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Excuse the length of this review, I hope you don't mind it being here - there were so many different GBA review sections, I got confused, felt no one would actually read this and so it's here. Oh yes...
The GBA?
Ah, it arrived without fail and not a pre-order fiasco in sight. Yes Nintendo have gotten it right again, a mere 10 years on from the original Game Boy arrives one of the hottest pieces of gaming hardware money can buy. The Game Boy Advance has arrived.
I never bothered with the original handheld superstar console, although it seems as though well over 120million of you did! Home to thousands of games the GB and Game Boy Colour showed us that you don’t need millions of polygons to make superb games. Many a time I would pick up a friend Game Boy with Tetris in and stay contented for a good few hours, possibly days. The fact that the least complicated games sold so well shows that they’re nearly always the greatest, perhaps. The Pokemon rainbow of titles sold hysterically well, as did the classics of Mario and Tetris and alike. Anyway, Nintendo decided to change things, and so 8bit became 32.
As I sit here writing this, watching Shaggy on the Box, I know that I really should be in bed, playing on my GBA. And the GBA can only enrich your gaming delights, make you realise that you don’t need a £200 graphics card to experience the forefront of technology. In this mini world you will find many magical moments, let me tell you more. At around £90, despite Nintendo’s SRP of around £80, the latest gaming device to hit our merry shore isn’t as cheap as in Japan (£58) or as in the USA (£75) but in my view it’s worth every penny. Why should you get a Game Boy Advance?
Because! No that isn’t the reason, although you really shouldn’t waste your time reading this – you cannot afford to wait! Go get one now! Actually, you should read.
The GBA is Nintendo’s little spoiled baby. The Game Boy has dominated the handheld market after fighting off the battery thirsty Game Gear from Sega and the excellent Neo Geo Pocket Colour, which out surpassed the Game Boy in everyway except sales, and so fell to the ground and sunk. Loads of people own one, and now they’re all likely to be considering the advance in gaming.
Size matters…
At just 144mm wide, 82mm in height and 25mm in depth (as just measured) the GBA is roughly the same size as the Game Boy, only on its side and the screen is 50% larger on the GBA. It’s a wide screen! Probably the cheapest and smallest wide-screen you can get – 43mm by 63mm. Anyway, its large enough in my belief. Us Europeans get the same model as the Japanese and so it will seem smaller to us, as the Japanese people are generally smaller than us with smaller hands, with the exception of Sumo wrestlers. It’s easy to hold though, brilliantly designed with 2 shoulder buttons (L and R), an A and B, D-pad (not analogue – very relieving) and a start, select and power button. It is a lot smaller than I depicted, but that’s not a bad thing, in fact it makes Nintendo seem even more impressive for such compactness – all that technology!
IT’S IN COLOUR! Well obviously, but you can get the GBA in four different colours – the shell/body colour. Select from “Arctic”: a pure white (not a good idea for grubby fingered people), “Glacier”: a light blue see through colour, my personal favourite and so this is what I have, “Indigo”: a solid purple colour, probably the most popular at the moment, and finally “Clear Red” which looks more pink than red, but it’s the other see through machine. So make you choice wisely, this’ll be with you for a good ten years hopefully. As for the screen, well it’s not backlit, but then if it was you’d be forever recharging the batteries, so the only way you’re going to be able to see what you’re playing is by sitting or standing where a strong light source (i.e. near a window in daylight) is behind you.
Graphically? It’s so much better than the Game Boy and we’ve now got special 3D effects and isometric 3D gaming, ala Tony Hawk’s 2. I have just the two games at the moment with Super Mario Advance having joined the empty box of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on my shelves (the cartridge is in the GBA), and I’m extremely impressed. I keep reading people’s thoughts that the GBA is basically a portable SNES, with old technology, 2D games and nothing new about it, but how could that be a bad thing! A portable Super Nintendo the size of a Casio Calculator. Superb. Ah, but the GBA can perform full 3D gaming, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with 2D games. The simpler the better in my view! Just pick one up – test one, it’s fantastically fast and will give you quite a surprise. Be sceptical by all means, you’ll just be even more amazed. Vibrant, colourful and fluid! The launch line up was particularly good but you should expect visuals to improve immensely over the next few years.
Sound wise! As I say I have only Tony Hawk’s 2 and GBA at the moment, but already it’s clear to tell that the sound has evolved from simple beeps and dings of the original GB. Turn it on without the game and you’ll be treated to a relatively simple start up as the words ‘Game’ and ‘Boy’ bounce onto the screen along with lively sound! Tony Hawk’s music differs to the Dreamcast and PS versions, but you still get that Papa Roach style of rhythm and sound, but there’re no actual words (i.e. song lyrics), but it’s still something. Very clear – one front mounted speaker just below the A and B buttons. Good, good! Mario is brilliant by the way - I have no idea what I'm doing when playing, but I don't really care!
