Most gamers, especially Nintendo fans, have fond memories of the Game Boy Advance. Released in the U.S. on June 11th, 2001, the 32-bit handheld allowed users to experience Super Nintendo quality graphics on the go. Early launch games, like F-Zero: Maximum Velocity and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, offered a glimpse into the future, and we happily purchased systems, despite the lack of a backlight.

Then Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance SP (the famous clamshell design, with backlight), and a portable renaissance followed. Tons of quality games debuted on the machine, including numerous Castlevania adventures, chapters in Square Enix's Final Fantasy series and plenty of hits from Nintendo, such as Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Mario vs. Donkey Kong. With that, join us as we count down the greatest GBA games of all time, with help from the web's most comprehensive Nintendo blog, GoNintendo.

10.) Drill Dozer

Like most Nintendo fans, we have a soft spot for Drill Dozer. This imaginative and cool 2-D game casts players as Jill, a pink-haired schoolgirl who rides this humongous drill. With hundreds of enemies standing in her way, players use the drill to plow through bad guys, various objects and even walls, switching gears to receive an added power boost. It's great destructive fun.

9.) Sonic Advance

For a while, it seemed like Sega had lost its way with Sonic the Hedgehog, thanks to a glut of terrible to average 3-D games. That's why Sonic's 2-D outing on GBA, Sonic Advance, filled us with excitement. This speedy and portable adventure brought back lots of happy Genesis memories, as we blazed through familiar locales, spun around loops and bopped enemy robots on their heads to free our animal buddies. It was a superb effort.

8.) Golden Sun

There's no shortage of quality role-playing games on the GBA, including numerous Final Fantasy adventures. Nintendo's Golden Sun series, however, managed to stand out from the competition. Although the story and dungeon crawling felt similar to other games, we'll always remember it for those impressive attacks full of neat looking special effects; it's without question a showpiece for the GBA. In addition, the game lets players collect magical creatures called Djinn and use them in battle, so that sort of adds a Pokemon element to the gameplay.

7.) Astro Boy: Omega Factor

Although D3 plans to release an Astro Boy video game that coincides with the upcoming film, we doubt it'll surpass Treasure and Sega's GBA adventure. Omega Factor was a proverbial breath of fresh air, a gorgeous beat-em-up/shooter/flying game where players tore through enemies and took to the skies as Osama Tezuka's boy wonder. Everything about this gem, from the detailed graphics to the imaginative characters, took us back to the glory days of 16-bit gaming. It's a shame we can't play this on DSi.

6.) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Konami struggled bringing its Castlevania franchise to consoles, but on GBA, players were treated to phenomenal 2-D adventures with attractive visuals, quality Castlevania music and plenty of monsters to slaughter. Aria of Sorrow stands out the most for its Tactical Soul system, which is the ability to absorb the souls of defeated enemies, thus gaining new and powerful abilities. In addition, we were drawn to the somewhat awkward story and hero, Soma Cruz. Typically, Castlevania video games star vampire hunters battling Dracula in ancient times, but here, Soma's a transfer student visiting Japan in the year 2035. Hey, it's strange, but it works