In early 2003, Nintendo upgraded the Game Boy Advance giving it an internal front-light that can be turned on or off, a rechargeable lithium ion battery, as well as a folding case approximately half the original size. It was designed to address some common complaints with the original Game Boy Advance which was criticized for being very uncomfortable. The Game Boy Advance SP also came with a new and much brighter LCD screen for improved playability.
Around the same time as the release of the Game Boy Micro, Nintendo released a new backlit version of the SP in North America (commonly referred to as the "GBA SP+"). The switch that controls the light now toggles between "normal" (which itself is already brighter than the original Game Boy Advance SP's screen), and "bright," an intense brightness level similar to an LCD television set.
In September 2005, Nintendo released a second redesign of the Game Boy Advance. This model, dubbed the Game Boy micro, is similar in style to the original Game Boy Advance's horizontal orientation, but is much smaller and sleeker. The Game Boy micro also allows the user an ability to switch between several colored faceplates to allow customization, a feature which Nintendo advertised heavily around the Game Boy micro's launch. Nintendo also hoped that this "fashion" feature will help target audiences outside of typical video game players, much like its new Wii. Unlike the previous Game Boy Advance models, Game Boy micro is unable to support Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles.
Nintendo's competitors in the handheld market were the Neo Geo Pocket Color, Bandai Swan Crystal, Game Park 32, Tapwave Zodiac and the Nokia N-Gage. Despite the competitors' best efforts, Nintendo maintained its majority market share with the Game Boy Advance.
To date, Nintendo has sold 80,500,000 GBA units around the world. Over half of those in the Americas and 16 million in Japan at second place.
The Game Boy Advance has become the modern flagship of sprite-based games. With hardware superior to the Super NES it has proven that sprite-based technology could improve and live side by side with the 3D games of today's consoles. The Game Boy Advance not only has one's typical platformers, but also a huge collection of SNES-style RPGs. It has also become a popular system for old-school gamers due to the increasing amount of games ported from various 8-bit and 16-bit systems of the previous era. Through the use of flash cartridges and emulators the Game Boy Advance can even play NES and TurboGrafx-16 games, as well as AGI-based Sierra On-Line PC adventure games.
Nintendo owners enjoy a huge selection of Nintendo games from Sport, Action and Adventure to Simulation, Strategy and Edutainment.
The best selling game of all times is Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, Released in March 2003 was sold at over 13 million copies.
An updated list of all GBA games can be found on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Advance_games Nowadays you can find many websites that sell Nintendo games online, where you can also find rare classics in affordable prices and games that are mostly unreachable in stores.
My personal favorite, "Games advance" is an online store with, by far, the largest online selection of both new releases and rare classics and both original and 3 rd party Nintendo accessories. Prices are very reasonable and the selection is huge. You can check them out at:
http://www.games-advance.com
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