| Gameboy Advance Some of you might be wondering why I am not writing my usual review of a cool video game. There is a funny story behind this, you see I go out and buy a new Nintendo system (Gameboy Advance). I put mine on reserve so I can have it a few days before everyone else. And much to my shock, it isn�t selling as wildly as I had hoped. Don�t get me wrong, it�s selling terrifically but much to my dismay not many people who I played Gameboy Color with have one yet. Advance is bogged down with the memories of its Gameboy predecessors. When Gameboy first came out it was cool. Its primary games were a Mario Brother�s game and Tetris. Both of these games are still cherished Gameboy traditions today. However there were drawbacks to the original Gameboy, first you had to use four Double A batteries to power the thing. Secondly it was huge, they were making portable TV�s at the time smaller than this thing. Thirdly it had adjustable contrast. Meaning that if you loaned it to a friend and got it back after a few minutes you�d have to spend that few minutes getting the contrast just perfectly back to where you had it. Not to mention that when the batteries got very low it tended to alter the contrast dramatically. Ten years later Nintendo released Gameboy Pocket. The improvements were dramatic. They got rid of the adjustable contrast and they made it smaller with a larger screen and run longer off of a smaller power supply. It had a sharper image than the old school Gameboy. However this too, has it�s own set of problems. Firstly the thing ran off of two Triple A batteries. This is fine however when your batteries die and you don�t happen to be near a store. Chances are greater that someone nearby would happen to have four Double A batteries than two Triple A batteries. Secondly the thing was really tiny. It was really easy to lose. Mine is still M.I.A. from when I moved last. Hopefully it�s in a box somewhere although I fear that it might have gotten burned in a junk pile. A couple years after that Nintendo released the Gameboy Color, by this time the Pokemon franchise was just starting to take off. So the color quickly got dubbed �the Pokemon machine�. Needless to say it was a step forward in portable gaming for the Nintendo. For the first time Nintendo had made a machine that was not only backward compatible with previous versions of itself, but it also made a machine that they already had a library for. Namely the old 8-bit NES. They promptly started porting games down to the Color while making a whole new library of fantastic games. However it was still dubbed �the Pokemon machine� because of the extremely popular Pokemon franchise launching it�s best games on the color. For the design they made it a little more bulbous and harder to lose. So it was small enough to where is was convenient but large enough so that you could keep track of it. However in a world of PS2 and Dreamcast, Gameboy Color couldn�t compete with an older audience. It had to grow up. That�s where Gameboy Advance entered the picture. It has a HUGE screen for a portable, it is backwards compatible with Color and classic Gameboy Games, it�s operating in true color, it�s backwards compatible with most previous Gameboy Color external hardware (worm lights, link cables, etc) but this system operates in a full 32 Bits! For those of you who don�t know what that means I�ll be simpler, half of the N64 but twice of the Super Nintendo. Its launch library included Super Mario Advance (a 32 bit Mario brothers 2 and a 32 bit 70�s arcade classic in one game) and a 32-bit version of the SNES classic Earthworm Jim. Later other games such as a Mario Kart game came out. However with former competitor Sega pledging alliance with Nintendo in an attempt to make superior games there�s an entire Sega 32X library to fall back on. Not to mention the new Sonic game that�s coming out this December along with a new Advance Street Fighter game. If this isn�t enough reason to purchase GBA then dig this, it�s only 90 dollars! The future looks very bright for Gameboy Advance. However despite the fact that it�s a superior system nothing is forever. However if you are a lover of good gaming like I am then you�ll not pass up a system like this. |