My Game Boy Color was getting rather old. The main symptom is that it's now quite difficult to find games for it in the shops. After some undecidedness I figured that it was time to open my options up a bit more. For once, I had a decent amount of money to spare, so one day while shopping I thought I'd pick up this new gadget and try it out.

Various sources give the SP as standing for either SPecial or Special Project, and at this time of writing I'm none the wiser of which is the correct expansion.


Size, shape and foldability

The Game Boy Advance SP comes in a squarish box, almost the size of a pile of three and a half Game Boy game boxes. Only when I opened the box and got it out did I realise how small the GBA SP itself is - folded to a size of 8.5cm × 8.5cm × 2.5cm (3.3" × 3.3" × 1"), it's slipped down the side of the box, the rest being taken up by the AC adaptor, instruction leaflets and cardboard inner packaging.

The design is similar to that of a laptop computer, with the hinge between the screen and the controls. It 'clicks' to a position in which the screen is at an inclination of about 23 degrees, and this angle is perfectly comfortable.

Although the 'clamshell' doesn't have any kind of seal, when closed it doesn't easily come open by accident, and definitely helps to keep dirt and scratches off the SP screen and controls when it's not in use. The other day I had a somewhat overripe and soggy banana in my bag with my SP, and although the banana had leaked onto the opening side of the SP, it had not got inside and was easy to wipe clean. No, I don't recommend that you leak a banana onto your SP! I'm merely stating that it has some capacity to protect itself should an accident happen.

To make this design work, Nintendo has done away with the Lynx/Game Gear-esque layout of the first GBA and reverted to the old arrangement. The shoulder buttons L and R are at the upper corners of the control section. At first it's easy to press these buttons by accident, but you soon get used to their being there.

The opened-out face is actually slightly bigger than that of the Game Boy Color, but the compact folded size more than makes up for it. You'll notice if you're used to the GBC that the Select and Start buttons are a little further from the rest of the controls than before.


The screen and light

The screen is about 4cm × 6.2cm (1.7" × 2.7"), about the size of the GBC screen but wider, and perfectly adequate for my eyesight. The resolution is 240 × 160, compared to the almost square 160 × 144 of the earlier GB and GBC.

Nintendo did an excellent move by introducing a frontlight. Yes, you heard me, it's a frontlight, not a backlight. I've occasionally seen it called a sidelight, since the light comes in from the side, but the basic idea is that it lights up the front of the screen. But it does a reasonable job of distributing the light equally.

A button at the top middle of the control section switches the light on or off, so you can either have the screen illuminated for visibility, or keep it off to conserve battery power if ambient light is adequate (or if you take a break but leave it switched on).

Without the light, the screen's about as visible as that of the GBC. The light unquestionably makes it better, as long as it's too little rather than too much ambient light making it difficult to see. But it does seem to wash out the contrast just a little, so I tend to prefer to play without the light when room lighting is adequate. Under bright sunlight, the SP's light has no visible effect - the screen ends up more like a mirror either way, and all you can do about it is find either the shade or the right direction to face while playing it. But in this case, it's also quite easy to have the light on and running down the battery without realising it! You can check by closing the SP most of the way so that the light becomes visible.


The battery

The SP has a built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery, similar to the kind found in mobile phones. The bundled AC adaptor is necessary in order to recharge the battery.

There are two little indicator lights on the right-hand edge of the control section. The power indicator lights up when the machine is switched on, and is either green or red depending on whether the battery is running low. The charging light comes on while charging the battery and goes out to tell you it's fully charged (or the adaptor has been unplugged).

Having become quite hooked on my new toy, I've been playing it for a few hours of the day at the weekends and for a bit in the evenings during the week. So far, I've found that it needs recharging about once a week.

It is said that the battery lasts 18 hours without the light, or 10 hours with it, and that it takes three hours to recharge. I haven't timed it, but I believe the figures are about right. So even if you like to play late at night, it will be charged up ready for you to take it somewhere in the morning.

But normally I tended to run my original GB and GBC straight off the mains when I was in the house, and I'll probably find myself doing this with my GBA SP quite a bit. I can't tell but only hope that doing this cuts battery deterioration compared to emptying and recharging the battery for the same amount of playing time.

But there are a few caveats here. Nintendo have gone out of their way to use a non-standard AC adaptor port, meaning that you can only charge it with the adaptor that's provided. I think the only way in which this is fitting is that they've also used a non-standard voltage here, namely 5.2V. (The battery itself outputs another non-standard voltage, 3.7-3.8V.) Consequently you can't plug in, say, a standard voltage-selectable car adaptor, or anything you may have used to power any of your old Game Boy incarnations.

