thanks for the suggestions all, next month i'll be going on a 17 hour bus trip (17 hours each way to and from) so i'll be picking up some GBA games for my trip hopefully cheap.
I have:
-Tetris DX (GBC) - Great game
-Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts - fun game
-Metal Slug Adance - decent, not as good as i hoped. you can play awhile if you wanna collect everything.
-Gradius Galaxies - fun game
-Zelda (NES) - fun game
-Zelda 2 (nes) - CRAP
Nobody mentioned Mario vs Donkey Kong yet, it looks like good times.