Sitting down or standing up? SP'ing, I mean. (Nintendo W/O)
Written: Aug 19 '04 (Updated Nov 02 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Backlight makes for better visibility. Compact design helps keep scratches and dust off the screen.
Cons: While there are many games you can play, there aren't too many "unique" ones available.
The Bottom Line: The SP is an excellent improvement over the previous GBA, but its price is a little bit high. Also, there isn't too many "original" titles made especially for the system.
ChromeKiller's Full Review: Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP White Console
Errors and omissions are something of a major part in the hardware business of video games. For more than twenty years now, the video game industry has run itself to a point where technology has significantly advanced during a shortened time period. What each company promises for their system is ultimately what defines the status of it and its competition. The games are what makes each platform great. But for the machine that the games run on, they also have a big part in the applied personal preference system, too. Look at the Nintendo 64, Nintendo's renowned first-entry platform that dived into 3D. While many gamers had happy-happy-joy-joy feelings about select titles on the system, others could see the console without the games and notice that this machine's controller only functioned with a single analog stick. There were multiple buttons for multiple camera angles - making playing games a bit overbearing at times. The controller also had no way of rumbling without an add-on. Not to mention, its molded finish was enormous. In my personal opinion, all of these issues were resolved around that same time frame, in Sony's now standardized PlayStation DualShock controller. Forgoing essentials can hurt a system along the way. This was a problem that's not a problem anymore, in the original but now obsolete handheld device that Nintendo once called the Game Boy Advance. Recently slithering out of its old shell like a snake from its skin, many people have since upgraded to the new, the improved, and the best damn Game Boy that you can ever own (for the moment): Game Boy Advance SP!
I was once one of many unfortunate souls whom Nintendo bullied with the best-selling Game Boy Advance platform for a while. Then I saw the light. It BURNED at first, but an aged and kooky reverend helped me to shake off those feelings of hatred for the sake of the future. Here is the story of how Reverend Maloney helped me to convert to his temple of player....
While gazing hard upon a Game Boy Advance screen, reflecting off of the lamp's light that was beaming upon it one dark and stormy night, lightning soon struck the town's main generator. When all of the power went out around town and my Tetris game was in jeopardy (because darkness overcame my visibility), the only option that I had was to blindly search under the couch for a match.
"Cold... warm... dead... AH HA! No wait, this thing's moving."
Having no luck, I turned my attention back to my seating when there it was: A single glowing aura lit up the sky that night right outside of the window. It was magnificent, this incident; it was like being Jason Voorhees, quietly waiting in the wilderness while a single group of frisky teens told tales of his life's background around the campfire. I had to reach that light and intrude.
"Ma, I'm going out!" I said. "Remember: No more hookers after eleven! We don't have enough trash bags to bury them in anymore!" she called out.
Rolling my eyes like the James Dean imitator that I am, I stormed out into the rainy weather, getting to where I needed to be. That light... that wonderful light!
"Whatever could it be?" I wondered.
I must've walked through the pouring rain for hours. Or, at least that's what it felt like after I stopped due to excessive laziness when reaching the end of my front walkway. Then I had an extremely brilliant idea. Instead of actually taking my time to do work, I waited right there in front of my house for the future until someone reanimated my body in a cloning device. All I needed to do from there on was to travel back to the past in the time traveling device that I assumed they'd have ready by then, and teleport myself to the exact coordinates of that light's origin. My calculations having all been correct, and one slug monster peeled off my back later, I hurried into the church where the glow resonated. A heavy voice filled the air-
"Welcome, mah brother!" I asked, "What is that?" The preacher man standing at the altar informed me, "This is what they call a Game Boy Advance SP, mah son. Reviewers rave it is thy craze when hence comes to playing games on thy go." Blinking five times in a row, I told the guy, "Well, I already have a Game Boy Advance. What makes this thing so different, besides its useless lettering at the end?" He responded, "Let me show you thy light!"
Then out of nowhere, a Game Boy Advance SP plopped down from the air above me. I looked up, and there was a hideous goblin creature clinging to the ceiling and scampering away like a rodent back into his darkened lair. Holding onto the Game Boy Advance SP, I wondered where the damned screen was. Fiddling around for a bit, the preacher interrupted my daze.