Ah so the games, here’s a list of what you could be getting in the next few weeks. No delays, no supply problems, well done Nintendo! (touch wood)
The magic list (launch titles):
Army Men Advance.
Chu Chu Rocket!
F-Zero: Maximum Velocity
GT Advance
Iridion 3D
Kuru Kurur Kururin
Rayman Advance
Ready2Rumble 2
Super Mario Advance
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
Top Gear GT
· Pretty impressive! ChuChu Rocket is the first game to make use of the link up play – up to four of you can connect and partake in one of the best puzzle games around -mouse mania!
· I’ve never played any of the Army Men games, nor do I want to, so I’d stay away from that if I were you. Although it might be good, stranger things have happened.
· F-Zero is supposedly one of the best games around I’ll have to get it! It’s meant to be one of the fastest racing games available on any format. Futuristic and fun!
· GT advance looks to be the better of the two car racers here, but don’t quote me.
· I have no idea what Iridion 3D is, but hey it’s got three-dimensional graphics!
· Kuru Kuru Kururin is a suitably named Japanese insane puzzler of some sort, check the screen shots, read the individual reviews and make you mind up. One special feature of the game is that you can play a 2player game, using the link up cable and only one of you needs the cartridge.
· Rayman Advance takes a 2D stance in an attempt to be the better of the two ‘adventure’ style games, of itself and Mario. Worldwide acclaim for the Dreamcast, PlayStation and PlayStation 2 versions, this is bound to be good.
· Ready 2 Rumble 2 should be funny. Secrets to unlock, hilarious characters and easy to get into. Not overly serious.
· Super Mario Advance! This one arrived on Monday, so expect a review soon. It’s Mario! First impressions: "wow" it is like the SNES versions you’ll be delighted. Welcome back Mario!
· Tony Hawk’s 2. An essential purchase. One of the best selling extreme sports games, Tony Hawk and friends make it onto the tiniest 32bit machine available in style. Brilliant!
Sites for more information: Nintendo only: www.Nintendo.com. Naturally, I bought mine from here, and although I ordered the "carry case" pack, I was given the "starter" pack, but the accessories are yet to arrive. I don't mind really (snarls at lazy telephone employee).
So, with future titles including Super Mario Kart Advance, Sonic The Hedgehog, Silent Hill, Bomberman, Castlevania and many, many more (check the Nintendo homepage) the future is luminous for everything Nintendo! I imagine over 2million GBA consoles will have been sold worldwide by the end of the week. Expect the Tomb Raider, Fifa, Resident Evil and Tekken franchises to jump on board within the not too distant future. Games cost around £30, so they are slightly more than Game Boy games, but they’re worth more. Just make your decisions carefully. Oh and Black and White may well appear sooner than you think. Sega will bring out Virtua Tennis 2 on the GBA next summer (hopefully - if you all email them saying what a good idea it would be!) and the old Sega classics like Golden Axe and Streets of rage are soon to make a gaming revival, and why not!
You can get a wide range of quirky and innovative accessories too, and the GBA will even be able to act as a control pad for the Game Cube – Nintendo’s future console, so get one now! Right, you can get mains adaptors, worm lights, link cables, carry-cases and so forth. There’ll be 3rd party and official, so have a look around.
Advice? Keep the screen clean! Fingerprints will always be a pain, so have a tissue or duster nearby at all times. Batteries will not last forever, so it is advisable to get a pair of rechargeable ones, the GBA does come with 2AA Panasonics, but they aren’t rechargeable.
So what about the box? (Who cares about the box!?)
Only teasing. It’s a nice box, you get instructions but I won’t bore you with a 300word description of the box.
You can play all of your old GB games on it! Not bad! If the PS2 was a handheld, it'd get flattened ;)
That’s it for the moment! Look after it, enjoy Game Boy Advance 24:7.
Dan2K1
The GBA?
Ah, it arrived without fail and not a pre-order fiasco in sight. Yes Nintendo have gotten it right again, a mere 10 years on from the original Game Boy arrives one of the hottest pieces of gaming hardware money can buy. The Game Boy Advance has arrived.
I never bothered with the original handheld superstar console, although it seems as though well over 120million of you did! Home to thousands of games the GB and Game Boy Colour showed us that you don’t need millions of polygons to make superb games. Many a time I would pick up a friend Game Boy with Tetris in and stay contented for a good few hours, possibly days. The fact that the least complicated games sold so well shows that they’re nearly always the greatest, perhaps. The Pokemon rainbow of titles sold hysterically well, as did the classics of Mario and Tetris and alike. Anyway, Nintendo decided to change things, and so 8bit became 32.
