The release of the Game Boy Advance SP fixed the primary thing wrong with the original GBA - it gave us light!

There are many ways in which the SP shines over the original GBA, in addition the fantastic light which makes game-playing so much easier.

There's the close-shut design which keeps the screen safe from being scratched, and makes it fit perfectly in your pocket or pocketbook. It's smaller than a deck of cards now! The speaker is reasonably good, and the buttons are a bit on the small size but still quite playable. You can't plug a regular headphone into the back of the system, but an easy-to-find adaptor solves that problem. You do have to wonder why they didn't just put a normal headphone port on the back, but I imagine this strange-shaped port they used instead will have other uses soon!

There's the normal port for GBA to GBA play. And then there's the cool power adaptor! Instead of buying trillions of batteries and always burning them out, you simply plug in the fold-up power adaptor for a few hours. Once the built in batteries are charged, they'll play for 11 hours! It's a great setup that saves tons of money (and resources!) by not having you buy batteries on a weekly basis.

Of course, it plays all GBA and past generation games, so the wealth of games out there for pretty cheap money is just phenomonal. You can play literally a different game every day of the year and still have many games to go through.

Highly recommended for any gaming fan - the perfect system to keep next to your wallet for any line-waiting, time-killing or quiet lunchtime gameplay!

Buy the Game Boy Advance SP from Amazon.com

GBA Review