Need for Speed Most Wanted on Gameboy Advance: a weird port of an amazing game.

While people probable expect that my expectations for Need for Speed Most Wanted on Gameboy Advance were high (considering it's one of my favorite titles in the entire franchise), it doesn't take a genius to know that a 3D racing game isn't going to translate very well to Nintendo's humble handheld, but it's still interesting to see that so many elements of the original experience can be carried over to the console without losing its essence.

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Far from being a solid alternative, Most Wanted on GBA is a curious experiment that has the same superficial features (racing, vehicle customization, and story progression), but lacks the same intuitive controls or incentives to keep you hooked on the game.

Ironically, its aesthetic and gameplay shortcomings are a pretty strong incentive to give it a chance, either because we're morbidly curious about how portable ports worked in the early 2000s, or because nostalgia invites us to revisit a title we knew in an era when it wasn't so easy to replicate a 3D experience on something other than a PC or a home console.

Regardless of its mediocrity, it must be acknowledged that it's a brilliant product from a technical standpoint, with several vehicles available and a couple of tuning options that add density to the experience. And, while it doesn't have anything very characteristic of Most Wanted (remember that one of the crucial pieces of the classic version was the presence of police chases and the most wanted list), it's still an entertaining title with controls that may start out feeling a bit rough but that we'll eventually start to master.

Is it perfect? Not at all, at best it's only worth a couple of races and that's it, but I really appreciate the way it captures the essence of Need for Speed, and nowadays it's almost unimaginable to think of a port conceived for a portable console with so many technical limitations.