Rediscovering “Golden Sun” in HD!

Ah…Golden Sun. You know, if you were to ask someone to list off some of the best RPGs available on portable systems, this game series would likely make a lot of lists. In fact, even today a lot of people say that the two Golden Sun games on the Game Boy Advance were perhaps the best RPGs available on the platform. This actually is saying a good deal because there were some pretty nice RPGs that were ported over or developed for the GBA, but I can see why some folks would say this.

Of course, I was very much aware of this game and its follow-up on the platform, but they were games that I just never actually got into for some reason. It’s a shame, because after reading a lot about the series it seems like it’s really great. And, since I really had not done anything from the GBA on The Retro Play Show, I figured this was a good opportunity to give this game a shot.

Well, Golden Sun (released in 2001) is a very solid JRPG with a good story to it. The graphics are very nice, especially up-scaled and filtered to HD quality in Visual Boy Advance M, and the overall delivery is nice. It reminds me of a game from the mid-1990s on the SNES and has that sense of wonder and fun associated with it. You meet some really neat characters even in the first hour or so of gameplay, and you already get drawn in. There’s some good goofiness and fun to it, but you also know that there is a deeper story brewing and that things won’t all be sunshine and rainbows along the way. Also, upon digging a bit into Camelot Software Planning’s other games, I saw that the battle system and overall art style in Golden Sun is very reminiscent of their 1995 RPG Beyond the Beyond for the original PlayStation. The battle sprites (that appear semi-3D in a way) look almost identical, really.

Anyway, this video represents the first hour or so of the game. I do hope you enjoy it! I also hope that if you like it, you’ll let me know so that I can consider revisiting it in its own little series one day. 🙂

As always, enjoy, and stay tuned for more awesome fun!

Jessica Brown

Retro Games and Technology Editor. She'll beat pretty much every Mega Man game without breaking a sweat.