The GBA was great and I won't argue against the idea that it's a SNES2, but it's absolutely flawed and I don't think it holds the a candle to the DS or even the original Playstation in terms of 2D games.
First off, the screen is obviously limiting. That comes with the territory of being a handheld of course, but the smaller screen means that sprites either have to be crushed or the player's view has to be limited.
Second, the sound is awful. Thanks to copyright kerfuffles they couldn't even use a soundchip similar to the SNES's soundchip, so they went for one that is closer to the
NES than anything in terms of capability
. Most game also used the CPU for audio mixing, meaning that the more things were happening on screen that were being calculated, the less audio you could have.
And third, and this one infuriates me personally, the original GBA did not have a backlit screen. To compensate developers made their games a blotch of bright saturated colors. This works as intended in that you can at least see whats going on without a backlight, but with any screen thar is properly-lit will make it burn your eyes.
Some examples:
Here's a comparison of
Donkey Kong Country's GBA port vs. the original:
All blacks become light gray, and all the distinct yellows become the same saturated shade.
These next 2 images are of the Sector 6 area in
Metroid Fusion.
This is supposed to be the
dark area. Adam comnents on how it's too
dark to see anything. The player isn't supposed to be able to see anything outside of a certain radius around Samus, because of how
dark this environment is. Can't you tell how
dark it is?
Anyway, the GBA is great, but not perfect.