As I sit here writing this, watching Shaggy on the Box, I know that I really should be in bed, playing on my GBA. And the GBA can only enrich your gaming delights, make you realise that you don’t need a £200 graphics card to experience the forefront of technology. In this mini world you will find many magical moments, let me tell you more. At around £90, despite Nintendo’s SRP of around £80, the latest gaming device to hit our merry shore isn’t as cheap as in Japan (£58) or as in the USA (£75) but in my view it’s worth every penny. Why should you get a Game Boy Advance?
Because! No that isn’t the reason, although you really shouldn’t waste your time reading this – you cannot afford to wait! Go get one now! Actually, you should read.
The GBA is Nintendo’s little spoiled baby. The Game Boy has dominated the handheld market after fighting off the battery thirsty Game Gear from Sega and the excellent Neo Geo Pocket Colour, which out surpassed the Game Boy in everyway except sales, and so fell to the ground and sunk. Loads of people own one, and now they’re all likely to be considering the advance in gaming.
Size matters…
At just 144mm wide, 82mm in height and 25mm in depth (as just measured) the GBA is roughly the same size as the Game Boy, only on its side and the screen is 50% larger on the GBA. It’s a wide screen! Probably the cheapest and smallest wide-screen you can get – 43mm by 63mm. Anyway, its large enough in my belief. Us Europeans get the same model as the Japanese and so it will seem smaller to us, as the Japanese people are generally smaller than us with smaller hands, with the exception of Sumo wrestlers. It’s easy to hold though, brilliantly designed with 2 shoulder buttons (L and R), an A and B, D-pad (not analogue – very relieving) and a start, select and power button. It is a lot smaller than I depicted, but that’s not a bad thing, in fact it makes Nintendo seem even more impressive for such compactness – all that technology!
IT’S IN COLOUR! Well obviously, but you can get the GBA in four different colours – the shell/body colour. Select from “Arctic”: a pure white (not a good idea for grubby fingered people), “Glacier”: a light blue see through colour, my personal favourite and so this is what I have, “Indigo”: a solid purple colour, probably the most popular at the moment, and finally “Clear Red” which looks more pink than red, but it’s the other see through machine. So make you choice wisely, this’ll be with you for a good ten years hopefully. As for the screen, well it’s not backlit, but then if it was you’d be forever recharging the batteries, so the only way you’re going to be able to see what you’re playing is by sitting or standing where a strong light source (i.e. near a window in daylight) is behind you.
Graphically? It’s so much better than the Game Boy and we’ve now got special 3D effects and isometric 3D gaming, ala Tony Hawk’s 2. I have just the two games at the moment with Super Mario Advance having joined the empty box of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on my shelves (the cartridge is in the GBA), and I’m extremely impressed. I keep reading people’s thoughts that the GBA is basically a portable SNES, with old technology, 2D games and nothing new about it, but how could that be a bad thing! A portable Super Nintendo the size of a Casio Calculator. Superb. Ah, but the GBA can perform full 3D gaming, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with 2D games. The simpler the better in my view! Just pick one up – test one, it’s fantastically fast and will give you quite a surprise. Be sceptical by all means, you’ll just be even more amazed. Vibrant, colourful and fluid! The launch line up was particularly good but you should expect visuals to improve immensely over the next few years.
Sound wise! As I say I have only Tony Hawk’s 2 and GBA at the moment, but already it’s clear to tell that the sound has evolved from simple beeps and dings of the original GB. Turn it on without the game and you’ll be treated to a relatively simple start up as the words ‘Game’ and ‘Boy’ bounce onto the screen along with lively sound! Tony Hawk’s music differs to the Dreamcast and PS versions, but you still get that Papa Roach style of rhythm and sound, but there’re no actual words (i.e. song lyrics), but it’s still something. Very clear – one front mounted speaker just below the A and B buttons. Good, good! Mario is brilliant by the way - I have no idea what I'm doing when playing, but I don't really care!
Ah so the games, here’s a list of what you could be getting in the next few weeks. No delays, no supply problems, well done Nintendo! (touch wood)
The magic list (launch titles):
Army Men Advance.
Chu Chu Rocket!
F-Zero: Maximum Velocity
GT Advance
Iridion 3D
Kuru Kurur Kururin
Rayman Advance
Ready2Rumble 2
Super Mario Advance
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
Top Gear GT
· Pretty impressive! ChuChu Rocket is the first game to make use of the link up play – up to four of you can connect and partake in one of the best puzzle games around -mouse mania!
· I’ve never played any of the Army Men games, nor do I want to, so I’d stay away from that if I were you. Although it might be good, stranger things have happened.
· F-Zero is supposedly one of the best games around I’ll have to get it! It’s meant to be one of the fastest racing games available on any format. Futuristic and fun!
· GT advance looks to be the better of the two car racers here, but don’t quote me.
