Game Boy Advance: Classic NES Series
November 1, 2008 - 8:26 am - Posted by Sean R.
The Classic NES Series in North America (Famicom Mini Series in Japan and NES Classics in Europe) are a series of Game Boy Advance games that were originally released on the NES/Famicom and Famicom Disk System emulated on the Game Boy Advance.
A special edition GameBoy Advance SP, which has a similar color pattern to a NES controller (along with a Famicom counterpart in Japan), was released to go along with these games.
The color of the cartridges match the color of the original NES carts.
All of these games were released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Famicom in Japan.
Series 1 was released in North America on June 7, 2004 and in Europe on July 9, 2004:
- Bomberman
- Donkey Kong
- Excitebike
- Ice Climber
- The Legend of Zelda
- Pac-Man
- Super Mario Bros.
- Xevious
Series 2 was released in North America on October 25, 2004 and in Europe on January 7, 2005:
- Castlevania
- Dr. Mario
- Metroid
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Some highly popular games were left off the Classic NES Series which were later released on the GBA in remade form, such as:
- Tetris (as Tetris Worlds)
- Super Mario Bros. 2 (as Super Mario Advance)
- Super Mario Bros. 3 (as Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3)
- Bubble Bobble (as “Bubble Bobble: Old and New”)
- Kirby’s Adventure (as Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land)
The Japanese release of Ice Climber features the seal Topis while the international copy reflects its remade characters including the yeti Topis.
4 Responses to “Game Boy Advance: Classic NES Series”
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I still find it funny that they released that remake of the original Metroid, considering that off the top of my head I can think two other ways to play it on modern systems before the Classic NES series version was released (on Gamecube by connecting Metroids Prime and Fusion, or on GBA with Metroid: Zero Mission).
@Luke: I wish Nintendo would have released MegaMan 2 under the classic NES series of games. Oh well, at least I still have my original NES MegaMan 2 cartridge to play
i have a few of these games for my GBA. I agree with you Sean, they should do MegaMan 2 as well.
@Billy: I have all the NES classic versions from Series 1 and 2, except Pac-Man but I’ve got that on the Pac-Man Collection cartridge, so no biggy.