Nintendo has announced the next set of games coming to the Game Boy Advance library for Nintendo Switch Online and Expansion Pack subscribers, and it’s all Mario, all the time. The first three games in the Super Mario Advance series will be added to the collection in a week’s time, on Friday, May 26.
Among the three are two of the greatest platform games — scratch that, two of the greatest games — of all time. Super Mario Advance 2 brought the Super Nintendo launch classic Super Mario World to GBA, while Super Mario Advance 3 did the same for its gorgeous, hilarious, and quite different sequel, Yoshi’s Island. They’re perfect conversions, and nice to have, although both can be played (without an Expansion Pack membership) in their original versions in Switch Online’s SNES collection.
The first Super Mario Advance doesn’t belong to the same god tier, although it’s arguably a more interesting release. This was a 2001 refurb of the much-maligned Super Mario Bros. 2, a curious 1988 NES game about throwing vegetables that was itself a reskin of a game called Doki Doki Panic, made when the American market balked at Nintendo’s original Super Mario Bros. sequel. The Super Mario Advance version nicely updated its graphics and was the start of a critical turnaround on the game and its charmingly oddball gameplay. Again, the original NES version is available already with a basic Nintendo Switch Online membership, but in this case, the GBA remake is definitely the version to play.
The three games join Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 — available since Nintendo launched Game Boy games on it premium-tier subscription service — to complete the Super Mario Advance series’ availability on Nintendo Switch Online.
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