As you can tell by looking at the developers of these games, third party devs for the most part don't care to make good games for handhelds. Quite honestly, even Sony didn't exactly make a whole lot of good efforts on releasing quality instalments of their franchises on handhelds either...

Ka-pi96 said: Lack of Pokemon makes me

the way i felt in the 95+ consoles without a final fantasy xD

Lol some of those are a joke, other games too old for Meta.
In all honsety though handhelds are crimianlly underrated in the west, many great games that review worse because "Its on handheld and I want to play on big screen".

How was Phantom Hourglass so high?

Because it was an awesome game =P

Well I loved it. But I mean it was early DS days where touch screen was the shit. Its like Wii games that were praised for inivative new controls that when you try to play them now make you want to murder somebody or N64/PS1 3D platformers that are near unplayable by todays standards. Also the graphics, man they were a huge upgrade from the GBA.

Advance Wars is still the best handheld series of all time IMO

Super Circuit is overrated?

Glad to see Fire Emblem Awakening is the highest meta 3ds game ( not including those remakes and etc)

I hope they do make another one, even if it was on the new 3ds.

A wii u game too ( maybe release one before the crossover)

1. GTA Chinatown Wars (93) [PSP/DS] (Sorry, but meh)
2. Mario Kart: Super Circuit (93) [GBA] (I loved it at the time, and put many hours into it, perfecting my best times. It's aged, but I don't object to its presence here.)
3. Advanced Wars (92) [GBA] (Awesome)
4. Fire Emblem Awakening (92) [3DS] (One of the best games in recent years)
5. Metroid Fusion (92) [GBA] (I liked this but I preferred Zero Hour)
6. God of War: Chains of Olympus (91) [PSP](I tried to get into this game twice but couldn't. I'm not sure why but it just wasn't interesting to me.)
7. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (91) [GBA] (One of my favourite castlevanias. A simple and solid metroidvainia)
8. Golden Sun (91) [GBA] (To slow for my tastes)
9. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (91) [3DS] (I was utterly griped by his game)
10. Castlevania Circle of the Moon (91) [GBA] (Good but Aria of sorrow steals the show)
11. Mario Kart DS (91) [DS] (My favourite Mario kart, snaking and all)
12. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (90) [GBA] (One of my fav jrpg's)
13. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (90) [DS] (Finally a worthy sequel)
14. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (90) [DS] (Too many flaws to really enjoy. Spirit Tracks was far better)
15. Advance Wars: Dual Strike (90) [DS] (Advanced wars is just soooo fun!)
16. Super Mario 3D Land (90) [3DS] (Though I was disappointed at first, once I unlocked the secret worlds and the difficulty was at the right level I found this a huge amount of fun.)

Not a bad list. I've played them all and loved most of them.

The top 2 spots make me question reviews again....