Game Boy Advance


The is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advance. Compared to the Game Boy Color it succeeded, the console offered a significantly more powerful ARM7 processor and improved graphics, while retaining backward compatibility with games initially developed for its predecessor.
The GBA is part of the sixth generation of video game consoles, competing against Nokia's N-Gage and Bandai's WonderSwan. The original model was followed in 2003 by the Game Boy Advance SP, a redesigned model with a frontlit screen and clamshell form factor. A newer revision of the SP with a backlit screen was released in 2005. A miniaturized redesign, the Game Boy Micro, was released in September 2005.
By June 2010, the Game Boy Advance series including revisions, had sold 81.51 million units worldwide, massively outselling its competitors. Its successor, the Nintendo DS, launched in November 2004, was backward compatible with GBA games. GBA sales ended by 2010 after over nine years.

History

Project Atlantis

When the original Game Boy launched in 1989, many questioned Nintendo’s decision to release a monochrome handheld console, when competitors like the Lynx and Game Gear had color screens. However, the rivals' color displays were criticized for their poor battery life and bulky size, while the Game Boy’s better portability and battery longevity increased its popularity.
Nintendo publicly pledged to develop a color version of the Game Boy only when the technology overcame the limitations of existing color handhelds. Internally, however, a team led by Satoru Okada—who had worked on the original Game Boy—was already experimenting with color screens. Their early 1990s prototype, codenamed "Project Atlantis," featured a color display and a 32-bit processor designed by ARM. Despite the promising technology, the team was not satisfied with the outcome and the project was shelved by 1997.
However, as competitors such as the Neo Geo Pocket and WonderSwan entered the market, Nintendo decided to create a color version of the Game Boy by combining the color screen they had been testing for Project Atlantis with a faster version of the existing Game Boy's 8-bit processor. The Game Boy Color launched in 1998.

Game Boy Advance

Still under pressure from its competitors' handhelds, Nintendo started developing a successor to the Game Boy Color. The project, codenamed Advanced Game Boy, would utilize the 32-bit processing power from Project Atlantis. Details about the GBA emerged at the Space World 1999 trade show in late August.
Nintendo officially announced the Game Boy Advance on September 1, 1999, revealing details about the system's specifications, and that the handheld would first be released in Japan in August 2000, with the North American and European launch dates slated for the end of the same year. On August 21, 2000, IGN showed images of a GBA development kit running a demonstrational port of Yoshi's Story, and on August 22, pre-production images of the GBA were revealed in Famitsu magazine in Japan.
The GBA’s design featured a landscape form factor, diverging from the portrait layout of the previous Game Boy models. The design put the buttons to the sides of the device instead of below the screen. The shift was the work of French designer Gwénaël Nicolas and his Tokyo-based studio, Curiosity Inc.
In an announcement on August 24, 2000, Nintendo revealed the final design of the GBA to the public, announced its Japan and North America launch dates, and revealed the ten launch games. At Space World 2000, Nintendo also showcased several peripherals, including the GBA link cable, the GameCube – GBA link cable, a rechargeable battery pack, and an infrared communication adaptor. By March 2001, Nintendo confirmed the $99.99 price and announced 15 launch games for the system, with over 60 expected by the end of the year.
Nintendo spent about $75 million marketing the system in North America.
All Game Boy Advance models were discontinued in the Americas in 2008, and globally by the end of 2010.

