Last of the Line: Game Boy Advance Ended One Legacy as It Began Another
15 years after its debut, Nintendo's final single-screen handheld stands out as a herald of transition.
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One foot in the future
The end of Game Boy Advance's life also closed the door on a nearly 20-year console legacy. The success of the DS saw Nintendo retire the Game Boy name; while the trademark still has quite a bit of public mindshare, to the point that some people continue to refer to DS as "Game Boy DS," the brand name refers to a bygone era of gaming that Nintendo seems just as happy to leave in the past.
The "Game Boy" moniker itself also carries a lot of inherent connotations that Nintendo's product line has transcended. The DS succeeded largely on the strength of its non-game applications, which appealed in large part to older consumers, many of whom were women. DS wasn't just for games, and it wasn't just for boys.
As for the GBA, its place in history ultimately is a transient one. A fine console, and a decidedly successful one, it nevertheless enjoyed a shorter life and more modest sales than both the original Game Boy before it and the DS after it. Still, despite being the final entry of the Game Boy family, GBA shouldn't be seen as the last of the line but rather as the first modern portable console.
The GBA was the first portable system to run on an ARM processor, leaving behind older architectures derived from ’70s standards (like the Zilog Z80 and Intel 8080) in favor of RISC (reduced instruction set command) technology developed in the ’90s. Originally designed for desktop systems, RISC chips like the GBA's ARM7 proved perfect for portable consoles thanks to their energy efficiency and the way their specific functionality yields excellence performance with modest clock speeds and in very little physical space. Today, nearly every mobile device uses a chip set derived from ARM's processors, including 3DS, Vita, and the iPhone, making GBA a true pioneer in gaming and beyond.
The GBA also served as a test bed for countless concepts and innovations that would become standard fare in later Nintendo hardware creations. It introduced a low-power sleep mode, available through a menu selection in certain games, that would become a fundamental feature in the DS hardware. The eReader card add-on and NES Classics series saw Nintendo testing the waters with back catalog game re-releases, attempting to determine what the market would bear in terms of pricing and alternate publishing models. GBA saw Nintendo's first attempt at multiplayer through wireless communication, tentative experiments in handheld-to-console communication (a concept that looks to be an integral element of the upcoming NX platform), and a move toward modern handheld tech.
The first two models of GBA also feel like attempts at a dry run for the eventual design of the DS. Combine the relationship between control inputs and screen as seen in the original GBA with the flip-top design of GBA SP and you have Nintendo DS. Not coincidentally, the initial GBA hardware format strongly resembles the old Game & Watch family, whose dual-screen models directly inspired the DS.
Oh, and of course, the GBA played host to countless excellent games, most of which carried forward the essence of the 16-bit era — something that had otherwise been abandoned by the industry. Representing an all-too-fleeting moment in history, Game Boy Advance encompassed the best of gaming's early days while planting a foot firmly in the future.