OK, so the 10-18 hours may be adequate for most situations, but my almost annual week away camping (which tends to be a time when it would be played more, especially since I have others to entertain) may well need more than this. Being able to have some spare batteries at hand has always been a feature of previous Game Boys, but the SP is different. This is where the mobile phone analogy breaks down, and it becomes more like an electric shaver (except for the kind of plug). I don't think spare batteries are on sale, or at least easily available, and you would need to actually unscrew the battery cover with a tiny cross-head.

I'm informed that a longer-life battery pack and a solar charger are among the devices in the pipeline, but don't know when they're likely to be available.

I think Nintendo's only actual reason for making the battery cover unscrewable is so that, when the battery finally dies out, you can send it back to them and get a new one. If spare batteries were easy enough to get hold of, it would eliminate the time when you probably wouldn't be able to play at all while waiting for the new battery to arrive. But Nintendo claims that the battery will last for 500 chargings (it must have taken them at least about ¾ of a year of testing to come up with that figure), and this would be several years at my usage level, so I suppose I should cross this bridge when I get to it. Let's just hope the bridge isn't going to be demolished!


General capabilities

The SP as a game console has the same basic technical specifications as the previous GBA, including a 32-bit CPU and 15-bit colour. The graphics are the obvious difference between GBC and GBA games, with some graduated backgrounds and parallax scrolling being among the nice effects.

Some games support a 'sleep mode', rather like that on modern PCs, enabling you to take a break from playing while saving battery charge and your precise position in the game. This could have been implemented as a built-in switch, so that it would work in any game even if the developer hasn't provided access to it.

Though I don't yet have a GBA link cable, and neither have I seen one in use, I've seen from documentation that the design enables up to four GBAs to connect together, using one fewer cable than there are players. A further improvement is that some games need only one copy to play a link-up game. But others (presumably those that rely on saved game data, as well as old GB/GBC games) still need a cartridge per player.


Backward compatibility

The box states that the SP "plays all Game Boy games", though there's debate over whether that's entirely true. But apparently the only problems are old games that exploit bugs in the original GB (see http://pc1-archbo.bot.unibas.ch/~lukas/GBprojects/gbFAQ.html#GBCBugs ), implying that if it works on a GBC it will work on a GBA/GBA SP. The exception is the unusual control system of Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, which will be backwards since the cartridge goes into the bottom of the SP.

When a GB/GBC cartridge is inserted, the SP behaves in the same way as a GBC. That is, it displays the GBC splash screen rather than the GBA one. Just as before, it makes monochrome GB games slightly colourful, and you can select the palette by pressing buttons on the splash screen.

Contrary to some sources, the SP still has the GBA's facility to switch between 'square-screen' and 'wide-screen' modes in GB/GBC games using the L and R buttons. The square-screen mode is in the same proportions as on the GB/GBC, with a black border. The wide-screen mode stretches and anti-aliases the image to fill the width of the screen. I personally tend to prefer the square-screen mode.

The Game Link port is identical to that of the GBP/GBC, except for a little extra bit cut out that's presumably supposed to enable the GBA link cable to be plugged in. Also contrary to some sources, it is whether you're playing a GBA game or a GB/GBC game, not whether you're linking two GBAs together, that determines which link cable you should use.

While this machine is backward compatible on the whole, not everything that works in it is forward compatible; for example, the Mega Memory Card sadly isn't compatible with GBA game cartridges.


Connecting headphones

I'm not sure why Nintendo went out of their way to do this, but it sounds like another ploy to make a little more money. Remember when the original Game Boy came with headphones? Well, the SP doesn't even come with a headphone socket! You need to buy a headphone adaptor, which (oddly) plugs into the charging port, and then bring your own headphones to plug into that.


My purchase

The SP retails here in Britain for £89.99. Quite expensive, but not too bad in the end. I bought two GBA games with it, namely Zelda: A Link to the Past and Warioland 4. The former was displayed in Game as a discounted offer when bought with the SP, but I was quite surprised when they gave me a discount on the other one as well! I even got some money off a GBC game I bought at the same time, m&m's Minis Madness.

Overall, it came to £144.96, £25 less than the SP and games would have cost separately. You may wish to see if there is a similar offer available where you are.


Conclusion

Having decided to buy a Game Boy Advance SP, I am now quite happy with my purchase. I think it is worth its price in the long run, either as a first Game Boy system to own or as an upgrade from a GB or GBC. However, I probably wouldn't have been inclined to fork out if I already had a GBA of the first version.

On the whole, Nintendo has kept up the good work, and made significant improvements to the Game Boy gaming experience. I will build up my collection of games, and continue to play on my SP into the future.


Recommended: Yes