Nintendo Switch Online Updates GBA Library With Three Left-Field Picks

We can’t remember the last time Nintendo updated the Game Boy Advance section of Switch Online, but it happened today. And the choices for additions are not something anyone would have won a bet on.

First is Tecmo’s Monster Rancher Advance, a handheld spinoff of their long-running life-raising sim (which hasn’t run in quite a while, really). Second is the GBA port of SNK’s original Metal Slug game, called Metal Slug Advance. If you know anything about Metal Slug you know what to expect here…run to the right with guns blazing, shoot everything to make it flash and eventually explode, and if you don’t get hit too many times you will eventually win. SNK is owned by Saudi murderers, but so is 49.5% of Skydance, so you’re going to support their reign of terror no matter what you do.

It’s the third choice that’s the most interesting, at least if you know your Nintendo history. Kururin Paradise is the sequel to Kuru Kuru Kururin, the puzzle game that intrigued so many gamers with its magazine screenshots back in the day, yet US audiences never actually got. It received a European release and, eventually, an American one 15 years later on the Wii U‘s Virtual Console. But the sequel has NEVER been released here. If this is like Nintendo’s other Japanese additions, it isn’t going to be translated. They don’t tend to be hard to figure out, but you’ll have to resort to using an AR translation app on your phone if you really need to know what everything says.

How do you package such an eclectic connection? Like this, apparently…Nintendo is selling this update as “Raise, Blaze, and a Maze.” Amaze amaze amaze!

All three titles are now available on the Expansion Pack version of Nintendo Switch Online for both Switch and Switch 2.