Happy Monday, folks! Welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread.

This month, I’ve been playing a lot of Golden Sun, Nintendo’s signature classic JRPG series. One of the most memorable parts of the game, and certainly the thing I’ve taken notice of the most, are the graphics. Golden Sun on its own is a pretty alright Chrono Trigger-style role playing game with a fun but confusing elemental and summon system, but the pixel art is pretty astonishing. The game came out on the GBA, in 2001 no less! Some mobile phones notwithstanding, this was probably the single most underpowered conventional system for releasing a video game.

Nowadays, there are plenty of examples of pretty miraculous graphics on hardware that theoretically shouldn’t be capable of that. The Switch 2, for instance, has had plenty of miracle ports, like Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil Requiem, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. But these feel more impactful the more you know about game making, the more you know about the work that went into every version of those titles. When I reviewed Requiem on Switch 2, I was only astonished in parts, because (bad hair physics aside) Resident Evil Requiem looks as much like a modern, 2026-style game on Switch 2 as it does on every other system. Its graphical prowess is less showy by design. See what I mean? The jumps are more impressive when you know what’s going into these things. And maybe that’s a byproduct of how the leaps of hardware generations are less exciting or noticeable with each new one.

Golden Sun promises us something else entirely, something that’s arguably gone from the video game industry entirely. This was a game that came out alongside smooth, detailed, and highly interactive worlds powered by the PlayStation 2 and GameCube. It was on a 32-bit console that could do a lot more than you might think but was never going to go anywhere near the home consoles or gaming PCs of its day. You weren’t going to get “miracle ports” in the way we see today. Instead, studios like Golden Sun and perennial Mario sports game developer Camelot simply pushed the graphics ridiculously hard. Throughout the combat scenes alone, characters summon graphically sumptuous djinn, fight in rain or on unique landscapes, and even enjoy cinematic camera angles done through excellent sprite work. Arguably, it’s Golden Sun‘s best feature. And I’m still pretty shocked seeing it play out in each fight, of which there are many.

So for today’s prompt, I’d like you to look back to the pre-Switch days, where there were commercially mainstream handhelds that couldn’t project graphics in 1080p. Whether it’s the GBA, the PSP, the 3DS, or even less graphically powerful home consoles like the Wii, what are your favorite examples of a markedly, seriously weaker system showing graphics way beyond its norm? Were you a fan of the times where God of War shrunk its blockbuster scope down to work on a PlayStation Portable? Did you enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles doing more with the Wii’s graphics than anyone (or did you enjoy its even more ambitious and probably ill-conceived port on the 3DS)? For me, it may not be Golden Sun; it’s probably the even better and more lurid DS sprite art of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

It’s a unique question, and whether or not you’re thinking of answering it, what did you play this weekend?