Hardware

The Game Boy Advance uses a custom system on a chip, integrating the CPU and other major components into a single package, named the CPU AGB by Nintendo. Manufactured by the Sharp Corporation, the SoC contains two processors: the ARM7TDMI running at a clock rate of 16.776 megahertz for GBA games, and the Sharp SM83 running at 4.194 MHz or 8.389 MHz for backward compatibility with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. The system operates in two modes: GBA mode using the ARM7TDMI, and the backward-compatible CGB mode using the SM83.
The ARM7TDMI is a hybrid 16-bit and 32-bit RISC processor based on the ARM architecture, designed to maximize performance under power and storage constraints, making it more suitable for use in a handheld device. It features sixteen 32-bit registers and a 32-bit bus connected to 32 kilobytes of "working" RAM on the SoC, and 16-bit buses interfacing with the 256 KB of "working" RAM on the motherboard and the Game Pak. In addition to the 32-bit ARM instruction set, the CPU supports the 16-bit THUMB instruction set, which is used when executing instructions over the 16-bit buses.
The SM83 is a hybrid between two other 8-bit processors: the Intel 8080 and the Zilog Z80. The SM83 has the seven 8-bit registers of the 8080 but uses the Z80's programming syntax and extra bit manipulation instructions, along with adding new instructions to optimize the processor for certain operations related to the way the hardware was arranged. Like the Game Boy Color, the SM83 in the Advance could be commanded to operate at either 4.194 MHz when playing games compatible with the original Game Boy or at 8.389 MHz when playing games designed for the Game Boy Color. The SoC also contains a 2 KB "bootstrap" ROM which is used to start up the device in CGB mode.
The CPU CGB incorporates an updated version of Nintendo's venerable Picture Processing Unit, which was used in the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The PPU is essentially a basic GPU that renders visuals using 96 KB of Video RAM located inside the CPU CGB. Inside the PPU itself is 1 KB of object attribute memory and 1 KB of palette RAM, which are optimized for fast rendering. The display itself is a 2.9-inch thin-film transistor color liquid-crystal display, measuring wide by high. The screen is 240 pixels wide by 160 pixels high in a 3:2 aspect ratio.
Foreground objects are sprites with up to 128 per frame, sized from 8×8 to 64×64 pixels, and with 16 or 256 colors. Backgrounds can be rendered in one of six different modes. The first three are the "character modes," which use traditional tile map graphics: Mode 0 offers four static layers, Mode 1 has three layers with one affine transformation layer, and Mode 2 has two affine layers. The other three are the "bitmap modes" which allow for rendering 3D geometry: Mode 3 has a single full-sized, fully-colored frame, Mode 4 provides two full-sized frames with 256 colors each, and Mode 5 provides two half-sized, fully-colored frames. Having two bitmaps allows "page-flipping" to avoid the artifacts that can sometimes appear when re-drawing a bitmap. While the bitmap modes were considered cutting-edge, most games avoided using them because they cost a lot of CPU resources.
For sound, the Game Boy Advance features two PCM sample player channels, which work in combination with the Audio Processing Unit, a programmable sound generator first used by the legacy Game Boy. The APU has four channels: a pulse wave generation channel with frequency and volume variation, a second pulse wave generation channel with only volume variation, a wave channel that can reproduce any waveform recorded in RAM, and a white noise channel with volume variation.
The Game Boy Advance features a D-pad and six action buttons labeled 'A,' 'B,' 'L,' 'R,' 'SELECT,' and 'START.' The top of the console has a link port that allows it to be connected to other Game Boy devices using a Game Link Cable or a Wireless Adapter, or the GameCube home console with a special GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable.

Technical specifications

Color variants

The Game Boy Advance was available in numerous colors and limited editions throughout its production. It was initially available in Arctic, Black, Orange, Fuchsia, Glacier, and Indigo. Later in the system's lifespan, additional colors and special editions were released, including: Red, Clear Orange/Black, Platinum, White, Gold, Hello Kitty edition, The King of Fighters edition, Chobits edition, Battle Network Rockman EXE 2, Mario Bros. edition, and Yomiuri Giants edition.
Several Pokémon-themed limited-edition systems were made available in Pokémon Center stores in Japan. These editions include: Gold Pokémon edition, Suicune edition, Celebi edition, and Latias/Latios edition.

Games

With hardware performance comparable to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Game Boy Advance represents progress for sprite-based technology. The system's library includes platformers, SNES-like role-playing video games, and games ported from various 8-bit and 16-bit systems of the previous generations. This includes the Super Mario Advance series, and the system's backward compatibility with all earlier Game Boy titles. Though most GBA games primarily employ 2D graphics, developers have ambitiously designed some 3D GBA games that push the limits of the hardware, including first-person shooters like a port of Doom, racing games like V-Rally 3, and even platformers, like Asterix & Obelix XXL.
Some cartridges are colored to resemble the game. Others have special built-in features, including rumble features, tilt sensors, and solar sensors.
In Japan, the final game to be released on the system was Final Fantasy VI Advance on November 30, 2006, which was also the final game published by Nintendo on the system. In North America, the last game for the system was Samurai Deeper Kyo, released on February 12, 2008. In Europe, the last game for the system is The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night, released on November 2, 2007. The Japan-only Rhythm Tengoku, the first game in what would eventually become known outside Japan as the Rhythm Heaven/''Rhythm Paradise series, is the final first-party-developed game for the system, released on August 3, 2006.
While those games were the last to be officially released at the time, a game titled Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution'' was released in 2025 for the console. It was originally in development until 2004, when work halted due to the lack of a publisher. Development resumed in 2023, using the same code and hardware.