The Sims 2 (GBA)

The Sims 2 for Nintendo Game Boy Advance takes place in Strangetown, and shares a similar GUI and gameplay to its predecessors (The Sims Bustin' Out and The Urbz: Sims in the City). In it, players create Sims to star in a TV series called 'Strangetown'. The player's Sim then stars in 12 episodes of the series. In between episodes, the Sim plays mini games and socializes with other Sims.
==Story==
Daddy Bigbucks has hired the player's sim to work as an actor in his new Reality TV Show: Strangetown. However, there's a catch: nobody except for the player knows that they're being recorded. The whole game is built off of this premise.
After being hired, the player Sim leaves their house to go meet the town. The first Sim they meet is Dusty Hogg, who they have a friendly conversation with. Dusty Hogg then goes to the pawn shop to get some bike supplies. The player is then instructed to go to there too to get some furniture for their home.
At this point, the player can talk to NPCs around town and get a few character introductions, but once they've entered the pawn shop, they have a bladder urgency and have to go back home to go use the toilet. When the player reaches the toilet, they find Burple using the toilet and refusing to get off. The player has to intimidate Burple off the toilet. Burple leaves the toilet covered in a disgusting, glowing green ooze that the player has to clean off.
Once the player has successfully uses the toilet, they get a call from Dusty Hogg to meet him in the local saloon. As it turns out, Dusty was hosting a surprise welcoming party for them. There, the player meets Tank Grunt and, if they hadn't already, Mayor Honest Jackson and Ara Fusilli. Then, the episode ends.
After the introduction episode, the episodes following have a variety of disconnected plots, such as: shrinking down with Tank Grunt and fighting a horde of ladybugs, ruining the plans of Kayleigh Wintercrest's many suitors, and stopping a giant asteroid from hitting the planet. Daddy Bigbucks often, but not always, claims to have manipulated things around town to set up these situations. Daddy Bigbucks claims to be responsible for putting Strangetown into the situations that happen in the episodes.
In the final episode, only unlocked after beating all other episodes, Daddy Bigbucks decides he wants to change up the Strangetown formula. So, he asks the player to spray Optimum Alfred with a powered-up super drencher they got from Emperor Xizzle to make Alfred evil. So, the player does, and Alfred explodes. The player then collects all the pieces of Alfred and convinces Tristan Legend to rebuild him.
After Alfred is rebuilt, he reveals to everyone in town that they have all been in a television show the whole time and that the player had known all along. Then, Jimmy "The" Neck beats the player up and throws them in jail. At this point, the player has two choices: to give up being Daddy Bigbucks' pawn and end the show or to convince everyone that Alfred was lying and throw Alfred out of town. 
This leads to two alternative endings. If the player decides to end the show, by destroying all of the cameras in town, Daddy Bigbucks is confronted by Emperor Xizzle and is thrown out of town. If the player decides to keep up the charade, by convincing three people that Alfred was lying and paying Alfred to get out of town, the ending shows Daddy Bigbucks and an unnamed green alien (likely Emperor Xizzle or Burple) relaxing on a superyacht.
==List of Episodes==
Episode 	Description 	Season 	Difficulty
It All Begins 	The dawn of a new season. Maryland Summers shows the new star around the set. (unused description) 	Season 1 	1 star
Buried By the Mob 	Mobster Frankie Fusilli has a favor to ask of just about everyone in town. Where do your loyalties lie? 	Season 1 	1 star
What Digs Beneath 	Something strange is lurking under the arid sands of Strangetown. Is it a friend... or a foe? 	Season 1 	1 star
Aliens Arrived 	The shrewd Emperor Xizzle launches a full scale invasion... with a twist: you may not be able to find his army. Be careful! 	Season 1 (Purchased)	4 stars
Blackout! 	A suspicious power failure at the Nuclear Plant raises questions of sabotage. Is the guilty party one of your friends? Or are greater forces at work? 	Season 2 	2 stars
A Brand New Scent 	Kayliegh Wintercrest's sweet new perfume has surprising effects on the single men of Strangetown. 	Season 2 	2 stars
The New Cola 	A delicious new cola with a secret formula has an unexpected effect on your Sim. 	Season 2 	3 stars
There Was This Mummy 	When things start disappearing in Strangetown, your Sim vows to unravel the cause. 	Season 2 (Purchased)	4 stars
Triassic Trouble 	Oops! Honest Jackson has misplaced a dinosaur. Or, rather, its bones. Your Sim can help him recover the pieces. 	Season 3 	3 stars
The Doomed Earth 	An errant asteroid hurtles towards Earth, much to Emperor Xizzle's delight. Stop this natural accident before it's too late! 	Season 3 	4 stars
It All Came to an End 	In a scheme for higher ratings Daddy Bigbucks decides a tragedy should befall Strangetown in this season ending cliffhanger! 	Season 3 	5 stars
A Very Special Reunion	Five years after the final episode, it's time to cash-in on Strangetown's cult status. Help Kent Hackett find the best loved stars and most reviled villains for one last action-packed adventure!	Season 3 (Unlocked) 	5 stars
The first episode, It All Begins automatically starts after a player makes their Sim and chooses their aspiration. After completing this episode, the next episode, Buried by the Mob is unlocked. And after this episode is complete, all episodes except for purchasable episodes, unlockable episodes, and It All Came to an End are unlocked. The latter episode is unlocked after all other episodes, except for A Very Special Reunion is unlocked.
