Advanced Wars 2 gets an emulated spot on every phone Ive had. Its a little turn-based strategy game, and is perfect for filling in 20 min to 2 hour attention gaps depending on map size.
There's also Fire Emblem, which people seem to regard well, and is a worse turn-based strategy game with, like, plot i guess, and no artillery or soviet parodies.
Donkey Kong for the Game Boy Color. It looks like a simple arcade port at first, but they made a boatload of extra puzzle platformer levels.
Dunno what kind of games you're into but there's at least a dozen JRPGs for the SNES that are great, Star Ocean, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3, Shadowrun, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Evermore, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound. Off the top of my head for other genres, Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid, Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Starfox, Mega Man-X, Earthworm Jim, Demon's Crest, Pocky and Rocky
I would definately prioritizing playing something you've never tried before, as you'll have time to settle in and really get to know it. Some good options that I think have aged well:
NES:
Kirby's Adventure
Zelda 1
GB:
Link's Awakening
Super Mario Land 2 (try the DX version)
GBA:
Advance Wars (any of them)
Metroid Zero Mission
SNES:
A Link to the Past
Super Mario All-Stars (the remastered version of Super Mario 3 is in here)
You might get pretty far through Super Metroid. A plane ride without distractions might be the right frame of mind to do some of the required exploration.
If you like RPGs, there are a gazillion great ones
Don't disregard Sega console stuff. The Genesis had some frantic gameplay and spritework:
Gunstar Heroes
Thunder Force IV
Sonic 3 & Knuckles (best to play the Sonic 3 Complete romhack)
Castlevania - Bloodlines
Just because I doubt anyone is going to recommend PC Engine games (hope you like shmups, I guess):
CD games (need a BIOS file called syscard3.pce):
All one needs is pokemon pinball…. I can still hear it
You should download the GBA Balatro homebrew. It’s seriously addictive: https://github.com/GBALATRO/balatro-gba
Also tactical RPGs are great, like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Advance Wars 1+2, and any of the Fire Emblem GBA games (look for translated roms).
I also especially like old Lucas arts (and similar) adventure games on SCUMMVM.
I haven’t tried it but also there’s apparently a Plex port for Onion OS out there, so if you have a plex server or know someone who shares, you can download stuff to your Miyoo Mini Flip and watch it.
The pokemon trading card game for gameboy is a really fun rpg if you're into the original 151 pokemon.
[SNES] Tactics Ogre, Front Mission, Kyūyaku Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei I & II, Wizardry I-II-III: Story of Llylgamyn,
They all have translations.
[NES] Mother, Castlevania I-III, Final Fantasy I-III, Dragon Quest I-III, Ninja Gaiden I-3, Puzznic, Fire & Ice, Metroid
Theres loads of popular games. Translations are available for some of these too.
I have a tradition of trying to beat a Snes game on a flight. So here are my favorites based on that specific criteria:
I think the games people usually recommend are great, but it sounds like you've played a lot of the usual stuff, so:
NES: Fire 'n Ice (puzzle game), Conquest Of The Crystal Palace (hard platformer with sword), The Adventures of Lolo 3 (action puzzle; they're all good but I think 3 is the best intro), Super Mario Bros Flow (ROM hack, joyous)
SNES: Lufia II (whole RPG with great combat mechanics), EVO The Search For Eden (RPG platformer about evolution, weird as shit, grindy, kind of a trip), Demon's Crest (hard as shit platformer with rpg/metroid mechanics), King Arthur's World (RTS), Ultima 6 (open world RPG, completely unlike the SNES RPG canon)
The DOnkey Kong Country series is one of my favorites from the SNES era, always recommend them if you like platforming games. There's also a team in Brazil making a DKC4 that looks RAD as hell, but it isn't out until November.
The best SNES game ever, Wild Guns. Anything else is rexommend has already been posted
Super Mario World 2
Any Pokémon before Crystal
Pokémon Trading Card Game for GB
I'm not exactly sure how the storage and file system works on that device but I'm assuming you load ROMs onto a SD or something. So for example you can torrent a zip file of ROMs for every SNES(and the other consoles listed but I'll just to math for SNES here, but I can't imagine the other are massively different) games is like 2 to 3 GB and unzipped 4.5 to 5.5GB, so assuming you have the version with 64GB storage you could feasible be able to get a ROM of every game for every platform you listed on it. Still good to get recs though as you may get 'choice paralysis' but if you can why not so you have the option if you get bored of whatever recs you get/play
super mario land, super mario land 2, wario land
Fire emblem The Blazing Blade and FE The Sacred Stones are good GBA games
basically every Pokemon romhack is based on the GBA games - FireRed or Emerald
there's a good process now where you just get the base rom (from vimm or wherever) and then patch the rom file on https://www.hackdex.app/ to turn it into the romhack. i just got into playing some of these on my phone recently and the quality is surprising. notable ones are Unbound, Elite Redux, Odyssey, R.O.W.E, Super Mariomon & Celia's Stupid Romhack
otherwise, GBA classics will definitely take up your time: Advance Wars, Golden Sun 1 & 2, Wario Land, Metroid
Lost vikings are good too. 1 can be played on gb but 2 is exclusive to snes
The GBA Metroid games aren't too long, so you could very well finish one (or both) of them (depending on flight length).
Fusion is my favorite Metroid period, but I still have yet to play Dread on switch.
GBA is a great console, imo. The library was excellent and it was late enough to have some more modern game design sensibilities in the titles. Metroidvanias imo are where this really shows up - SCIV had pretty conventional level-based gameplay without the exploration aspect of the later games and only Super Metroid (strong rec btw) really went all in. I have limited nostalgia for the 16 bit generation because most of the games have that same, fairly straightforward, beat-this-level-to-get-to-the-next-one sensibility (also I was a sega guy through and through and the Mega Drive frankly just wasn't as good as the SNES...) Metroid Fusion has already been recommended and I agree it's fantastic. I also love the Castlevania GBA games - Aria of Sorrow, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance. Aria in particular is critically acclaimed, the other two got a mixed reception but personally I don't really see why, they're fun as hell. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was one of my favourite games ever at the time but the hit rates and slow character movement just frustrate me now, which is a shame, because I genuinely had a blast with it back in the day.
Showing my age but the tony hawk GBA games are pretty fun for a handheld.
Punch out!
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru/For Whom the Frog Tolls (GB) Japan-only RPG that has an English fan patch available. Made by the team that later made Link's Awakening - super cool since you can see features that later get used in Link's Awakening.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (SNES/SFC) Japan-only strategy RPG that has an English fan patch available. Probably one of the best in the Fire Emblem franchise.
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