The Game Boy Advance SP

Now that I have written well over a dozen GBA game reviews, I suppose it's about time I review the player itself. Since the release of the new Gameboy DS, I am hoping that the price of the GameBoy Advance player and games will drop some more. You can get the original GBA at Wal-Mart for $39.95, last time I checked.

The GBA SP represents the natural evolution of the Game Boy series. It started out with a monochrome machine, then a color one was soon developed. After an extended period, the original GBA was introduced. It featured some cool games, but many people complained about the lack of a backlight and how quickly it ate batteries. With the GBA SP, Nintendo fixed most of the major problems that came from the original GBA.

There are two primary differences between the first GBA and the SP model. First, the SP now features a rechargeable lithium ion battery, like what you would find in a cell phone. This means no more having to buy large packs of AA batteries. It also includes an AC charger so you can plug it in when the battery gets low. Trust me, this added feature will save you a lot of money in the long run. Second, the SP model has a backlit screen, meaning that you can play this thing in the dark and still see what is going on. With the original GBA, you had to be in a well-lit area just to see the screen, so this made it useless when on road trips at night. Playing with the light on will run down your battery twice as fast, but you can always turn the light off by hitting a button.

The GBA SP is a little bit bigger than the size of a pack of 3M Post-It notes and twice as thick. It resembles a miniature laptop and has a flip-top screen. I really like that this thing folds in on itself because it will help to protect the screen when you aren't playing it. It features a cross-shaped directional pad just like what all the other previous models had, plus four buttons. You still have an A and a B button, but there is also an L and R button located in the upper corners. At the bottom of the player are the Select and Start buttons.

I am a pretty big guy (6'2", well over 200 pounds) and have fairly big hands, so this GBA SP feels a little small when I'm playing it. The L and R buttons are easy to get to and the directional pad and A and B buttons are also easily accessible. The Start and Select buttons seem to be located a little far down on the face of the player and the backlighting button is sort of flush with the casing. The volume control is a slide rather than a wheel, and I would much rather have preferred a labeled wheel.

For some reason, this model does not come with a headphone jack, but you can buy a pair with the necessary adapter for about ten bucks. Considering the size of this unit, I think Nintendo could easily have squeezed one in their somewhere, but apparently they saw a chance to make a few extra bucks off their customers. I think most parents would happily spend the money to not have to hear GBA game music on long road trips. The little built-in speaker on this unit does adequately reproduce the sound in games, but I know it would be much better through a pair of headphones.

What has made the Game Boy series so popular all these years is that every new model is backwards compatible with the older models. With the new GBA SP, you can play every single GB game that came before it, thus giving this thing an impressive library of titles. After getting my GBA SP, I was shocked at how much the original GB games still sell for on Ebay. Some of these video games are over ten years old, yet they still sell for $10-20 used! The new GBA SP games sell for $10-35 new, depending on how old they are and what you get. Strategy and Role Playing Games tend to hold their value longer than arcade or sports titles.

There is an impressive library of games available for the GBA SP. Although you can't buy the original GB and GB Color games in stores, you can still find a slew of them in used video game outlets and online like on Ebay or Amazon. I still think that for what you get, the GBA games are still a little overpriced. These games are all a little better than the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis in quality and depth, and I think a $15-25 price tag would be appropriate for most titles. Nintendo has also re-released several of the classic NES games, such as Zelda, Metroid, or Super Mario Brothers, and they charge $19.99 apiece of them. To me, this is a ripoff when I know they could fit all of those games onto a single GBA cartridge.

Beside the headphone issue, the only other real complaint I have about this system is the lack of save options in most games. Some of the titles, like role playing games where you can play for hours upon hours, have battery backups that will store your information. Most other games just give you passcodes after each level, meaning that when you will have to write them down or else play through those same levels again the next time. At least you don't have to buy any memory cards for the GBA, like you would a console system. I'm waiting for somebody to come out with some stickers to put on the back of the games so I can write the passcodes directly on them.

For $79.99, the GBA SP is still a pricey system and you won't find many games for less than $10 unless you find a good deal online. However, it offers a great pocket-sized diversion for those long waits in doctor's offices or for road trips.