A Very Special Reunion is unlocked by either connecting one’s GBA with a copy of The Sims 2 with another GBA with a copy of The Sims 2. Alternatively, the player can collect 100 alien space ship parts and sell them all at once.
==Gameplay==
The core gameplay of The Sims 2 for GBA revolves around the episodes. Episodes contain a distinct plot with a set of goals (called plotpoints) that need to be completed in a certain order to be completed. The locations of all NPCs, sale price of recyclables, and much more are determined by the current episode. There is no 'freeplay' mode either, so if the player is running around Strangetown, they have to be in an episode.
An important part of the episodes is getting good ratings on said episodes. There are 100 'ratings' points available to get on episodes, which can be used to buy more episodes, more social moves, house decor, or a motorbike. 25 points are obtained by just finishing an episode, but more points can be obtained by completing an errand (delivering an object from one sim to another), finding and meeting the episode's hidden want (an extra task that is not always explicitly shown to the player), or by completing conversations of the player's aspiration type (5 points for each conversation, for a maximum of 25 points). At the end of the episode, the Goth family is shown rating the episode using the above criteria.
There are three aspirations: Friendly, Intimidation, and Romance. The only thing that changes between aspirations is the conversation type that needs to be completed to earn the aspiration ratings point. Aspiration can be changed at a whim between episodes.
The gameplay within each episode is similar to the gameplay from The Urbz: Sims in the City (handheld) and The Sims Bustin' Out (handheld), but it has many differences that make it distinct from its predecessors.
Instead of having multiple motives, the player only has one bar they need to keep track of, their Performance Bar. The Performance Bar is reduced by many things, namely: a motive being low, failing a social move in a conversation, and being attacked by an alien or ladybug. The Performance Bar can only be restored by doing need-fulfilling actions (sleeping, eating, looking at decorations) or successfully finishing a conversation. 
If a player's Performance Bar empties, a variety of things can happen to a player depending on why it emptied. If the bar empties by failing a conversation, the player will be brought back to Daddy Bigbucks' lair and lectured. If the bar empties by failing to meet a food or drink need, Sims will wake up in the medical center. If the bar empties by failing to meet a bladder need, Sims will end up in the jail behind the city hall.
Additionally, there exists no other bars for any other needs, both visibly and invisibly. This means that a player will only be able to fail one motive at a time, but this also means that the player cannot refill all their needs all at once. This can be annoying, as a player can do a task that fills up a need (such as sleeping or eating) when they don't have an associated urgency, soon get an urgency to fill that need, and immediately have to do that task again just to fill that urgency.
The player can choose to do any level of job that they have unlocked, no matter if they have been promoted past it or not. Jobs are also available 23 hours a day (all jobs are unavailable at 12am) and time does not pass while doing a job. The game has seven jobs, but only five jobs are available all the time. Two jobs, King Chug Chug and Car Commercial are only available through 'commercial breaks' in episodes.
The method of socialization is also very different. Instead of picking a topic or piece of dialogue and hearing a response, players are put into more of a conversation battle. The player must choose a social move and the NPC they're talking to will either accept or reject the social move. Whether or not a move succeeds or not is up to chance. Different social moves have different probabilities of working and different sims are more or less receptive to certain conversation types, but, ultimately, whether or not a player's social moves work or not depends on random chance. Players can do things to increase the odds, such as building up associated the conversation type's associated skill or giving the Sim a gift (only specific items will change a Sim's mood). Also, time does not pass during social games.
