Pocket one of these! (Game Boy Advance in General (GBA))

Name: BOBBOB

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Product:	Game Boy Advance in General (GBA)
Date:	19/09/02 (149 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, Good picture quality without blurring as in previous gameboys, Link-up facility

Disadvantages: Exspencive games for what they are, Game cartridges are so small that they can be easily lost

Portable gaming has been taken to a new level thanks to this little feller. Small and light with a wide range of title available, but that's not all this baby can do!

The gameboy advance is one mean console. Its 32-bit display provides excellent graphics for on when you're on the move and its wide range of features makes it an ideal purchase as a present for kids or grown-ups. The gameboy advance comes in a wide range of colours, including lilac, white, pink, purple and more recently orange, black and silver. The gameboy advance has a total of 4 buttons for game play, start/select buttons and a conventional control pad for movements.

The sound quality you get from this little machine is quite astounding but often depends on the game. For example DOOM Advance has mono sound, whereas Mario kart has amazing digital stereo sound. There are literally hundreds of add-ons for this console such as extension handles to make it more comfortable to grip to light magnifiers to enhance the picture brightness and clarity. The display this little machine offers is of an extremely good quality although let down significantly by its dull display. The console is not backlit and the foremost problem with the GBA (gameboy advance) is getting enough light on the display for your gaming experience to be normal. It is therefore highly recommended that your purchase a light magnifier. An alternative to this is the backlit display add-on. However this voids your warrantee and is EXTREMELY tricky to put on and I wouldn't recommend doing it. Nintendo have announced another gameboy release with the backlit display already present and it would be recommended to wait for this. The gameboy runs off of 2 AA batteries and a car/adapter rechargeable unit can be bought for about £10. The amount of battery life you get from 2 AA batteries is quite sufficient to last for about a day and a half (16hours) if continuously left on. One of the main features of the GBA is its li
ttle black connector hole at the top of the console. This allows multiple users to link-up and play. However this usually requires 2 game cartridges however games such as Bomberman only require 1 Cartridge and a maximum of 4 GBA's can be linked up.

There are a wide variety of games for the gameboy advance and even all the previous gameboy colour and normal gameboy games can be used. The cartridge size of the new gameboy games is extremely small and can therefore be easily lost and therefore a carrier case is recommended to keep all your games in. These cost around £10 and come in a choice of colours and styles. Also available for the GBA is an action reply cart, this enables games to unlock hidden features such as cheats. You can also buy for around £80 a T.V. add-on, which turns your GBA into a miniature travel T.V. however I haven't seen, the quality and cannot advise you on whether this is worth the large price tag. In addition to this you can also buy a cartridge writer and blank cartridges. This allows you to link your GBA up to your computer and download games from the Internet onto your Gameboy advance. This is very expensive (around £120 in total) but allows you to own almost every game.

Overall the gameboy advance is an excellent purchase and retails now for around £59. The console may also be used in conjunction with a Gamecube and be linked up and used as an extra pad or add extra features to games. The games do retail at a price which is probably more than their worth (£35) but nevertheless as prices start to drop you can be sure that this will be an extensive investment for the future. With an internet add-on planned and new technology which may bring PC games such as Quake onto the GBA, one thing is sure, it will only get better.

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