“First commercial GBA game in 13 years” smashes Kickstarter target in less than a day

The Kickstarter for Goodboy Galaxy – the first commercial Game Boy Advance game since 2008 – has smashed its target in less than a day.

The Kickstarter went live yesterday asking for £18,000. Today, at the time of this article’s publication, it’s on over £58,000.

Goodboy Galaxy is the work of two developers, Rik Nicol and Jeremy Clarke, who met while working at a mobile games studio in the Netherlands.

It’s a new exploration-focused adventure platform game the creators likened to Cave Story, and described as a “cuter Metroid”.

The plan is to release Goodboy Galaxy on real GBA carts as an “aftermarket-product” neither licensed by nor affiliated with Nintendo. An enhanced version for PC and Nintendo Switch is also in the works.

In a note sent to Eurogamer, Nicol said the last commercial Game Boy Advance game was The Bee Gee game, released by now defunct publisher Midway on 5th November 2007.

“We think it’s interesting, especially since the GBA doesn’t get too much homebrew (let alone attempts at full commercial style releases), but we’re hoping to change that!” Nicol said.

There’s a demo available on Itch.io, if you fancy trying Goodboy Galaxy out for yourself.