Silent Scope (GBA) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
133A playthrough of Konami's 2002 handheld port of the popular arcade rail shooter for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Silent Scope.
Played through the standard story mode and the GBA exclusive Advance modes on the default difficulty level. Advance mode begins at 12:46.
The GBA had quite a number of unexpected releases pop-up over its lifetime, but for me, this one was among the least likely. The arcade game was a fairly impressive for a fully 3D arcade time when it cane out in 1999. The PS2 and Dreamcast handled the conversions with aplomb, but the Gameboy Advance? And on a cartridge? Uh oh.
But regardless of the massive differences in hardware abilities, Konami pulled off a surprisingly solid conversion. Of course compromises were made, but the gameplay actually survived intact and in impressively playable form.
The 3D backdrops have all green replaced with static images and the characters are all sprites (sometimes impossibly tiny), but they replicate the look better than you might anticipate. Much of the music, sound, and voice effects are also present, albeit in tinny, super-compressed samples.
Konami also made an attempt to provide more game here than in any other version - there Advance mode offers a whole new story to play through, and while it feels a bit cheaply and quickly put together, it was a nice surprise to find as an unlock after finishing the main campaign.
It reminds me a lot of the GBA version of Space Channel 5. It's clearly inferior to the console versions, but it retains enough of what made the original special that it stands up as an entertaining "approximation" of the full-size experience in your pocket.
Just be warned though, you'll need some seriously good eyesight to make out some of those enemy locations. If you don't need glasses, you just might after paying this.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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