5 reasons that the Gameboy Advance is the best handheld ever!

I have had many Nintendo Handhelds through the years, from borrowing my sister’s Gameboy and playing Lemmings until the batteries ran dry to spending hours on Animal Crossing New Leaf and holding my breath until Pokemon X and Y come out. But the Gameboy Advance is always the one which stuck out in my mind and held a place in my heart, the many games that I had on it as a kid, the joy I had playing it and honestly it was one of the hardest consoles I ever had to let go of, so hard that 8 years after selling it on, I bought another one with the games I used to have.  So here it is, 5 reasons why the Gameboy advance and the Gameboy advance SP are the best handhelds ever and the legacy they begun.

1.    The Backlight

The Gameboy Advance SP was the first handheld to have a backlight, something which now seems like a minor thing that we take for granted but before that time if you wanted to play on your Nintendo handheld in the dark you needed an external lamp to clip onto it so you could see in the dark. So the Gods at Nintendo created a wonderful thing, a console with a backlight, one which could be turned on and off and all of a sudden, we could easily play Zelda, Spyro and other games in the dark and under our blankets late at night after our parents had sent us to bed early because it was a school night. Not only that but the backlight added a new dimension of colour to our beloved games, Mario never seemed so full of colour and life on a handheld until that moment in time.

2.    Rechargeable Batteries

Just picture the moment, you are about to defeat the legendary Pokémon on Pokémon sapphire or Pokémon when all of a sudden, the batteries in the console run out and you’ve lost all the progress you made. Then at the release of the Gameboy advance SP, we got a console which we could recharge! No longer would we have to steal the batteries from the TV remote when our parents weren’t looking or go on a rampage through drawers looking for batteries when the red light comes on, no, now we could get out our charger and sit there whilst it charged and play our game without worry.

3.    Compact and Comfortable

One thing that Nintendo are good at in my opinion is making a handheld which is comfortable and compact and nothing screamed this more than the Gameboy Advance SP.  As comfortable to hold for hours on end like all those consoles that went before but even more compact than ever. The SP itself being able to be shut not only made it the most compact Nintendo handheld ever but also protected the screen from anything lurking in the bottom of our school bags which could potentially damage the screen.  A design so ingenious that it has become a major design component for every handheld they have made since, and honestly I love it.

4.    Backward Compatible and Region-Free

These days when you buy a new console most people will sell their old ones due to the fact that their new console won’t play the games they already have. With the Gameboy Advance that was not an issue, you didn’t have to throw away that Pokémon game that you got for Christmas with your Gameboy colour, or that copy of Tetris your older sibling gave you all those years ago. No, the Gameboy advance was 100% backwards compatible with both Gameboy and Gameboy Colour games. Not only that but it was region free, meaning you could get those games which America got and we didn’t meaning the gaming possibilities were endless.

5.         Simplicity

When I say simplicity, I mean it in two ways, in use and in design.  The Gameboy advance had 7 buttons in which you would use to play the game, which was a simple layout compared to the GameCube controller which had 11 buttons or the PS1 controller which had 13. This simple layout made it easy for us to get a hold of game controls easier and truly enjoy our portable consoles. And c’mon, the Gameboy advance and Gameboy advance SP looked amazing, and in my eyes no matter how flash a handheld looks, The Gameboy Advance was just a beautiful piece of kit.

So those are my reasons why the Gameboy Advance is the greatest handheld ever, and how it paved the way for handheld’s to become something which most people have in their life, even those who do not consider themselves gamers. The Gameboy Advance has really stood the test of time and in my eyes always shines up on top as wells as bringing back a sense of nostalgia which makes me feel 10 again, I’ll come right out and say it, it’s my favourite handheld and even with the 3DS and the PS Vita showing the endless directions in which handheld gaming is going, I like to remember where it started, with the Gameboy Advance.