Medal of Honor : Underground

Medal of Honor: Underground for Game Boy Advance is a World War II first-person shooter released in 2002. Developed by Rebellion Developments, it adapts the earlier PlayStation Medal of Honor: Underground for Nintendo’s handheld while reshaping the experience around the Game Boy Advance. The North American cartridge was published by Destination Software, an authorised Electronic Arts distributor. It is the portable series debut for a game that originally followed the first Medal of Honor, putting French Resistance fighter Manon Batiste at the centre of its campaign rather than the original game’s Jimmy Patterson.

The action begins in occupied Europe, with Manon working alongside the Resistance before the campaign carries her into service for the OSS. Missions draw on a range of wartime locations, including Paris, Casablanca, Italy, and Germany, and frame the fighting around specific assignments instead of a simple run from one firefight to the next. The game’s objectives can require recovering documents, opening routes, planting explosives, helping allies, or reaching a designated point. Briefings establish the immediate task, while the pause screen keeps a checklist of current objectives and records the enemies defeated during the level.

Rebellion presents the adventure from a first-person viewpoint in fully three-dimensional corridors, streets, and other enclosed combat spaces. The directional pad moves Manon forward and backward and turns her left or right; the shoulder buttons let her strafe. The A button fires, with a held press allowing continuous submachine-gun fire, while Select cycles through weapons. Pistols, rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, grenades, and other picked-up arms give missions different rhythms. Ammunition matters, reloading takes time, and the compass doubles as a damage indicator, showing the direction of incoming fire as well as remaining health.

Although fighting is central, Medal of Honor: Underground GBA also asks players to use stealth and situational awareness. Some missions include Buddy Mode, in which allied characters need to survive long enough to perform an important task. Disguise sequences provide another alternative to open combat: Manon can show credentials and, when guards grow suspicious, use a camera as part of the deception. The campaign is divided into eight missions made up of multiple sections, with three selectable difficulty settings. Completing a level awards a performance rating based on objectives, enemy eliminations, and health, and passwords allow progress to be resumed or previously finished missions to be replayed after the system is switched off.

The Game Boy Advance version is an adaptation rather than a direct technical duplicate of the PlayStation game. It removes the original’s video clips and free vertical aiming, instead using an automatic targeting cursor when the crosshair passes over an enemy. Pre-mission photographs, German guard voices, and a symphonic score preserve some of the presentation despite the smaller format. It also adds a dedicated link-cable multiplayer option: two players can choose from available arenas for head-to-head matches, with the first player to score ten hits winning. That combination of a substantial single-player mission structure and local competitive play made Underground an early attempt to bring Medal of Honor’s Resistance-focused World War II action to the Game Boy Advance.