Game Boy Advance

Nintendo's Game Boy franchise has been the most successful console ever, outliving every single one of its systems from the original NES to the Nintendo 64. The Game Boy has sold over 100 million units since its introduction in 1989 and has defeated all competing handhelds from Sega's color Game Gear to the Neo Geo Pocket Color. However, an old system cannot last forever, so Nintendo has pushed for a large upgrade in the form of the Game Boy Advance. The GBA is a 32-bit system with an ARM processor, which blows the doors off the old 8-bit Z80 used in the original Game Boy. The system is available in four colors: Glacier (transparent blue), Indigo (solid purple), Fuchsia (transparent pink) and Arctic (solid white and gray). The Game Boy Advance is a small system, much smaller than it seems to be in photos. It is roughly the same size as a Game Boy Color, except that it is held differently. The screen is positioned between the player's hands with the control buttons on the left and right sides, similar to the Sega Game Gear and SNK Neo-Geo Pocket Color. It is very lightweight and feels more delicate than the Gameboy Color. A new set of batteries lasts about seven hours on the GBA; rechargeable packs and AC adapters are available as well. An Extension port allows hook ups to power sources or other GBA's for multiplayer games.

The screen by Sharp Electronics is of excellent image quality and color clarity, and it is wider than the old Game Boy's square-shaped screen. Despite the good image quality, it has a major flaw that has become the prime complaint about the GBA: it is too dark. Unless optimal lighting is available, managing to see the action on the screen is difficult. Adding to the lighting problem is glare: the plastic cover on the screen is highly reflective and any bright light will produce a heavy amount of glare, making it difficult to see. Considering these two contrasting problems, you cannot have too little or too much light for the GBA. The best solution to the problem is to invest in a light accessory such as Pelican's Light Shield Advance. Nintendo could have avoided the problem by having a backlight installed inside the system, but decided not to because it would drain the batteries much faster, would make the system more expensive and would be a major hassle to repair. However, considering that the GBA is a portable system subject to moving to many different locations of different lighting qualities, I do not think Nintendo chose wisely by not including a backlight inside the system.

Graphically, the games are in an entirely different universe than the Game Boy Color. The GBA has lush, vibrant colors comparable to the Super Nintendo's graphics, since it can display 511 simultaneous colors as opposed to the Game Boy Color's 56 simultaneous colors. While the GBA is not designed to crunch 3D polygonal graphics, its optimized 2D display is ideal for a portable game system. Those who held off buying a Game Boy Color because of the Advance will be pleased with the system's excellent 2D graphics.

The GBA is fully backwards compatible with old Game Boy games. Since the old games are much larger than the tiny GBA game-paks, they will stick out over the top of the system. To solve the screen ratio difference problem, players may choose two options for old games: stretched wide-screen mode or the original square-shaped view with black matte bars on the left and right sides of the screen. Different pseudo-color combinations are available via a sequence of button presses as the unit powers up. The GBA game-paks are literally half the size of the original Game Boy's, in a rectangle shape. Even more impressive is that they hold even more game data in half of the space. I do wish, however, that Nintendo would have continued to include plastic carrying cases in each game's package.

The sound quality from the GBA is vastly superior to the original Game Boy, with fully recorded samples and voices. Games such as Super Mario Advance and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon demonstrate the GBA's superior audio capabilities with great music and voices. The GBA has one mono speaker built in, but stereo sound can be utilized via the headphones jack. Although the sound quality is much better than any portable system, it only outputs sound in 8-bit, despite the fact that the system can process sound at 16-bit. The 8-bit bottleneck prevents the GBA from achieving the highest audio quality possible, meaning that the sounds have a small amount of muffled fuzziness to them.

Despite its problems with screen darkness, light glare and bottlenecked sound quality, it is hard not to get excited about the future of the GBA. It is a powerful little system that will provide outstanding games for many years and is the only portable system you will ever need for a long time. If you are looking for a new portable system, you should definitely choose the GBA over the Game Boy Color. If you already own a GBC, you may want to try out some of the games before deciding whether or not to buy one. Game Boy Advance demo units are available for play at most stores, so go try one out and see if it is the right system for you.