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Game Boy Advance
- November 24, 2000 14:47 PM PST
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The Game Boy Advance is officially unveiled! What does it look like? How big is it? Will it rock the world?
The Game Boy Advance is officially unveiled! What does it look like? How big is it? Will it rock the world?
First, the Details?
The Game Boy Advance has some big shoes to fill since its predecessors, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color have sold millions, but Nintendo's new portable system looks like it's up to the task. The Game Boy Advance is listed as a 32-bit machine (running about 17 times the speed of the Game Boy Color), but Nintendo is billing it as "the ultimate 2D game system." According to many developers on hand at the press conference, the system is certainly capable of doing 3D games, but you have to sort of force it using some tricky programming wizardry. The Game Boy Advance also has amazing audio capabilities, although not many of the games shown at Spaceworld proved that. The GBA uses PCM audio, the same format used in audio CDs and CD ROMs, though the audio quality for the games will ultimately depend on the sample and bit rates used during recording.
Can You Feel Me?
The first thing you'll notice is how small the unit is: 82mm(L) x 144.5(W) x 24.5mm(D) (approximately 3.25 inches long, 5.6 inches long, and 1 inch deep). It's very compact and, most importantly, very light, weighting in at 140 grams (about 5 ounces). The layout is also different from the Game Boy Color, with the D-pad on the left side of the screen, and the two action buttons on the right side. The D-pad and other buttons all feel quite nice. The nicest thing about the system is the screen resolution and size. The TFT LCD display has an extremely sharp resolution of 240x160 and shows off every little detail. It's easily the biggest screen for a portable yet. According to Nintendo, it's 1.5 times larger than the Game Boy Color screen, and can show off 32,000 colors simultaneously!
The Game Boy Advance will allow gamers to hook up to four players into a single game for team or head-to-head gaming. Get ready for some epic Pokemon battles!
Here Before You Know It
The Game Boy Advance will ship first in Japan on March 21, 2001 and then in the US sometime in July 2001. The unit will retail for 9,800 yen which is about $95, so expect the final US retail to clock in somewhere between $89 and $99. With the busy holiday season ahead for the PS2 and Dreamcast, the wait for the Advance will seem very short, so the only thing you have to worry about is saving enough money.
