here's some handheld games that don't get discussed often enough

Game Boy Advance Longplay [191] Mr. Driller Ace: Fus...

least obscurely, Mr. Driller Ace

Mr. Driller fucking owns and I played like a hundred hours of this in college

action puzzle game about trying to drill your way deep into the earth's crust, except the earth is made of tetris blocks and they're trying to kill you

if same-color blocks fall into contact, they fuse together and clear, resulting in huge, terrifying chain reactions

you're also managing your oxygen supply - it slowly depletes, there are oxygen drops surrounded by hard tiles, and breaking a hard tile costs 20% oxygen

so you need to navigate and drill your way into a position where you can safely grab one without getting stuck

it's ridiculously fun and intense

Judgement Silversword (Rebirth Edition) - Normal 1cc...

Judgment Silversword, on the Wonderswan Color

just a really smartly-designed score attack bullet hell shooter

you have multiple weapons/defense systems you can swap between on the fly

the game gets ridiculously hard but always remains short and snappy

good game feel, good game

you get to have swordfights with spaceships

Dicing Knight for WonderSwan Color

also on the Wonderswan, Dicing Knight

a strange but inventive roguelike dungeon crawler

where the gimmick is that everything does damage in d6s

like you hit guys and dice pop out of them

and when they land that's how much damage they take

then there are all kinds of dice gimmicks like manipulating your dice luck or seeing your next ten die rolls in advance

and there's just something really gratifying about doing a massive super attack and just seeing piles of dice roll out of the boss

Ninja Five-O Playthrough - Hard Mode

And for the GBA, and the reason I made this plurk, the legendary forgotten Ninja Five-O

grappling hook action platformer stealth adventure about a ninja fighting terrorists

the movement feels fantastic and the levels are the perfect size to make you want to challenge them over and over to get a perfect score

rescuing hostages from gun thugs and sometimes from enemy ninjas while doing unbelievably sick flips

played the shit out of it back in college and I kind of want to pick it back up having remembered it

in conclusion, video games

what's a great handheld game that you love that time has forgotten

Magical Starsign, niche DS RPG about children from a magic school looking for their teacher. Surprisingly dark story for a cute, colorful game; had a mechanic where you could tap a character as they were casting a spell to boost it or while an attack was coming at them to lessen the damage a little... I have fond memories of it

Magical Starsign (NINTENDO DS) Part 1 The Students

oh!!!! i actually played magical starsign!!!!!!

unfortunately i never finished it bc my ds and all the games got stolen and i never replaced it, but it was a fun game for the half i did play