Game Boy Advance Impressions

Written by Jeff Pear on May 15, 2001

Game Boy Advance Impressions: All your Gameboy Advance are belong to us.

Gameboy Advance; everyone knew it was going to rock but does it kick as much ass as it's supposed to? Let me start by saying this Gameboy Advance is remarkable and is groundbreaking however it does have some flaws. I'll get into those a bit later. Now onto the first impressions!

System
The System is just sexy all around. It has a great finished quality and is sturdy as can be. I already dropped mine once (doh!) and it took the hit like a champ. The L+R buttons could have used a little work but oh well I can deal. The best new feature is the battery light. It changes 3 different colors Green when the batteries are all good, Orange when they are dying, and Red, which means save now and get some new batteries sucker.

Games
After opening the GBA box and popping in my copy of Super Mario Advance in the first thing you notice is the new Nintendo startup sound. No longer do we have the Gameboy beep, we now have a colored Nintendo logo and a new superior sound which you can check out here in a nice mp3 format. Finally Mario starts to boot up and you see what vivid colors the system is really capable of. GBA is a visual marvel, but wait what's this, its first flaw?! Yes, GBA uses the same type of screen as GBC does. You need to be in some pretty bright light to see all the colors, and don't think you'll be putting your old Worm Light on there. The GBA uses a different wattage so your Worm Light won't be anywhere near as bright as it was for your GBC, time to go buy a new GBA Worm Light. While we're at it you can't use the original Gameboy's link cable either, it may fit into the slot but you'll transfer a whole lot of nothing during a game, courtesy of the GBA's faster bit rate.

Anyhow back to Mario Advance. If you've played Super Mario Bros. 2 then you've got the gist of what Super Mario Advance is. However, Nintendo changed the levels ever so slightly, by adding in 5 special coins to collect in every stage that will unlock a bonus (I won't go past that, don't want to spoil but it's pretty cool what you do unlock). New baddies are also the order of the day, how about some Shy Guys that are twice the size of Mario and refill your life when you throw them around. Birdo is also new and improved for some of the levels. Don't pass Super Mario Advance up just because you think you've already gotten all you can out of it from playing Mario 2. Included in SMA you get the original Mario Bros. Arcade game. You know it from Super Mario Bros. 3 on NES, where you have to flip all of the different baddies over to finish the level. That's where multiplayer comes in and let me be the first to say that GBA is a multiplayer lovers dream machine. Playing against another person with only one cart; that's what I'm talking about. Onto F-Zero.

Continuing with Nintendo's rehash theme, F-Zero Advance is the systems best showcase of what it's capable of. Think of it as the Pilotwings of Gameboy Advance. We get all new courses and all new racers for this version of F-Zero. With F-Zero however you see that the system could have stood to be just a bit bigger. Back in the hey-day of F-Zero on SNES all you had to use to control were the accelerator, brake, and steering. Nintendo threw in L+R for making sharp corners but no one used them. Sadly with F-Zero Advance you always have to use the L+R controls to make those corners. So you're going to have to get used to that, but that's my only problem with F-Zero.

The new courses are awesome the new racers are boring but their stats are the same as our beloved original racers. Multiplayer on the other hand is cool if you have 4 carts, but the one cart deal just really doesn't work as it should. Nintendo left us with the impression that we would be able to have only one cart and play the entire multiplayer game that way. However, this is not so. You can only play one course with your buddies if you have one cart, sucks doesn't it? We all knew that this 4 player-one cart deal was to good to be true, so suck it up and each buy a copy of the game.

Konami Wai Wai Racing (Konami Kart Racing here in the US) is one of the best GBA games out now in my opinion. It's an original title, its cart racing, and its well done. Most people consider this a blatant rip off of Mario Kart simply put out during the calm before the storm that will be Mario Kart Advance. I feel that it's everything but that. Konami has its own characters that are just as well known in Japan as Nintendo's are, they simply put out an excellent racer. The controls are perfect. A is gas, B is brake, L is for weapons, and R is to jump. These simple controls lead to heated races and battles and suit this genre perfectly. Nintendo will most likely use this exact control scheme for Mario Kart Advance. The courses are your typical cart racing courses. Sharp 90° turns and water/falling off the course hazards. Wai Wai has tons of extra modes that you will earn from beating the races, I won't go into them here, as I don't want to spoil anything that this lovely game has to offer. If your looking for a game to pick up launch day that will always be a fresh breath of air from any other game look no further than Konami Kart Racing

Final Word
The Gameboy Advance is here to stay, this was obvious from the start. It is setup almost perfectly and has the games to back it. Selling 700,000 units on launch is an excellent start and we can already assume that the 500,000 for America have already been pre-ordered or will be sold launch day. So if you haven't already, I suggest you get down to your local game store and pre-order yourself a GBA with some games so that you too can bask in its excellence.

Now here are some audio files from the games:

Mario Advance Sound Clip
Konami Wai Wai Racing Clip
F-Zero Sound Clip
The new Startup Sound