· I have no idea what Iridion 3D is, but hey it’s got three-dimensional graphics!
· Kuru Kuru Kururin is a suitably named Japanese insane puzzler of some sort, check the screen shots, read the individual reviews and make you mind up. One special feature of the game is that you can play a 2player game, using the link up cable and only one of you needs the cartridge.
· Rayman Advance takes a 2D stance in an attempt to be the better of the two ‘adventure’ style games, of itself and Mario. Worldwide acclaim for the Dreamcast, PlayStation and PlayStation 2 versions, this is bound to be good.
· Ready 2 Rumble 2 should be funny. Secrets to unlock, hilarious characters and easy to get into. Not overly serious.
· Super Mario Advance! This one arrived on Monday, so expect a review soon. It’s Mario! First impressions: "wow" it is like the SNES versions you’ll be delighted. Welcome back Mario!
· Tony Hawk’s 2. An essential purchase. One of the best selling extreme sports games, Tony Hawk and friends make it onto the tiniest 32bit machine available in style. Brilliant!
Sites for more information: Nintendo only: www.Nintendo.com. Naturally, I bought mine from here, and although I ordered the "carry case" pack, I was given the "starter" pack, but the accessories are yet to arrive. I don't mind really (snarls at lazy telephone employee).
So, with future titles including Super Mario Kart Advance, Sonic The Hedgehog, Silent Hill, Bomberman, Castlevania and many, many more (check the Nintendo homepage) the future is luminous for everything Nintendo! I imagine over 2million GBA consoles will have been sold worldwide by the end of the week. Expect the Tomb Raider, Fifa, Resident Evil and Tekken franchises to jump on board within the not too distant future. Games cost around £30, so they are slightly more than Game Boy games, but they’re worth more. Just make your decisions carefully. Oh and Black and White may well appear sooner than you think. Sega will bring out Virtua Tennis 2 on the GBA next summer (hopefully - if you all email them saying what a good idea it would be!) and the old Sega classics like Golden Axe and Streets of rage are soon to make a gaming revival, and why not!
You can get a wide range of quirky and innovative accessories too, and the GBA will even be able to act as a control pad for the Game Cube – Nintendo’s future console, so get one now! Right, you can get mains adaptors, worm lights, link cables, carry-cases and so forth. There’ll be 3rd party and official, so have a look around.
Advice? Keep the screen clean! Fingerprints will always be a pain, so have a tissue or duster nearby at all times. Batteries will not last forever, so it is advisable to get a pair of rechargeable ones, the GBA does come with 2AA Panasonics, but they aren’t rechargeable.
So what about the box? (Who cares about the box!?)
Only teasing. It’s a nice box, you get instructions but I won’t bore you with a 300word description of the box.
You can play all of your old GB games on it! Not bad! If the PS2 was a handheld, it'd get flattened ;)
That’s it for the moment! Look after it, enjoy Game Boy Advance 24:7.
Dan2K1
Page:
LOL
Ah yes, but you wouldn't say that while you're eating it though. Full of nutrients, energy and soft cheese - mmmmmm.
I'd be prepaed to give more than a Pizza to play as that little skater dude or Axel agagin!
My pizza takeaway, that't what.
Whenever
> you see this at the start of a topic, do you, like me, just skip it
> and move on because of those two words: 'length' and 'review'?
Most people would be sensible enough to see who wrote it first...
I'll rephrase just for you.
"Do not excuse the length of this review, it's all my fault and not yours - so don't claim any credit for it"
Thanks
> you see this at the start of a topic, do you, like me, just skip it
> and move on because of those two words: 'length' and 'review'?
Most people would be sensible enough to see who wrote it first...
I'll rephrase just for you.
"Do not excuse the length of this review, it's all my fault and not yours - so don't claim any credit for it"
Thanks
Ive heard that all the Sega classics will come on one cartridge like the DC pack released in the States not that long ago - I think there were like five or six games in one!!
Whatever happens I think Streets of Rage will be very popular - What I wouldnt give to play that one more time!!
Whatever happens I think Streets of Rage will be very popular - What I wouldnt give to play that one more time!!
Ive heard that Golden Axe and Streets of Rage may come on one cartridge. Has anyone heard any more on this?
To think Golden Axe was original in its day because you could ride on the backs of big Dragons who flamed your enemys...oh and you had the ability to get multiple potions out of the little elves.
Classics though, great gameplay.
Tyris Flair the first videogame sex symbol...will she make it to the GameBoyAdvance....we can hope :-)
To think Golden Axe was original in its day because you could ride on the backs of big Dragons who flamed your enemys...oh and you had the ability to get multiple potions out of the little elves.
Classics though, great gameplay.
Tyris Flair the first videogame sex symbol...will she make it to the GameBoyAdvance....we can hope :-)
Page: