Game Boy Advance – a twist in design

Nintendo’s Game Boy console ruled the portable gaming market during the 90s. Entering the new century, the Game Boy got its successor, and it appeared in Europe on this day in 2001.

Game Boy Advanceor GBA for short, was conceptually not a console that took risks with changes. The only major difference compared to the previous Game Boy blah is that the controller’s buttons were placed next to the screen, not below it. Nintendo didn’t really invent a new console factor there, because they used a similar design for their Game & Watch devices a good twenty years earlier.

The Game Boy Advance brought more powerful hardware, but it still ran on batteries and mostly ran 2D games. Its functionalities were the most basic, although later new possibilities came in the form of add-ons, such as connecting to a Gamecube console and e-reader. The moves weren’t particularly advanced because the console didn’t even have a screen backlight. However, in later revisions of the console this was changed.

Game Boy Advance was launched with about 15 games at the price of then 99.99 dollars. The platform continued get new games until 2008and platformer terole-playing titles stood out in sales. Among the most popular titles were Metroid Fusion, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Advance Wars, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, also the best selling titles.

The Game Boy Advance was launched with about 15 games at a price of $99.99 at the time.

The console received a total of three hardware revisions. In 2003 came the Game Boy Advance SP, then a model with an illuminated screen, and then the smaller-format Game Boy Micro. When you add up the sales of all those models, the GBA consoles were sold 81.51 million copies. The console was succeeded by the even more successful Nintendo DS, and the legacy of the GBA platform is now also offered on the Nintendo Switch console through a subscription to the Switch Online service.