Have you ever developed a sense of kinship with a London hotel room? As I played Golden Sun in the dark of our plush chamber, I came dangerously close.
Textured as richly as the velvet curtains behind me, the game’s luscious environments made my eyes melt, chiefly because the Game Boy Advance did not have a back-lit screen and I couldn’t see a damn thing. Thankfully, the gaudy characters made soft bleeping sounds when they babbled inane nonsense about a spherical floating Cyclops, so my impaired vision posed no problem. “Verily, this is endearing,” I proclaimed, fondling the curtains which I then, at that point, estimated were not made from velvet at all…but from nylon. The difference was startling. I took notice.
Golden Sun is unequivocally the finest game I ever played for the Game Boy Advance. It is blessed with a very real enthusiasm that permeates every seam and oozes out of your gaming system like treacle onto the streets, where it then devastates the traction of passing vehicles and begets destruction much akin to that scene in Toy Story 2 where the toys are crossing the road and things crash into each-other. [9]