Game Boy Advance

The indigo Game Boy Advance.

Game Boy Advance is a handheld video game console created by Nintendo and released in Japan, the USA, and Europe in 2001. It was extremely popular, out-selling Nintendo's estimate and becoming the fastest-selling video game console (handheld or otherwise) in both the US and Europe at the time. On 2003-02-14, a clam shell model called the Game Boy Advance SP was created. The initial version lacked a backlight, but a later 2005 model added one. On 2005-09-13, a smaller stripped-down version was released called the Game Boy Micro which lacked backward compatibility.

The processor is a system-on-a-chip called the CPU AGB which consists of a 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI and a Sharp SM83 for backward compatibility with the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. It's display resolution is 240 × 160 pixels.

The Game Boy Advance, and several of its variants, are included in the Controller Font.

Personal

I remember seeing the GBA at a friend's party in the early 2000s. One of the more antisocial party goers was playing it rather than talking to people. I remember thinking it looked pretty cool, and I wouldn't mind having one, but, by that point in my life, I wasn't really following new video game releases, so I didn't have much of a reason to buy one. After dabbling in a fair amount of the console's library and finding it lacking, I'm glad I didn't. I have never played a Game Boy Advance in real life, but I have played several games using emulators.

I do not own, nor have ever owned, a Game Boy Advance.

Games

See all Game Boy Advance Games.

These are the Game Boy Advance games that are important to me:

Review

Good

In only 10 years time, Nintendo made hardware comparable to the SNES that fits in the palm of your hand. Very impressive.
The system had a large catalog of games, and several really impressive ones.
Backward compatibility with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games was icing on the cake.
There were several peripherals including link cables for multi-player games, compatibility with some GameCube games, wireless communication, and several others.
The system was redesigned twice, and each time, engineering issues were addressed and improved upon.
There were dozens of different colors to choose from.

Bad

The original model didn't have a very good display, and it was often too dark to see comfortably. Luckily, Nintendo fixed this by adding a back-light to the later model.
Like with most platforms, the library has a lot of crap. Also, when you look at a list of the best games for the platform, you'll notice that a fair amount of them are merely remakes or ports of existing games with only minor upgrades.