We're all looking forward to the launch of Nintendo 3DS this weekend, but the timing of the system is an interesting coincidence: It falls within a week of the Japanese debut of the system's "grandfather," the Game Boy Advance. The 3DS is pretty clearly derived from the the DS, which was initially presented as an alternative to the Game Boy rather than a replacement. But Nintendo retired the GBA a couple of years ago, and it's pretty clear that the Game Boy line -- which kept the company in the black for a decade and a half -- has been retired, never again to see the light of day. The GBA, we're sorry to say, was the end of that particular family tree.
In retrospect, the GBA fits somewhat oddly into the history of Nintendo systems -- a fact reflected by its unusually short lifespan. The GBA was barely around for more than three years before the DS arrived; Nintendo's hand was likely forced by Sony's announcement of the PSP, which made the GBA -- essentially a portable Super NES -- look painfully dated. Nintendo kept the GBA on life support for a while longer with a few interesting games and the so-tiny-it-was-cool Game Boy Micro, but once it became clear that the DS was a hit, the GBA was dropped with a quickness.
When it launched in 2001, the GBA had been a long, long time coming. Rumors of a 32-bit portable Nintendo handheld were circulated as early as 1996, and in fact a prototype of that system -- a huge, chunky box called Project Atlantis -- was shown off at Game Developers Conference 2009. The enduring popularity of the original 8-bit, four-color Game Boy (thanks largely to Pok?mon) allowed Nintendo to hold off on launching the GBA until it could be produced cheaply and in a far more compact form. In fact, both the Game Boy Micro and folding Game Boy Advance SP represent two of the most compact portable systems ever made: small, sturdy, simple, and fun.
The SP also addressed the single most crippling flaw of the original Game Boy hardware: the screen lacked any sort of integral light and was, frankly, awful. In fact, the dimness of the screen was memorably lampooned by Penny Arcade and, more famously, addressed by enterprising hardware hackers, who created an aftermarket mod called Portable Monopoly (later renamed Afterburner after the owners of the Monopoly board game bitched about trademark violations). And even the SP bungled things; Nintendo may have added a light, but they forced people to buy an adapter in order to use headphones.
But despite its design flaws, and even if it goes down in history as a sidenote -- a momentary distraction between the classic age of Game Boy and the blue ocean of DS -- it was crammed with great games. And perhaps more importantly, it's where Nintendo perfected its tricks. Annual incremental hardware updates? Yep, the SP opened the door for moderate tweaks and a far greater array of collectible colors than the company could possibly have dreamed in the Play It Loud days. Selling our memories back to us at a premium? Absolutely: the NES Classics series proved to Nintendo that it could rake in a fortune with imperfect ports of 20-year-old games sold for the cost of some new releases. Yeah, the GBA was quintessential Nintendo, for better or for worse. But considering it gave us games like Boktai, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, WarioWare, Ninja Five-O, Mega Man Zero, and more... well, it's hard to be bitter, you know?
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