On Christmas day 1989, almost all video game players watched and waited for a small handheld version of the Nintendo to appear underneath their tree. Soon there will be something else for gamers to anticipate — the Game Boy Advance SP.
Nintendo is releasing a new version of their already popular Game Boy Advance on March 23. The new Game Boy will feature some major improvements over the old design, but still it has some problems.
“It’s like they took the old Game Boy pocket and made it into a foldable Game Boy,” said Todd Musso, a photography junior. “The thing that really worries me is that there is no headphone jack on the thing.”
The first thing gamers will notice is the new clamshell design of the Game Boy. The entire unit folds between the screen and the controls. This new design keeps the screen from getting scratched and also makes the unit smaller to fit in the average pocket better. This also makes the screen look bigger because it takes up the whole top side of the clamshell, but the it is just as big as the regular Game Boy Advance screen.
Once the Game Boy has been opened and turned on, previous Game Boy owners will notice the screen has its own lights. This makes playing in the dark much easier than when players had to buy separate light attachments. The lighting effect also can be turned off to conserve battery power.
The only other option up to this point to achieve a backlit screen was for owners to purchase an Afterburner Backlight kit that required gamers to open up their Game Boy Advances and install the kit internally. Installing this device also voids any warranty on the device and may take technical skills above that of the average gamer.
The Game Boy Advance SP also comes with an internal rechargeable battery. The battery takes three hours to charge and lasts 10 hours with the illumination feature on and 18 hours without. However, this does mean when the batteries do run out and players are not next to an external power source, they cannot simply put in a new set of batteries. It may save money on batteries, but it will be more of a hinderance in the long run.
The original Game Boy was designed with a headphone jack so not all of the people around players had to hear the game’s sounds. This model comes with no standard headphone jack. Instead players are required to buy a separate cord that plugs into the slot used for recharging the battery.
The button placement on the Game Boy Advance is tight. Because of the machine’s small nature, the buttons are placed close together and may take people with larger hands some getting used to.
“The buttons seem a bit cramped in, but it’s such a small space that I guess they had to,” said Joshua Roberts, a biological sciences senior.
Also, the game cartridge loads from the bottom of the control part of the clamshell. If players are using anything other than a standard sized Game Boy Advance game, such as an old Game Boy game, the cartridge will come into the hand space.
The Game Boy Advance contains almost all of the original Game Boy Advance’s features in a new package. It is backward compatible, so it can play all the Game Boy Advance and original Game Boy games. In fact, Nintendo has released some old Super Nintendo Entertainment System titles such as “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” on it.
Overall, it has some interesting innovations with some drawbacks. With a price tag of $99.95, if gamers already have a Game Boy Advance, there’s really no reason to go out and buy another. For gamers who haven’t already jumped on the Game Boy Advance bandwagon, this is the model to buy.
For more information, check out Nintendo’s Web site at www.nintendo.com.