I bought another GBA SP. Now we have a Flame (red) one to go along with my Onyx (black) SP. Add that to my Indigo (blue) GBA model, and now we can play Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles three player.
Although I must point out that I have four link cables so if we should happen to have a friend with a GBA SP, we can go foursies. (Hint: we do!)
I tried playing FF:CC with my non-lighted GBA, but it was just too pathetic. Rhonda was skating through inventory screens on the Onyx SP, while I'm tilting my GBA 360 degrees trying to catch some rays in our minimally lit living room. Earlier this weekend, I actually said "Getting another GBA SP is a good idea. Because not only do we have Crystal Chronicles now, but that new Zelda Four Swords game will be coming out." Such is my zest for life.
I did find an old third-party GBA light for the Indigo, for those inevitable four player sessions. We searched everywhere for a stupid light, and ended up buying a pre-owned Nyko worm light (with pass-through port). Third-party and pre-owned, disgusting. Judging from the store shelves around here, the venerable worm lights are completely out of fashion. Instead, everybody has those awful clamshell lights, that "protect your Game Boy!" as well as lighting it up and making it look stupid. Plus, I couldn't find a single clamshell design (out of fifty million) that would allow for the GC/GBA link cable to attach. The pre-owned worm light will be fine, but I'll feel dirty using it. Rhon claimed the Flame SP for all future gaming, by the way.
Oh, and the game? Yeah, it's worth me buying another damn SP. Imagine 4P Gauntlet, but make it worth playing. Hey, I used to love Gauntlet... so much so that I was once pick-pocketed while playing it. But today the game is all but unplayable. Crystal Chronicles takes the spirit of Gauntlet into the modern generation, smashing wanna-be crap like Diablo 2 into the mud.
We also picked up Karaoke Revolution, a PS2 music game where you sing. Really, you sing. Not press buttons like PaRappa. Sing. You use a mic/headset (the SOCOM one works, hooray!) and sing along with the screen. Very much like DDR, where accuracy is judged by the notes of your voice. My best song is Son of a Preacher Man.
The song selection hurts a bit. Only thirty-couple, which just isn't enough. A game like this should have 100 songs to choose from. There is the possibility of expansion discs, but that is predicated on how well the first one sells. If Karaoke Revolution flops, hopefully somebody will crack the code and figure out how to burn your own music. I'd slap together a They Might Be Giants compilation quicker than you could sing "Minimum Wage."
