I’m gifting my friend’s child a handheld emulator and loading it up with games. It’s capable of playing things pretty much up to Nintendo GameCube (It’s even running Twilight Princess, though it studders in some areas).
I’ve got pretty much everything that exists for NES, SNES, N64, as well as a couple dozen games for Genesis. I never had a Sega Saturn or a PS / PS2 growing up though and I’m wondering what I should grab for those, as well as some more obscure GameCube titles if there are any I should know about.
Here’s your chance to wax nostalgic about some old games and help ensure they make it into a kid’s present. Even if I have the game already, I can still throw suggestions into the “favorites” list and make them easier to find.
Roughly what age is this child?
Don’t sleep on handhelds - the GBA had a pretty solid library.
The three Fire Emblem games on GBA (Binding Blade [Japan-only, but has a solid fantran out], Blazing Blade [“Fire Emblem” outside of Japan], and Sacred Stones) are all great and relatively easy to get into. I’d recommend the SNES/SFC ones maybe for an older teen, but they’d be tricky for a younger player.
Oh I forgot to mention but I have nearly the entire library for Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and GBA as well, including the hacked fan translation of Mother 3.
The kid is 12, so as much as I’d like to throw San Andreas on this thing, I would like to avoid being strangled by his mother.
Yeah, you can library dump a bunch of the classic consoles, so I’m trying to rack my brain for special stuff that has a heavier file size or cool Japan-only games that have a fan translation or don’t require language skills.
Can Chibi Robo run on that handheld? It’s GCN, so kinda in the iffy area for handheld emulators.
Yeah, that’s the age where they have to figure out how to get a hold of it if they really want to play it lol.
Yes, there are so many good games for GBA and even GBC and they’re small so you can go for the whole library approach like NES/SNES.
I don’t know that much about the Playstation, having also never had one growing up, but the top shelf classics that come immediately to mind are Final Fantasy VII and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. There are also tons of kid friendly mascot platformers like Crash and Spyro
Even the original GB had bangers, like Donkey Kong '94
The original Pokemon R/B/Y games were technically GB games, even though Yellow did do some colors if you played it on a GBC. Metroid 2 was also a GB game.
Link’s Awakening, too, but the DX version was a little better
Edit: Totally forgot about Kaeru no tame no Kane wo Naru “For the Frog the Bell Tolls” - it’s a strange Japan-only GB game that’s roughly a more puzzle based Link’s Awakening. There’s a fan translation out for it.