The Game Boy was a massive hit for Nintendo. Taking games on the go wasn’t completely new, but Nintendo did it so much bigger and better that fans quickly flocked to the system. The console maker was able to extend the portable console’s lifespan by introducing the Game Boy Color, giving it more life than many might’ve thought was possible. The system was filled with great games, but a few of them have been forgotten over time. These games might top the list of anyone’s favorite Game Boy games, but they’re worth checking out.
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Here are five great Game Boy games you might’ve forgotten.
5) Survival Kids
Also known as Stranded Kids in Europe, this 1999 survival game was such a fun concept when it launched. It might look like a Pokรฉmon or Legend of Zelda knockoff visually, but Survival Kids is something else entirely. You’re trapped on an island and have to find your way off. That means managing hunger, thirst, fatigue, and your health. That sounds like a standard concept these days, thanks to the rise of the survival genre, but it was a neat novelty in 1999.
You can take pretty much any path you want to reach your goal. There’s no real structure to progression, leaving you totally up to your own devices. On top of that, there are a few different endings to unlock based on your choices. That gives Survival Kids extra replay value, and with all of the various ways to progress, you’ll find yourself coming back to this one again and again. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same about most of the sequels.
4) Avenging Spirits
Avenging Spirit has such a great setup. One day, you’re strolling the streets with your girlfriend when you’re attacked by a few thugs from a mysterious crime syndicate. They take your love and shoot you to death. Where some stories would end, this one is just beginning. In Avenging Spirit, you then become a wandering ghost. Your girlfriend’s father, a ghost researcher, calls you in to ask you to rescue his daughter. As you’d expect, hijinks ensue.
The gameplay gimmick of Avenging Spirit is also a little bananas, but not exactly unique in video game history. As a ghost, you can possess other bodies, most of which have their own special abilities to help you conquer all six levels and defeat the crime syndicate. It is a little weird that you possess your girlfriend at the very end to save her from the group’s leader before fading into the afterlife, but it works for Avenging Spirit.
3) Mole Mania
Mole Mania is a classic puzzle game, making it perfect for a portable console. Any time you had a few minutes of downtime during the day, you could whip out your Game Boy and solve a puzzle or two before continuing with your day. It looks great, has some genuinely funny cutscenes, and if you’re in a place where you can turn on the soundtrack, the tunes are pretty impressive.
For this particular brand of puzzler, you play as a mole named Muddy Mole, whose wife and seven children have been kidnapped by a local cabbage farmer named Jinbe. To get them back, you need to move a black ball through a maze, using Muddy’s digging ability to clear shortcuts around the various obstacles. Of course, various enemies and bosses won’t make it easy, but careful planning will eventually be enough to help you finally see your family once again.
2) Crystalis
To be clear, Crystalis also came to the NES about a decade before it hit the Game Boy Color. So, depending on your age, you might’ve missed the exceptional GBC port when it came out in 2000, since you’d already played it on another console. I’m not necessarily saying you need to play the Game Boy Color port if you’ve played the original, but it does have plenty of differences to make it work on the portable system.
Not only did Nintendo, which bought the license from SNK for the GBC port, alter a few aspects of the story via a new translation, but it also added an almost entirely new soundtrack. There’s a new ending sequence, and the lower resolution of the screen means that enemies can now attack you from off-camera. Despite the changes, Crystalis is still one of the must-play RPGs on the GBC. That said, you’re likely better off playing the NES game at this point. It’s easier to get your hands on, after all.
1) Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
It’s hard to call anything in the Metal Gear franchise “forgotten,” but Ghost Babel is certainly one of the least-discussed games in Hideo Kojima’s fan-favorite series. What makes this game a little weird is that it is not in the Metal Gear Solid timeline, despite coming out two years after MGS‘s first game took the world by storm. Instead, Ghost Babel is set seven years after the events of the 1987 Metal Gear game on the MSX2. It’s confusing, but it doesn’t really matter.
Ghost Babel uses the 2D overhead view made popular on the MXS2, while dropping in a few elements from Metal Gear Solid, making the distinction between the two continuities even weirder. That mix between 2D and 3D gameplay made for one of the best games on the Game Boy Color, earning it excellent review scores across the board. Thankfully, you’ll soon be able to check it out for yourself relatively soon, as Ghost Babel is set to be part of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 when it comes out in August 2026.
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