

 

[Bakuma1997]

I would rather be shot than play the original Donkey Kong Country in SNES, the GBA ports are the def ways to me, adding some QOL and managing to play nicely despite obviousl screen crunch, only critic is the flashbang of a graphical dept, but nothing a patch can fix

 

[beefbowl]

GTA has some bangers. Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, Chinatown Wars are all great. VCS basically was the San Andreas 2 we never got.

 

[lestagio]

The Mario games on GBA are just... top-notch, man.

Even better than the originals.

They're impressive but I don't think they're ALL as good as the originals, at least in my opinion.

SMB2 on GBA is an improvement, but SMW and Yoshi's Island are worse than their SNES counterparts. Very similar games, but the GBA having compressed sound and a smaller screen makes them worse. SMB3 goes either way. I love the OG and GBA version. That being said, the GBA versions are really just the Mario All Stars versions, on a handheld. I'd rather play SMB2 on GBA than NES, but I'd rather play it on SNES above anything else.

 

[RageBurner]

Mega Man World 5 rivalizes with the NES games since is a completely original game well executed on the Game Boy

More than rivalizes, it has it beat, if you ask me (especially when compared directly to MM5 NES).

I'd argue the GBC version of Azure Dreams is more fun to play that the PS1 original.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

More than rivalizes, it has it beat, if you ask me (especially when compared directly to MM5 NES).

BEAT

Agree, World 5 is pretty underrated.

 

[zerodayhx]

well a obvious answer is monster hunter but i actually want to include kingdom hearts chain of memories.
This is very subjective but i actually really enjoyed the GBA version of the game, was different enough to the later ps2 version to give it its own identity

 

[Stare best girl]

Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey is literally the best SMT mainline game even at this day Seg- I mean Atlus(the current Atlus is Sega Dream Corporation as the original Atlus died in 2010) didn't replicated its quality

 

[RageBurner]

Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey is literally the best SMT mainline game even at this day Seg- I mean Atlus(the current Atlus is Sega Dream Corporation as the original Atlus died in 2010) didn't replicated its quality

I agree with you heavily, so much so I consider SJ to be the true 4th entry.