GameBoy Advance SP

Here’s a prediction: Nintendo will release a cel phone edition of the GameBoy Advance SP in the next 18 months. Bear in mind, my predications have been as right as a left-hand turn.

When the GBA was first released, many decried its poor lighting and if you’ve ever played with a GBA you know precisely what I mean. Compared with the screenshots featured in print and online it made you wonder if the screens were doctored. Guess what, the games always looked like that by Nintendo’s choice to not include a backlight feature has robbed gamers of a full mobile gaming experience.

Enter the SP – to the chagrin of GBA owners everywhere because for $30 more you get a decidedly better gaming experience, way less eyestrain, and eliminate the need to buy batteries.  The SP’s best feature is the backlight. It allows you to play in dark and low-light conditions. (Boring movie but don’t want to leave the theater?) The 

light can be turned off with a press of the button to conserve battery time – stretching 10 hours to 18 hours but with a short recharge time of 3 hours why bother ever turning it off.

The SP casing picks up scratches quite easily. As Nintendo is aiming the SP at an "older" audience, who are presumably more careful with their stuff, this might seem a small point. But many that fall into that audience have kids who aren’t so careful.

As you might be able to tell the SP folds in half. This makes it truly compact – smaller than my wallet (which is always empty) and extremely portable. Also loseable. Cheap gamers need only wait to find a lost unit on the bus or playground.

The buttons take a bit of getter used to as the SP’s not as ergonomic as the original GBA – particularly if you have big hands. The shoulder buttons are smaller and the other buttons are flush to the surface. Playing a game like Tony Hawk, where every button is used and complex combos can be performed, does take a bit more effort but once I got used to the new feel I didn’t have any problems. That being said, some are sure to have a beef with it.

But the final verdict is that if you’ve been holding off buying a GBA, now’s the time to make the purchase. The improvements over the original (the backlight and recharge features) make it the near-penultimate GBA. The GameBoy Advance SP hits the streets March 22.