Well, it's about time!

  Almost one and a half years has passed since Nintendo released its last incarnation of the Gameboy, and I was getting worried. Since they've sold approximately 11 Gamecubes, I figured they were about due to find yet ANOTHER way to get every Gameboy owner to buy their system all over again to make some quick bucks.

Enter the Gameboy Advance SP -  Now, you may ask, "Why couldn't Nintendo have made a backlit Gameboy back in 2001? Or 1989 for that matter?" Well,  you obviously didn't know that backlighting a portable game unit was a scientific impossibility until 2003. The lineage of deceitful and faux lighting in portables until that time is a story shrouded in secrecy and shame...  

Some of us old-timers remember the Mattel Football and Baseball portable games of yesteryear. Ah, the memories, coming home from kindergarten, watching Smurfs or Knight Rider and then, engaging in a pulse-pounding sports game with players (and balls) rendered by no more than glowing red squares... But, were they TRULY glowing? Much like ancient Egyptians building pyramids, how could primitive (1983) gaming companies actually produce a backlit game?  

  Theories exist that, much like the Pyramids, these devices were actually built by highly advanced alien cultures who visited Earth for fun. Other suggest witchcraft. A thorough investigation by The Atari 2600 Portables Site reveals, however, that the glowing red squares were actually lighting bugs that had been genetically altered by the Pentagon for use in Granada. After spending billions on the bugs and having the war only last a month, the Pentagon had no choice but to license out the technology. Mattel bit, and the Football and Baseball games were born.

  Many years later, Nintendo, not wanting to sell-out to unproven and potential national security-breaching technology, did the honest thing in 1989 by releasing the un-backlit, spinach-colored screened Gameboy. An immediate success around the world (except in Alaska where it's dark for 6 months of the year) the Gameboy had a stranglehold on the portable market, then and forever. But, there was another...

    The same group of people who designed the Amiga (which had a backlit screen but cheated since it was a monitor) design a portable system called the "Handy". Atari dug around in the couches in its corporate break room / bathroom and found enough money to license the unit. Thus, the Atari Lynx was born!

  Both Lynx owners were astounding as they turned on their Lynxes (is that a word?) and discovered - light! Surely this must be a mistake, as the Gameboys owned by everyone else at school were dark and dim...

  Well, for you two people out there, I've come to set your minds at ease and end the sleepless nights that have plagued you since MC Hammer was popular. The Atari Lynx may have seemed to be backlit, but in reality (which bites) it used thinly ground depleted uranium smuggled out of Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall which, when actuated by a resonator, created an effervescent glow that APPEARED to make it a backlit system.

In the end, a full 124 years passed between the invention of the light bulb and the creation of a true backlit portable game system.

Nintendo, being the forthright and responsible company that they are, decided that it was time to bestow upon the world a savior...  a backlit Gameboy!

-  The Gameboy Advance SP New Features List!  -

• NEW!   Folding backlit screen improves visibility by 75%

• NEW!   Folding backlit screen improves chances of children breaking the screen, thus requiring the purchase of a new unit, by 100%

• NEW!   Non-built-in headphone jack improves chances of you having to buy a headphone jack adapter by 100%
  
  
  
  

• NEW!   "Backlight Off" feature almost 10% more useful than "Backlight Off" feature on the Atari Lynx.
  
  
  
  

• NEW!    Compact size and increased portability improves chances of you buying re-packaged games you already bought 10 years ago for the SNES by 80%
  
  
  
  

• NEW!   Compact size of Gameboy Advance SP packaging gives retailers 42% more room to store unsold Gamecubes.

  Now, I know you're thinking, "Well, this is all fine and good, but, what about the benchmark CAVE COMPARISON? Where does the GBA SP stand on that one?"

 The Benchmark CAVE COMPARISON!