"I defy your sluggish defiance, Nintendo"

Gaming, as a hobby, lets you see a lot of systems come and go. You watch as systems you love don't get their due praise, and you watch as systems you don't like get bought by the millions. You watch as magazines and the public fall in love with systems and you can't figure out why; you watch as your favorite system gets ripped apart and ridiculed by someone with a job in print.

The point of all this is that you also watch as people buckle their knees and make excuses for stuff that sucks. You witness people defending what is obviously disappointing or poor, and you watch as they futilely ignore the truth in favor of cloud logic and seriously predetermined bias.

This is what I've seen with the Game Boy Advance. I've watched as its many, many shortcomings have been totally overlooked, and undue favor has been given it. The GBA has been graded on a curve since day one, a curve so warped as to obscure its downfalls despite their overwhelming imposition on the machine and its games. I assume these guilty parties just love Nintendo and want to love the GBA. I fall into both those categories, but the truth is, I can't stand the Game Boy Advance.

To start, ''Advance'' is very much a misnomer. In fact, Nintendo, and anyone making games for the machine, seems to be speaking in code when creating product for the GBA. I have cracked the code, though, and I'll share with you the key to understanding GBA-talk. Key word translations are:

Develop = Port
Release = Rerelease
New = Old
Advance = Same as the last
Game Boy Advance = Portable Super Nintendo

So, here's how a breakdown of a GBA-related press release reads:

Our company plans to release a new game developed for the Game Boy Advance. It will be called ''No One Can Stop Mr. Domino Advance.

Now, the translated to English version of that release:

Our company plans to rerelease an old game ported to the Portable Super Nintendo. It will be the same as the last No One Can Stop Mr. Domino.

Now, is there something wrong with old games or even the GBA being a portable Super Nintendo? Hell no. In fact, I wish Nintendo had just had the stones to call a spade a spade, and make the thing work with old SNES cartridges. But, instead, they'd rather systematically rerelease all the old SNES game, as well as those of third parties, so we can all pay for them again. Oh, and so we can't see them anymore.

You see, the GBA is a step down in many respects from the formidable SNES. The screen is the biggest downfall; it's impossible to see. I don't exaggerate, and in fact, can only understate. The screen is not backlit, and is frustratingly difficult to discern anything on it. Colors suffer the most; any detail in the color department will never be seen. Games such as Castlevania, with its dark hues and tones, are seriously not feasible to play. It is so dark, you cannot make out the smaller enemies, or even various parts of the background you can walk or jump on. This pertains to other games too, even those such as Fire Pro Wrestling, where dark is simply not in the game; you just can't see the thing. And that's the fault of the GBA's poor screen.

And equally as poor is the control layout. Guess what Nintendo decided to do to a machine that was essentially a small SNES? Strip it of its buttons. How Nintendo justifies a four button layout for an SNES port box is beyond me, but that's the result the GBA nets you. Two face buttons, and two poorly made shoulder buttons. Poorly made in that 1st Gen Saturn Controller way. The kind with the clicky noises.

This button arrangement is not adequate, plain and simple. The Street Fighter adaptation is atrocious thanks to the terrible button outlay. Ditto for the once mind-meldingly intuitive Tony Hawk 2, which becomes a chore to play on the GBA's crippled control scheme. Funny enough, recent reviews of Tony Hawk 2X (XBOX) claim that Tony Hawk 2 is played out, and 2X doesn't offer enough new things (taking into account its five new levels and move expansion) to warrant owning it. Guess that didn't apply when the rave reviews for GBA Tony 2 were being handed out; GBA Tony is a stripped down version with none of the intuitive control that separates Tony Hawk from crappy games.

And Tony is one of the most exciting ports. Because, unlike the rest of the world, I'll pass on ''new'' rehashes of Final Fight, Phalanx, Earthworm Jim, Rayman, Super Mario 2, Mario Kart... hell, the list goes on, and it gets worse as it lengthens. The GBA is drowned in a sea of mediocre license runs (16 Jurassic park games, Mary Kate and Ashley, Harry Potter... another long, depressing list) and games that are simply better where they already were.

Nintendo is not stupid, though. They've succeeded in making all of this old stuff appeal to people as if it were brand new, and they've made the GBA's shortcomings something to marvel at. ''I CAN'T BELIEVE TONY HAWK 2 PLAYS SO WELL WITH THE GBA'S BUTTON LAYOUT.'' That is not a compliment. You can read from that simple, common statement the Game Boy Advance's three biggest, most insurmountable flaws:

It has severe design flaws (button layout, screen) that hamper the ability to play games
It is chock full of games we've already played and are used to playing better
People will make excuses for the above two, and find a way to praise the GBA in whatever semantic way they can.

I won't make those excuses. I wanted to love the GBA, even though it was full of games like ''Super Mario Advance,'' which is ONE FOURTH of the SNES release, Super Mario All Stars.

But I don't love it. It sucks. I can't see it. The buttons suck and the games ported to it aren't worth playing, portable or not. I don't need bad eyes from squinting or bad wrists from constantly tilting the machine, trying to get a better angle for the light. The GBA, like any machine, should do its best to make itself accessible. The GBA doesn't do that. And because of this smirking insolence, it's not worth taking the time to be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/03, Updated 07/03/03