Kuru Kuru Kururin

I swear it’s like Nintendo hand-picked this opening selection to win me in particular over, considering even the most obscure title on the list was one of my favorite GBA games back at the time. Kuru Kuru Kururin—a game that no one wants to abbreviate to its initials no matter how annoying it is to type out in full—is a unique action-puzzle game about trying to maneuver a spinning stick through courses that seem far too narrow for such things.

A launch title for the GBA in Japan, Australia and Europe, it was never the prettiest of games, and it’s fair to say it doesn’t benefit from being blown up to the size of a Switch OLED screen. Especially those intro screens that look like they were drawn in MS Paint. However, what matters here is the genius of the core idea, that survives the last 22 years intact.

Mysteriously, the game wasn’t released in the United States until 2016 when it appeared on the Wii U’s Virtual Console, meaning there’s a pretty good chance you missed out on this one, and that’s something you’d do well to put right. And perhaps if enough people get excited about moving that slowly turning stick down those tight corridors, we might get to see releases for both its sequels outside of Japan for the very first time.

Yeah, it looks like crap, but trust me, give it a go.