"Don't let its size fool you!"

This is the future in handheld gaming and it's start has been a great hit. It took me all day to find my GBA since all the stores were sold out!

Design 9/10: Pretty well designed. There are two things I dislike though. The power button, which is located on the bottom, is inconvenient to get to and the way you turn it to cut it ON is also inconvenient. The other thing is the speaker. Even though it is very loud it is located right under the A and B buttons. This leads to sometimes your hand covering it. Otherwise I love the new L and R buttons and everything is the same just layed out differently. Like the D-Pad is on the opposite side of the A and B buttons.

Screen 8/10: Ok the animation and everything is great. The new graphics are superb for a hand-held. Though, on some games, the darkness of the game makes it very inconvenient to play in dim lighting. For example, the Castlevania game has a very dark background usually and it tends to be hard to see anything even the character when you are in dim light. I have yet to but any of the accessories but hopefully they will serve useful.

Control 10/10: The L and R buttons are a very good attachment to the hand-held world. The controls on this system are a little looser, yet tighter than the GBC. The control responds very good, althought most of the time it may depend on the game for how well the control reacts.

Sound 10/10: The first thing you notice is the sound and how loud it can get. It gets pretty loud for that tiny speaker in there. The music on the games are great and very good for hand-held, it's just like the SNES! I love the sound on this system and almost everything about it!

Overall 8/10: To me the screen sets it back a lot with it's dimness and those few inconveniences in the design set it back a little. This is a must buy for anyone for this will be the future of hand-held gaming. I'd also recommend this to anyone who liked the SNES.

This game suprised me with its size right when I took it out of the box. I wasn't expecting it to be that compact! They probably took a lot of the bulkiness look out of the original design. I would have prefered the tropical colors of the original design but they give us arctic, white, and purple. These sell around $100 and games around $40 so expect to spend a little.

The carts are also another surprise. These things are small, not even and in tall and about as wide as a GBC cart. I find sticking the old carts into the system weird though. They stick out about an inch or so since they aren't made for such big carts so it looks a little tacky. ^_^ It's all good though and you'll love this system to death and let's hope for the best on this system and the games that make the system what it truly is.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/20/01, Updated 06/20/01