Game Boy Advance Nintendo Classics Adds Kururin Paradise, Metal Slug Advance, and Monster Farm Advance in Japan

Nintendo added three Game Boy Advance titles to the Game Boy Advance Nintendo Classics catalog inside the Japan Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack on Wednesday, October 14, with no advance notice. The three are Kururin Paradise (2002, Nintendo / Eighting), Metal Slug Advance (2004, SNK), and Monster Farm Advance (2001, Koei Tecmo Games). All three go out as part of the Expansion Pack tier, not the base Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

Two of the three are first-time re-releases. Kururin Paradise had previously appeared on the Wii U Virtual Console. Metal Slug Advance and Monster Farm Advance have never been officially re-released on any platform. Metal Slug Advance has been a long-running fixture of the Japanese retro collector market, with Japanese used listings trading at tens of thousands of yen for a loose cartridge, according to Automaton‘s coverage of today’s drop. Monster Farm Advance shipped in Japan first, with the English-localized Monster Rancher Advance arriving in North America on November 29, 2001, eight days before the Japanese release on December 7, 2001; both versions have stayed out of print on cartridge and un-reissued digitally until today.

Kururin Paradise is a 2002 action-puzzle sequel to Kuru Kuru Kururin in which the player steers a slowly rotating helicopter stick through obstacle courses. The new release adds a “Mini Game Paradise” mode with 16 mini-games themed around the rotating-stick concept, alongside the series-standard Adventure, Practice, and Challenge modes. The first Kuru Kuru Kururin was released in Europe in English in 2001; Kururin Paradise itself never left Japan.

Metal Slug Advance is a 2004 GBA side-scrolling run-and-gun from SNK, set on a training island for the Peregrine Falcons special forces squad. The GBA port includes the series’ signature hand-animated sprite work, plus “Meta-Slug Cards” that change weapon and character behavior when specific conditions are met. SNK shipped English builds in North America on November 30, 2004, and in Europe on December 17, 2004, alongside the Japan launch.

Monster Farm Advance is a 2001 monster-raising sim from Koei Tecmo Games (then Tecmo), set on Eagejima, an island where monsters are summoned by typing words into stone tablets. The monster that appears depends on the word entered, replicating the CD-reading gimmick of the Monster Rancher PlayStation series in text form. The Western GBA release was published as Monster Rancher Advance in late 2001 by Tecmo, the same parent studio.

Can you play it in English?

These three are added to the Japan Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack catalog on October 14, with Nintendo Japan‘s announcement naming only the Japanese service. Nintendo has not, as of this run, posted a Western counterpart, so Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe subscribers will need to wait. The Switch is region-free for cartridges and downloads, so Western players can already access the Japanese NSO Expansion Pack library by signing in to a Japanese Nintendo account and subscribing through the Japanese eShop. We track Japan-only NSO additions and other Asia-first releases on the Pixel Herald Coming West tracker.

Metal Slug Advance and Monster Rancher Advance both shipped with English text on the original GBA cartridges, so a Western NSO release, if Nintendo schedules one, would carry the English text. Kururin Paradise is the only one of the three that was a Japan-only GBA release; the original cartridge never had English text, so the Japanese NSO version stays Japanese-only regardless of region. For a broader look at where these games sit in the wider Japanese launch calendar, our Release Calendar lists every confirmed Switch release going forward.

Our read: the Metal Slug Advance and Monster Farm Advance re-releases are the real news here. Both have lived in the “you either had the cartridge or you didn’t” category for two decades, and the NSO versions end that for anyone willing to subscribe. Kururin Paradise is a more modest get; it was already on the Wii U Virtual Console, and a new audience for it has always been limited. Three titles, one Expansion Pack drop, zero advance notice: the pattern matches Nintendo’s recent GBA NSO drops, which have tended to cluster around the Switch 2‘s first year and lean on the same “long out-of-print Japanese GBA game” angle. The bigger question for Western players is whether Nintendo mirrors the October 14 drop outside Japan soon, which it has done for prior GBA NSO additions but has not committed to in writing this time.

Correction (October 13, 2026): An earlier version said the English Metal Slug Advance shipped in 2005 and that Monster Farm Advance was Japan-only; SNK's English Metal Slug Advance shipped in 2004, and Monster Farm Advance sold in North America as Monster Rancher Advance.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report