Best Retro Games of the 2000s

The 2000s: Gaming’s Most Transitional Decade

The 2000s were gaming’s most significant transitional decade. The generation began with PS2 and Dreamcast defining the sixth-generation shift to DVD media and online gaming. It ended with the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 defining the seventh generation’s motion controls and HD displays. In between: the GBA’s late 2D game golden age, the Dreamcast’s discontinuation, the GameCube’s underperformance, the DS’s dual-screen revolution, and the PSP’s attempt at console gaming on a handheld.

The 2000s produced games that are now 20+ years old but feel definitively “retro” — the hardware generations they lived on are no longer sold, their software ecosystems are closed, and the games are discussed with the same retrospective appreciation as 1990s titles. The best games of the decade deserve the same canonical attention as their predecessors.

GBA: Late 2D Excellence

The Game Boy Advance (2001–2008) was the final platform where 2D sprite art was the default rather than a stylistic choice, and the Japanese developers who knew 2D game design best produced the GBA’s finest games. Golden Sun, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Metroid Fusion, Mega Man Zero — each was a 2D game made by developers at the top of their craft.

Fire Emblem’s Western debut (Fire Emblem, GBA, 2003) introduced tactical RPG gameplay to Western audiences through a game whose story — a war for succession across three kingdoms — was accessible without prior series knowledge. The permadeath mechanic (characters who died in battle were permanently dead) created emotional investment in unit survival that subsequent Fire Emblem games have maintained.

Advance Wars — The Strategy Game Masterclass

Advance Wars (2001) was Nintendo’s localization of the Famicom Wars series for Western audiences and immediately established a devoted following. The commanding officer system — each CO had a passive bonus and a powerful CO Power ability that charged over time — created rock-paper-scissors strategic dynamics between COs that matched into specific map structures.

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003) expanded the CO roster and added Super CO Powers. The series’ puzzle-precise map design — where understanding the CO match-ups and unit type strengths produced consistent solutions — and its accessible visual style (bright, cartoonish unit designs with instantly readable identities) made it the most approachable strategy game ever produced on a handheld.

Metroid Fusion — The Horror Metroid

Metroid Fusion (2002) was the most narratively direct Metroid game: Samus spoke, the Space Pirates were replaced by the X parasite and the SA-X, and the game communicated its story through Samus’s internal monologue and dialogue with ADAM, the ship’s AI. The SA-X — a doppelganger of Samus at full power, immune to the player’s current weapons — was the game’s horror element: appearing without warning, requiring evasion rather than engagement.

Fusion’s linearity (more directed than Super Metroid’s open exploration) was a deliberate design choice that created narrative momentum the more open Metroids couldn’t achieve. The game’s final sequence — escaping the space station before it crashes into the SR388 biosphere — produced the same timed-escape adrenaline as Super Metroid’s Mother Brain escape while matching it with narrative stakes.

Mother 3 — The Untranslated Classic

Mother 3 (2006, Japan only) was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo, and its absence from Western markets remains one of gaming’s most discussed localization gaps. A fan translation by Tomato’s team (released 2008) made the game accessible to English-speaking players, and through it Mother 3 became widely known and discussed despite never receiving official localization.

The game’s story — about the transformation of a peaceful island by corporate industrialization, and a family separated by loss and violence — addressed themes of grief, identity, and the relationship between progress and nature with a specificity and emotional weight that few games achieve. The rhythm combat (hitting the A button in time with the music for additional hits) was mechanically elegant. The final chapters constitute some of the most emotionally affecting content in game storytelling.