Similar to The Sims 2 for Nintendo DS, secrets also exist in The Sims 2 for GBA, although each Sim required maxing out a different relationship bar instead of just reaching max relationship. A list of how to unlock each secret can be seen on this page.
All methods of skill-building has been removed from the game. Instead, the player has to buy skill books from a shopkeeper out on the boat in the wastelands. There are also only 5 skills with 6 levels each (0-5 points). The five skills are: Confidence, Mechanical, Strength, Personality, Hotness, and Intellect. Skills are used in the conversation minigames and for job promotions. 
The player does not move houses, but, using points they got from ratings, they can redecorate their current house in multiple styles based off of the aspirations in the game.
Unique to The Sims 2 for GBA, after completing the episode Buried by the Mob, the player can quickly switch between being empty-handed, holding a water gun, and holding a shovel. The latter two items serve no purpose outside of being used for specific plot points. 
The player also receives a mobile phone. During specific plot points, various NPCs may call the player. Regularly, the mobile phone can be used to call NPCs and get dialogue from them. This dialogue is the same dialogue a player would get from talking to them casually, and they will only say it if they are not involved in the main plot of the episode at all. The player can also get random calls from Mayor Honest Jackson, Mamma Hogg, and NPCs that the player has 1 or more intimidation with. All random calls are variations of ones that existed in The Urbz: Sims in the City.
==The Cast==
Strangetown has a number of residents (called the "Cast") whom at the beginning of the game are not aware of the fact that the area that they live in is part of a TV series and that they are being filmed. Like in previous handheld console games, there are a number of characters returning from its predecessor games The Sims Bustin' Out and The Urbz: Sims in the City. Some also did not appear in any of these games but have an interesting background.
 
*Emperor Xizzle 
*Burple 
*Ara Fusilli
*Auda Sherif
*Bigfoot
*Frankie Fusilli 
*Honest Jackson
*Jebediah S. Jerky
*Jimmy "The" Neck
*Kayleigh Wintercrest
*Kent Hackett 
*Mamma Hogg
*Lord Mole
*Mummy 
*Optimum Alfred
*Penelope Redd
*Sancho Paco Panza
*Tristan Legend
*Yeti 
===Returning characters ===
 
*Dusty Hogg - A biker introduced in The Sims: Bustin' Out and reoccurring in The Urbz: Sims in the City.
* Giuseppi Mezzoalto - A burglar in The Sims: Bustin' Out whom the player arrests and is reformed by the time he reappears The Urbz: Sims in the City.
*Luthor L. Bigbucks - The leader of the Richies in The Urbz: Sims in the City.
*Daddy Bigbucks - A character introduced in The Sims: Bustin' Out and the primary villain in The Urbz: Sims in the City.
*Misty Waters - She was introduced as SimValley's sole lifeguard in The Sims: Bustin' Out and reoccurred as a fitness guru, manager of the local gym, and Richie in The Urbz: Sims in the City.
*Ava Cadavra - previously served as the cashier for Phoebe Twiddle's store in The Urbz: Sims in the City. She used to be in a band called The Germinators with Vera Vex from The Sims Bustin' Out.
*Pepper Pete - First mentioned in The Urbz: Sims in the City as the long lost brother of Olde Salty. He disappeared in sea after being abducted by aliens while they were fishing.
* Tank Grunt - A character in the The Sims 2 for PC who happened to live in the neighborhood of Strangetown.
*Johnny Smith - A character from The Sims 2 PC who lives in the neighborhood of Strangetown. He appears a store clerk and cannot be interacted with.
*The Goth family - A scene is shown of them gathering in front of the television when the show is just about to start and ends. They are also characters from The Sims 2 for PC, except that they come from Pleasantview. Apparently Bella has been found. But an easter egg to this is that a Bella Squared painting from the PC version can be seen on the right side, and Alexander looks like a teen.
==Trivia==
*The Sims 2 for GBA was planned on having many more episodes than it ended up having. Early press releases about the game mention that originally twenty episodes were planned. The code shows many remanents of episodes that were scrapped.
*The television show featured in The Sims 2 for GBA was originally named "Once Upon a Time in Strangetown" rather than just "Strangetown."
==See also==
*Game guide:The Sims 2 (GBA) walkthrough
==Gallery==
The Goths.jpg|Bella is watching the show as well
File:Gameboy advance photo1.jpg
File:Gameboy advance photo2.jpg|Create a Sim
File:Gameboy advance photo3.jpg
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