Golden Sun: The Lost Age is the second half of the Golden Sun story, developed by Camelot Software Planning and published by Nintendo in 2002. This time you play Felix, who travels with Jenna, Sheba and Kraden to light the Elemental Lighthouses that are still dark, while Isaac’s party from the first game follows his trail. A ship opens up a wide sea, new Psynergy brings new kinds of puzzles, and there are many more Djinn to find. If you own the game, Nagori lets you play it on iPhone and iPad.
What you need
- An iPhone or iPad with iOS 17.6 or later.
- Nagori from the App Store. Your first game is free.
- The game file of your copy of The Lost Age in
.gbaformat, or a.zipor.rarcontaining it.
No BIOS file is needed.
How to play Golden Sun: The Lost Age on iPhone
- Install Nagori from the App Store.
- Put your Lost Age
.gbafile in the Files app, in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone. - Open Nagori, tap + and select the file. A
.zipor.rarworks too: Nagori unpacks it for you. - Find The Lost Age on the GBA shelf and press Play.
Controls
The Lost Age is a turn-based RPG played through menus, so the Standard touch layout covers the whole game: A talks, searches and confirms, B cancels, and every battle command comes from a menu.
Long sea crossings and dungeon walks keep your thumb on the D-pad for minutes at a time. On iPhone the 3:2 picture leaves black bars at the sides, so open Edit Layout in the pause menu and drag the D-pad and buttons into those bars, where they stop covering the map.
With a controller, the touch controls disappear and the left stick works as the D-pad.
Bringing your party from Golden Sun
The Lost Age can take your party’s progress from a finished Golden Sun save, over a link cable or with a password. Nagori has no link support, so only the password works:
- In Golden Sun, finish the game and save the clear data after the ending.
- Have Golden Sun show you the password. The longest one, the Gold password, carries the most.
- Start a new game of The Lost Age and enter the password there.
Take a screenshot of the password so you can read it back while you type. Nagori can’t import saves from other emulators, so you need a cleared Golden Sun save made in Nagori, or a password you noted before.
You don’t need a transfer to play. Without one, Isaac’s party still joins you later, just without the levels, Djinn and items you earned in the first game.
Fast Forward at sea
Much of The Lost Age is spent sailing between islands, with random battles on the way. Fast Forward runs the game at twice the speed, which shortens the crossings, conversations and Summon animations, and makes grinding levels or going back for a missed Djinni quicker. Bind it to a controller button, or add the ×2 button to the touch screen in My Layout.
Saves
Like the first game, The Lost Age saves from its own menu rather than at save points, and Nagori keeps that in-game save automatically. Nagori adds:
- Continue. Leave the app mid-voyage, and Continue in the game menu puts you back on the same spot.
- Save states. Pause and choose Save before you climb to the top of Jupiter Lighthouse. If the fight there goes badly, Load and change your Djinn before trying again. Nagori keeps your last four saves per game.
- iCloud and backups. Save to iCloud copies your progress to your private iCloud, and Export Saves makes a backup copy.
Best settings
- Picture Smoothing softens the sprites; turn it off for crisp, raw pixels.
- Full Screen stretches the picture. Leave it off to keep the GBA’s 3:2 shape.
- Screen Effects add CRT scanlines, a screen curve or bloom, from Off to Strong.
On iPad you can also play in portrait, with the picture on top and the controls below.