"I SAID that is NOT a Game Boy Advance, mah slow-minded friend. And thy 'SP' does stand for something. Special Project, is thy meaning. This embodiment of power, it is thou holiest of cartable creations from under thy Nintendo name. Gaze upon its might not from a visible vessel, but from within its inner coating."
Scratching my head for a little while trying to figure out what the devil this preacher was babbling about, I undid the Game Boy Advance SP's outer layering just like opening up a pornographic magazine. Err, that is to say a Bible. Before me was a clap trap, or like a fancy, schmancy PC-on-the-go laptop. When closed the Game Boy Advance SP appeared in a black and silver square-shaped box. This particular one being the Dual Tone limited edition version that is painted in an Onyx and Platinum mixture, where other available colors I was informed by the reverend consisted of plain Onyx (or black), plain Platinum (or silver), Flame Red, or even a brand-new NES edition that's designed to look like the original Nintendo Entrainment System's hardware. But on the inside of the SP, there laid two individual sections in one winning combination. The top half used an inner screen, and the bottom is where the buttons went. To the left was the directional pad, in the middle was the 'Start' and 'Select' buttons, the light gray 'A' and 'B' buttons settled on the right, and at the very top center I found out how that magnanimous light turned it and me on. With the push of a miniature dot above the other buttons and below the screen itself, I'd learn that I could save battery power by keeping the SP's backlit enhancement off and instead waste sun, or some source of artificial light. On the opposite end, I could also waste extra energy on the battery and actually see my games the way they're meant to be seen.
"Sorry battery, but my ability to see comes before your ability to generate." is what I would be saying, if not for the handy charger that was packaged with the product. Plugging it in, the reverend would further elaborate how the lithium-ion battery encased in the SP would allow for play time up to ten hours with the light burning, eighteen when dimmed, and will continue to extend the life of charging thousands of times before the hardware would need a battery change. The AA-powered Game Boy Advance can't do that. Not to forget the 'L' and 'R' buttons either: cleverly, the sneaky Nintendo stuck those babies up top at the system's shoulders where I was able to grip them by comfortably sliding my fingers right behind the open lid. Exactly like wrapping my fingers around the first-ever Game Boy Advance model, the reverend instructed me to hold the Game Boy Advance SP in a vertical position instead of sideways, like I would with the Game Boy Advance.
"Hold thy Game Boy Advance SP like you would the first-ever Game Boy model, and experience what its sleekness does, mah son."
See? I told you. Holding the Game Boy Advance SP this way was as simple to hang onto as it's ever been before. The reverend, kindly, then offered me a few games from his personal collection that were taped to the bottom of my seat. I shifted my eyes and ripped off the hidden gems to see and hear the games with the lights on and the sound up. Even more beautiful than on the Game Boy Advance, now I was actually able to SEE what I was playing. Crispy and neat, the SP's power really shows off in its SNES-like qualities. Listening to games was also a crystal clear experience. Lest the game was awful, the sound options would boast some mighty fine speaker samples. It was then when the preacher explained why this video game contraption was constructed into a flip book rather than one hunk of brick like all of the previous Game Boys.
"You see, young sir - with disgust and moral outrage - I'd shun Nintendo from community rituals had this been thy year before SP's arrival that they hath not realized thy purposefulness sooner. Dust carries from fleeting air onto thy screen. Scratches immortalize their devil's ways onto thy delicate of surfaces. Doth want thou demons reflecting back at thou?!" I squinted at him really hard with a, "No!" And then strangeness came about, as the preacher started break dancing after shouting in his churchy ways, "Good golly, Miss Molly, we have us a believer!"
Not that I wasn't as excited as he was; I would just look stupid dancing on a pew while eating a sub sandwich. Mmm... suuuub. Anyway, I began to notice the other extra features around the platform's design. On the slender right side of the SP was a power switch toward the lower portion, and over on the left opposite of that rested the volume switch where I could alter the level of listening any time that I felt like it. This is one fault that the preacher butted in again in an uproar about.
"Do you have no sense? Were you or were you not sent here by the all mighty Lord of the Rings himself?" Shaking my head at him in a puzzling look, I questioned, "Frodo, you mean?" The reverend just laughed at me, and replied, "NO! But, YES! Lord Frodo doth load bounty to thy womb of you and everyone around you! Obey him, and thy will receive a blessing of free movie tickets to Catwoman!" I asked, "Can't I just go to Hell instead?" And again, the reverend responded with exactly the answer that I didn't want to hear, "Heh, heh... NO!"
