The eagle-eyed amongst you might recognise Super Smash Land from the picture above. There's a bit more to this story than Super Smash Bros just suddenly landing on the Game Boy Advance. Super Smash Land is a homebrew demake port of Super Smash Bros originally made for the Game Boy. The game's original code was translated from C, and now it runs on the actual GBA via a flash cart as well as other FPGA handhelds like the Analogue Pocket and emulators.
Smash Bros on the GBA is something I would have loved back in the day. We had to wait until the 3DS to get a handheld version of Super Smash Bros, but I would have digged this so much when I was rocking my GBA SP.
There are 6 fighters that you can take into battle. As you can see from the featured image of this article, you start off with Pikachu, Link, Kirby, and Mario. You can also unlock Mega Man and Vaporeon. There are three modes - Arcade, Versus, and Endless, with 11 stages to play in. Only 5 of those are available to start off with, with the other six needing to be unlocked.
Yes, there are unlockables in this game; Smash Bros runs on unlockables, with players putting in countless hours to determine the criteria for new characters and levels.
There are 3 camera modes for you to flick through, and here's one of the best bits that I've saved till last - you actually play multiplayer with your friends if you have multiple GBAs and a link cable. Up to four people can play so long as they have actual hardware and everyone is using the same version of the ROM.
The CPU is pretty brutal in Super Smash Land too; I left Pikachu just chilling on a platform so I could see how my rival Pika would attack, and he wasted no time in electrifying me and trying to win the round. The same went for Link vs Mario; Mario is ruthless! It's a very nice hack and one that doesn't use any AI either. And all the classic moves are present too - Link's sword spin jump was always my favourite move to use!
All you need to get playing is to head to Itch.io and download the ROM. Then you'll need to transfer it to a microSD card on your flashcart or FPGA device, or you can play it on an emulator on your computer!
