Recently launched on the Australian market with a truly bizarre series of television spots (but a relatively small set of games), the Gameboy Advance literally marks a change of direction for Nintendo, featuring a horizontal screen (40mm by 61mm) for in-game display. It’s also a touch larger than its Gameboy, Gameboy Pocket and Gameboy Color predecessors. The control buttons are of the familiar Nintendo cross-stick variety for movement, with four ‘action* buttons. Two of the buttons could have been yanked from a standard Gameboy and are on the left side of the system, while two analogstyle buttons are on the top of the unit. The Gameboy Advance is also intended to act as a controller for Nintendo’s upcoming GameCube, although that system uses a controller with many more buttons.
Nintendo’s hype for the Gameboy Advance centres on the unit’s impressive display capabilities. It’s a pity, then, that the screen is so dark. Nintendo decided against fitting a backlight in an effort to maximise battery life from the AA cells. This does give the system a battery life of about 10 hours, but it still falls quite short of Nintendo’s claim of 15, and under any but the best light conditions, it’s very hard to see the onscreen action.
LCD screens that forgo backlighting all suffer the same problem — try looking at your digital watch in a dark room and you’ll see what I mean. A watch, however, is something you glance at for maybe a second, while a games machine is something you’re likely to stare at for hours on end. The result is sore eyes, not to mention a sore neck due to having to tilt the unit to make the best use of the available light. No doubt Nintendo (or a third party) will quickly develop a light adaptor similar to the ones already available for the older Gameboy models,
but it’s still something the developers should have thought of to start with.
Nintendo’s choice of launch games is somewhat underwhelming. We examined Super Mario Advance, basically a rejig of a Super Nintendo version of Super Mario Brothers 2, which itself was a re-release of an even earlier game. It’s still good fun, but chances are that if you’re a console junkie, you’ve already played it. We also played F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, another re-release of an earlier title. Both games looked superb for a portable machine — just as long as the light was right.

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