Robot Claw

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was Nintendo’s follow up to the massively successful Game Boy handheld console, and would continue to cement their dominance in the handheld market. The GBA sold over 80 million units in its lifetime, and is fondly remembered as a fantastic handheld with a very strong game library.

The GBA was released in Japan in March 2001. My first GBA was a Japanese version (in the milky pinky color) that I bought via my Working Designs connections in April, but I didn’t buy any games for it until the US release in June. I initially used it just to play Game Boy games since it was reverse compatible, and I expect when I got my first GBA game I was astonished at how good it was.

That’s my first model on the left, next to two Game Boy Advance SP units (both bought in 2003). The SP update was a landmark in design and is the obvious precursor of the DS. While the initial GBA model lacked a backlit screen and used AA batteries, the SP was rechargeable and had a fully backlit screen. In its day the SP was incredible.

In total I’d own five GBA’s; the three above, a second launch model traded in when the SP was released, and this:

That’s the GBA Micro released in 2005. It’s tiny and can’t play original Game Boy games, but it has an amazing screen, massive battery life and is the most portable handheld console ever made. It also failed since consumers had already moved on to the DS, and GBA Micro’s are worth a pretty penny these days.

All told I bought about 150 GBA games during its lifetime, and still own 145 of them. I took almost all of them out for a look today and here they are:

As I said the game library of the GBA contained some true masterpieces. At the same time though it contained the usual shovelware for kids, and of the >1500 games released for it I’d say easily 1000 are forgettable. But when the games were good they were exceptionally good, and you can bet I owned and played most of those. Some highlights from my collection:

There were lots of Yu-Gi-Oh games released for the system, and not all were translated. But the average quality of the nine that were is extremely high, and by the latter games we were getting annual installments of a very well done simulation of the TCG that featured well over 1000 cards, strong AI and robust story modes. I played these religiously, and always wondered why we never got equally good MTG games?

Megaman continued onto the GBA in the Zero series (which is great) but the original-to-the-system Battle Network series was a great hybrid of action and card game that improved with each of the six installments. I bought them all, and in fact the last game I ever bought for the system was this:

Yes I never opened it! I wonder what it’s worth these days?

The GBA was very similar to the SNES as a console and many games were ported over including most of the Final Fantasy series. Since FFVI is one of my favorite games of all time, it’s unsurprising I consider this one of the gems of the system,

And speaking of gems, it’s difficult to say which of the three Castlevania games for the GBA is best since they’re all incredibly great. So great in fact I’d say these are collectively the top three GBA games, and a must-own for any serious GBA collection. (Sadly they’re all very expensive these days; and if you want boxed copies of all three expect to pay $500+)

Speaking of serious collections, I suspect my GBA collection represents a good chunk of the value of my total collection these days. For starters the system features some very good games that suffered from poor marketing or distribution (most of which I own), and for seconds most people in those days trashed the boxes and just kept the cartridges (but not me). This means I own in near mint condition quite a few games that cost me ~$20-30 almost 20 years ago that are worth quite a lot more now.

In fact almost every game I own seems to be worth more than I paid for it and some much more (one game is >$500). I doubt I’ll ever sell though; the GBA is absolutely one of my favorite consoles of all time and there’s a lot of memories in these games.

As you may know the GBA was replaced in late 2004 by the Nintendo DS and the last piece of GBA software I bought was in 2006. It only reigned for five years, but in its day the GBA was nearly perfect 🙂

30 years ago today Nintendo released their first portable game system: the Game Boy.

That’s a very early Japanese advert touting the ‘handy game machine’ (being played by young boys obviously lost/abandoned in the Australian outback)! As you see the system was very much marketed at children, but as we know now went on to become beloved by players of all ages.

The Game Boy went on to sell almost 120 million units in the fourteen years it was sold, and directly led into the followup Game Boy Advance and then DS series. Many competing handheld consoles came and went, but none made much of a dent in a market absolutely dominated by Nintendo’s Game Boys.

I’ve loved this device since it was released, and to this day handhelds (especially Nintendo ones) are my favorite game systems. Between the Game Boy and it’s followups I own over twenty pieces of hardware and over six hundred games! Needless to say the release of the Game Boy 30 years back had a direct effect on my life 🙂

I’ve written about my (original model) Game Boy collection before. You can read that here (and yes I misspelled the console name throughout). In preparing this post I dug out my collection for another look-see. Here’s a shot of a portion of the game boxes I mentioned five years ago:

And here’s another shot of all five of my Game Boys (all of which still work):

I was looking for a particular game to feature, and found these four Japanese release Pokémon games I bought to play since I couldn’t wait for the USA releases:

(Yes I ended up buying all the USA versions as well, except for Pokémon Card 2 which was never localized!)

And since my original post I’ve added a few more games to my collection, including two more beautiful Wizardry games:

And this guy, bought for ¥100 in Japan last January:

I fired up the above just now on one of my Game Boy Pockets just for some nostalgia…

It was terrible 🙂

The Game Boy may be ‘obsolete’ now, but it will never be forgotten. It’s legacy includes not just numerous followup systems, but also a library of amazing games many of which are still great fun today. The systems themselves are notoriously robust so if you’ve got one in an attic somewhere why not get it out, pop in some batteries, and fire up Tetris again for some late 80’s gaming nostalgia?