It took a while, but eventually after going on about how Catwoman would be "THY" movie of the year, the reverend finally made his point about the sound options. Where he was going was elucidating the fact that Nintendo had all of the room to do everything that it could with the Game Boy Advance, except provide its owners with a space to plug in headphone jacks.
"Nintendo knows how it is thy top priority to mask thy noise of games blaring in gatherers' ears when thou is on thy leisurely travel. Thus, it is best to remedy thy solution by making thou fare them an additional penance of $4.25 for one adapter."
That rate really isn't that much, I figured. Still, money doesn't grow on trees... unless you have a money tree. Thankfully, for this dire situation I did. Otherwise I wouldn't be plugging my headphones into the specialized adapter, which then fits into one of two ports located at the back end of the hardware.
Then I got to thinking, "Wait a minute! Where do the games slide in? Does the Game Boy Advance SP have micro games the size of a thread of yarn now?" While searching for any strings attached, the reverend yelled at me once more, "Fool! Dost not checked thy bottom?"
To my avail, there she blew. By God, a hole sat open for me to stick my thing in there. And by thing, I meant game(s). I was still curious, though....
"What kinds of games does this newer Game Boy iteration have that previous Game Boys don't?" The reverend spun around still holding onto the razor in one hand, the SP and its reflective screen in the other, and the shaving cream spread across most of his face, "Boy, this thing ain't having jack but whatever leftovers that thy Game Boy Advance has a coming."
In other words, the Game Boy Advance SP is a handheld platform that upgrades directly from the old, yet is essentially traveling the same path as it was before. In the middle of carving the hairs off of his chinny chin-chin, the reverend spoke of some of the lineup of games that the Game Boy Advance did have already.
"Variety under God's watchful eye may be so, but under thy Nintendo's manifestation, what one sees is what one gets. Thou gets most of what fruit has already spoiled, and brought to a new plateau and cost."
I'm not one to disagree with a shaving reverend - they'll cut you. So, I went along with him and nodded. I thought to myself the Game Boy Advance's list of software, essentially, is in fact compiled of titles that gamers' have played already many times in many iterations over many years. If I wanted to hop through the 2D classic platform adventures of Super Mario, I could. If I wanted to revisit Link's land of Hyrule or defeat Mother Brain in Samus's space-age shoes, I could do that also. Even if I wanted to hurdle over barrels with Donkey Kong, or stock up on Pokemon in the zillionth sequel, nothing would stop me. Entering the games that I've played in the past once more, but instead on the go, is really the backbone that keeps the Game Boy Advance lineup so strong. It's primarily a platform for those who don't mind rehashing great games. And believe me, these are classics for anyone and everyone in a manner of puzzle, platform, racing, RPG, adventure, and other platforms. But then again, I'm not that someone who would want to empty out $25-$30 from my wallet for every handheld port unless it was something totally worth owning a second or a third time in a row.
"You know revie... besides the oldies that range from the NES to SNES days, there are literally hundreds of Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles that are now backwards compatible with the SP. There is a bunch of multiplatform games, too (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Madden NFL, Spider-Man, Hulk, and more), and even some new content as well." Finished shaving finally and wailing his arms around now with the bloodied barber's blade in a crazy rage, the reverend freaked out hollering, "CORRECT YOU ARE!"
Trying to escape the mentally unstable servant of peace and loveitude, I reminisced back to what some of these unique entries were. There's been Advance Wars and its sequel - two critically acclaimed original strategy releases. Castlevania's Circle of the Moon, Aria of Sorrow, and Harmony of Dissonance are amongst those in the cult classic adventure franchise, now continued through the Game Boy Advance's bloodlines. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is its own version of Final Fantasy Tactics, the widely popular PlayStation strategy-RPG release. Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga is the platforming RPG sequel to Nintendo's first-ever Mario RPG that debuted on the SNES, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. And Golden Sun 1 and 2, of course, is the wholly original RPG series that's brought nothing but good things to Game Boy Advance owners. And as can be imagined, the Game Boy Advance SP still utilizes multi-playability with a link cable connection routed between separate Game Boy Advance platforms (only for titles that make uses for this feature, such as sports or racing games like Fire Pro Wrestling and Mario Kart: Super Circuit). Just as well, the Game Boy Advance SP can also be attached to the GameCube for certain games that accentuate this connectivity feature (such as in Animal Crossing, where the only way to access the tropical island and scoop up special items that can't be found anywhere else is with the link cable). Oh, right.... In case you were wondering, I'm still running for my life.
