VIDEO GAMER X GETS GAMEBOY ADVANCE
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Well, going against my better financial judgment (I really am having money problems currently) I bought a GameBoy Advance and some games for it, primarily Super Mario Bros. Advance, and Castlevania Circle of the Moon. What can I say I'm a hardcore gamer probably willing to go hungry just to get another new game. Finding a GameBoy advance was easy compared to PS2, I had no trouble getting the system and the games I was looking for. It was retailing for $89.99. I got the purple one. I figured the "Arctic" white one would end up getting dirty real easy.

First of all let me just say that hands on, the GameBoy Advance is about exactly the same size as the GameBoy color only it's positioned lengthwize rather than vertically and the viewing screen is more oblong than square, like the GameBoy. This one has 4 action buttons, A, B, L, and R. as well as the plus shaped D pad and the select and start buttons. It takes 2 AA Batteries. This is supposedly a 32 bit system, which is good, considering I think it's the first to accomplish this feat in a handheld. One thing missing is a contrast adjustment button, something that I will touch upon later. The GameBoy Advance carts look like Mini Super Nintendo Games.

As it were, I put in Castlevania Cycle of the Moon and was astonished by the quality of the graphics, they looked along the lines of the Playstation Version, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. However I can't say that I could see or hear the system very well. I'm sorry to say, but the GameBoy Advance speaker is feeble, barely a sparrows breath of sound, yeah you could hear it, but barely. I pressed it up to my ear to listen to the music of the game which wasn't that bad, pretty good actually. As it were the design of the GameBoy Advance is such that your thumb ends up covering the system speaker anyway to press the A and B buttons. The only way to use this is with Headphones, or if you're like me and like to be experimental, plug it into your computer speaks - works great there. Unfortunately, I have yet to encounter an environment conducive to viewing the GameBoy Advance. I swear the screen is not what would or ever could be considered anti-glare. Frequently all i could see was the glare of bright things like windows and lights in the room shimmering off it's immaculate teflon surface. And alas, there was no contrast adjustment button to lighten or darken the image, or for crying out loud no backlight for the TFT (LCD! What TFT do you know has no backlight other than GameBoys. It made it a chore to play Castlevania, a very dark environmental game. SMB Advance was a little better however not too much. The best view I got was in the evening, with no glare from the windows, and just an overhead desk lamp. It looked a whole lot better that way.

One thing I have to say is - boy does this bring back the Super Nintendo Memories, like back when F-Zero, Super Mario All Stars came out and Castlevania IV, still what I consider a classics to this day. I also managed to pick up The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, and indeed it had qualities like Link's Awakening and Link to the Past rolled into one. Those were good times, going to school, hanging out with my friends and saving money from mowing lawns and doing chores to get games for the Super Nintendo. There was always that one kid whose parents were rich and had like EVERY game and we would ride our bikes over to his house to play. I remember when Nintendo was the top dog, before Playstation, and you would get those early issues of Nintendo Power and Electronic Gaming Monthly oogling over the latest and greatest games.

I am going to put in though that GameBoy Advance is nothing new or too innovative in terms of hand held gaming. You know Sega had a COLOR handheld system worthy for it's time years ago, long before GameBoy Color, that looks strikingly similar to the GameBoy Advance, called the GameGear, and later the Sega Nomad, a 16 bit Hand Held that played Genesis cartridges I believe, that was pretty much smashed into the dirt by the popularity of the GameBoy, and for those of you my age who remember a little known system called the Atari Lynx, it was a 16 bit color handheld back in the time shortly after gaming arrived at the 16-bit era. The Lynx sort of fell flat on it's face before it even got started if memory serves.

Honestly, yeah, the GameBoy Advance is pretty cool, and I'm just going to love playing classics from my formative years, but the system is nothing overwhelming or blowing my socks off kind of stuff. I've seen this type of thing before. The graphical power of the system is excellent, the sound capability is good, however the design of the system needs improvement. Do they even playtest these with gamers before they complete production of the hardware? Seriously the lack of backlit TFT is very poor, and the faint speaker is a need for improvement. And in this day and age of cheaper TFT's why couldn't they make the screen larger, at least 3.5 to 4.5 inches. That would have been awesome and help probably with the viewing difficulties. The size of the face of the unit appears capable of supporting a TFT of that width/height. The D-Pad could have been made a little larger and more ergonomic, it's just the same old plain plus design that has been around since the NES back in 1985.

Not that I'm pointing out the obvious, but the GameBoy Advance is the perfect way for Nintendo to make substantial profits on games that people already have or have gone the way of the dinosaur on a prior system. This grants them the capability to flood the handheld's game lineup with games that are either no different than their originals or only slightly modified. There are a strong set of classic legendary games in Nintendo's archive that appeared during the Super Nintendo era and I'm already noticing these reappearing for GameBoy Advance. Now don't get me wrong, I love playing those classics again, it brings back the feeling, however getting spiked twice in the wallet for a game I already own, i.e. F-Zero, Street Fighter II Turbo, etc. is not something I relish. What needs to happen is that a company, (Interact maybe?) needs to develop some kind of interface cartridge using CompactFlash technology or something similar that fits into the GameBoy Advance Game Pak slot and allows you to download ROMs of SNES games onto the cart and play them on the go on the Advance. That would be an awesome idea and save gamers a lot of wasted money. However I'm sure Nintendo would sue them somehow, considering all the profits that would be lost. Don't worry, there's a boatload of new stuff coming in tandem with the old if retrogaming isn't your thing.

No matter what this Handheld will be insanely popular, considering it's pretty much the only kid on the block these days. Nintendo has a monopoly on the Handheld market, it's a no brainer that it will be successful. There's really nothing stopping me from telling you to go buy this, or not recommend it. There's really nothing to compare it to or say, "wait until such and such comes out" I've pointed out the system's advantages and it's drawbacks in this article, reviewing the latest technology in gaming. I hope it identifies for you what GameBoy Advance is all about before you try it for yourself.