My Game Boy Advance is about to reject its first set of batteries. I know their time is up because the power LED has turned red (it's green when your batteries are fine.) What a great feature! Now if only they'd make consoles that you can turn on with the controller, instead of a button on the box.
GBA Mini-Review: It's great. The bigger screen size is worth everything; don't let anybody say it's not. Super Mario Advance (Nintendo's Big Launch Title, damn them) makes a cute point by having the startup movie begin in the GBC screen ratio, and then slowly reveal the entire screen. It's like breathing fresh mountain air when that two-and-three-eighths inch screen fills with happy colored pixels of clouds, rutabagas and grunting plumbers. Super Mario Advance was the first game I booted up in the GBA and it felt good.
Lot of buzz about the shoulder buttons being too small and the screen being too dark. Picky shits say this, not I. Every Game Boy unit has had visibility problems, and every Game Boy iteration has gotten better. Until Nintendo decides to build in a backlight, it's just what's for dinner, sonny. I have massive, meaty paws and I don't mind the shoulder buttons one bit. Although I must confess that I don't bother placing my index fingertips on them; I use the inside middle knuckle. Compared to any other handheld, it's wonderfully comfortable. You will enjoy holding this ugly-colored box (more colors! more colors!) for hours.
But like all new game systems, the launch titles lineup was lame. Too many ports and not enough showcase games. I'm not a major Castlevania- or Tony Hawk- head, and those were the two biggest marquee titles. I stuck with Super Mario and ChuChu Rocket, and I'm eagerly awaiting more (I'm first in line for Sonic Advance and Mario Kart Circuit Racer, baby.) Over-eagerly. Can you believe that Nintendo didn't push a Pokemon game for launch? Man, that's balls. Pokemon is almost singularly responsible for the Game Boy family's huge success over the past five years. Without Pokemon, there may never have been a Game Boy Advance. (Or more likely, we would have gotten one, but it would've been like the Sega CDX: the console addendum nobody wanted.)