"A SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT, TWO BITS!" That insane reverend had nearly trapped me in the darkest corner of the church, when all of a sudden... I opened the door next to me! Up the stairs I went, climbing toward what I didn't know. But when I reached the top of the stairs, I knew that it'd be the end - the end of the stairway. That's when I found another door that lead to the outside, as this was the entry to the bell tower. "RING-A-DING-DING, HEATHEN! YOU'RE ABOUT TO GET CUT FROM THIS STORY ONE WAY OR ANOTHER!" I had no escape plan. Nowhere to run to. It was still night outside, and the rain was heavier than before. As the reverend - with murderous intent his eyes - slowly approached my position, I removed the Game Boy Advance SP from my pocket, opened the lid up, turned on the power... and the volume. Then in a sudden flash my moment of blockbuster moments had arrived. "You've shown me the light reverend. Now, let me do the same." I hit the light switch on the Game Boy Advance SP. Sure enough, the reverend's eyes were flooded with sheer awesome effect. The light stunned him, but to my surprise as it was his, the Tetris game that I had put in the system had mirrored its image onto dozens of reflective water droplets. Twinkling all around both the killer and myself, he soon lost his balance from one too many pictures at once. Falling, smiling: the reverend plummeted to the gravel below the tower.
I stepped back down the staircase, playing some Tetris along the way. Popping out of the church's bottom then, the police suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"So, this must be where Phony Maloney's been shacking up." the chief stated out loud. "Who?" I questioned. "See this guy? He's a criminal, and a dangerous one too. You're lucky that he didn't use you as his next victim. He meets you, then he beats you, and then he finally becomes you. Similar to a chameleon, he'll change his personality to advance in the game. It's hard to keep track of someone who keeps altering their identities every day or two. Like I said, you're lucky to be here, kiddo." Then I was really stumped. "How did you know that he was here, though? Haven't you noticed that it's frickin' dark outside?" To respond to that question, the chief simply told me, "Was I to answer that, this Game Boy Advance SP review would never end."
He had me on that one. And so, as the story came to its final conclusion, I headed on home where the hour grew early and I wasn't even asleep yet for Christ's sake. Opening the front door, the first thing that I heard when I got in: "Is that a hooker that I hear you coming in the door with?" I replied, "No Mom, even better... almost."
As you might have already guessed (and you guessed right), this is my official entry into Rock_On's Fourth Annual Nintendo Write-Off. Like the forgetful person that he is, most of you know that Rocko pushed his usual July 19th write-off date to a month later. But, he did this with good reason. That reason was... because I kidnapped him. That's right: I was all like, "Gimme yo money!" And then he was like, "I already gimme'd yo money!" And then I was like, "But, you did not gimme yo pappy's money." And he was like, "My pappy's saving it to sue yo!" And then I was like, "Aiight! I'll let yo go then, to presume that yo misspelled 'sue' instead meaning 'use.' I await his money, YO!" Then somehow, I got sent to prison where I snuck in my entire PC setup under my shirt to bring you this review. Oh, and if you can... send money to get me outta here! Until next time, check out the remaining write-off reviews from the list of people located in Rocky's profile. Or, you can skip all of that and see some more of my reviews and the much vital information listed below.
Here's a few Game Boy Advance game reviews that you might be interested in:
Approximate Size (Closed): Height 3.33 inches, width 3.23 inches, depth 0.96 inches CPU: 32-bit RISC CPU with embedded memory Screen: 2.9-inch reflective TFT color LCD Light Source: Front lights have been integrated with the existing reflective LCD Display Size: 1.61 inches by 2.41 inches (identical to the Game Boy Advance) Resolution: 240x160 pixels (identical to the Game Boy Advance) Color: Simultaneously displays more than 32,000 colors (identical to the Game Boy Advance) Weight: Approximately 5 ounces Power Supply: Rechargeable lithium-ion battery Battery Life: 10 hours continuous play with three hour recharging period; 18 hours continuous play with light function disabled
PLATFORM PRICE: $99.99 (the same amount that the Game Boy Advance started at). This isn't too bad a price, but isn't a great one either considering that the SP is merely an upgrade to an already existing handheld platform.
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