The 17 best 6th generation handheld games

All systems together, ranked by the scores that magazines gave these games when they came out. Systems: Game Boy Advance, N-Gage, WonderSwan, WonderSwan Color. The list draws on 1,730 review scores of 738 games.

#	Game	Platform	Year	Score
1	The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past - Four Swords	GBA	2002	95.3
2	Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2	GBA	2001	94.3
3	Mario Kart Advance	GBA	2001	93.8
4	Metroid Fusion	GBA	2002	93
5	Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3	GBA	2003	92.6
6	Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance	GBA	2002	92
7	Final Fantasy VI Advance	GBA	2007	92
8	Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3	GBA	2002	91.7
9	Advance Wars	GBA	2001	90.9
10	Golden Sun	GBA	2001	90.9
11	Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow	GBA	2003	90.7
12	Final Fantasy Tactics Advance	GBA	2003	90.5
13	Metroid: Zero Mission	GBA	2004	90.5
14	Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga	GBA	2003	90
15	Castlevania: Circle of the Moon	GBA	2001	90
16	Sonic Advance	GBA	2001	90
17	WarioWare: Twisted!	GBA	2004	90

Highly rated, with fewer than 3 reviews

5 titles have a score of 90 or more, but from only one or two reviews, and no Metacritic score.

Game	Platform	Year	Score
Ultimate Card Games	GBA	2004	95
Boktai 3: Sabata's Counterattack	GBA	2005	92
Dragon Quest: Toruneko no Daibouken 2 Advance	GBA	2001	90
Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi	GBA	2002	90
GunPey	WonderSwan	1999	90

How the ranking works

The scores are the ones magazines gave when the games came out, all converted to a 0–100 scale. Only one review per magazine counts for a game: the most recent.
A game's score is half the average, half the median of its magazine reviews. A title opens the game's page on uvlist.net; a score opens the report with every review behind it.
A game needs at least 3 magazine reviews to be ranked. With equal scores, the game with more reviews comes first.
Metacritic already sums up many reviews, so it is never mixed with the magazines: it is used only for games with fewer than 3 magazine reviews, as their only score.
Each list shows every game with a score of 90 or more. Games with fewer than 3 reviews and no Metacritic score are shown apart: their score is promising, but rests on one or two opinions.
A title released on several systems of the group appears once, at the rank of its best version; every version good enough to make the list is shown under it.

The lists are rebuilt each time reviews are added. To filter by genre, year, magazine or publisher, explore all the scores in the report.

More lists

Best 2nd generation console games Best 3rd generation (8-bit) console games Best 4th generation (16-bit) console games Best 5th generation (32/64-bit) console games Best 6th generation console games Best 7th generation console games Best 8th generation console games Best 9th generation console games Best 4th generation handheld games Best 5th generation handheld games Best 7th generation handheld games Best 8th generation handheld games Best 8-bit home computer games Best 16/32-bit home computer games Best PC (MS-DOS and Windows) games All the lists