Gameboy Advance SP Classic Nes Edition Review

Good Points
It's gone NES Retro style for all older gamers.

Bad Points
THERE IS NO HEADPHONE JACK!

General Comments
I just got a NES Edition GBA SP and I love it. Great handheld. If you want mobile gaming now (not in a year's time when the PSP and Gameboy DS come out) then this is the best option. Great games, good battery and solid hardware. I am very happy :)



Now to other matters, if you did some research on the internet you would find out that adding a headphone jack to the unit would mean they needed to make a smaller main board for the GBA SP. Doing this would put the production of the board up. This would add to the total price of EACH GBA! Nintendo made a judgment call in that a small percentage of users use headphones with the GBA. So this kept the overall price of the GBA down (great for everyone!). Now before you say "but I had to buy an adapter for $5" let me tell you that if they had included a headphone jack by default you would have had to pay the extra $5 (or maybe even more!) in the price of the actual GBA! By not adding it by default they kept the overall price of the unit down. If you want to use headphones, just buy the adapter it is only $5 and like I said you would be paying it as a hidden charge anyway if it was built in.



The same goes for the poor audio quality from the GBAs speaker. Do you really want a high quality speaker for a little portable games console? It isn't like a speaker that is capable of doing CD quality audio would be a great addition to this unit would it? I would rather a little lower audio quality and the GBA cost $10 or so less!



IMO, the overall quality of the GBA is outstanding for the price. People say it isn't much (if at all) better than the GameGear. I thought the same until I played my GameGear next to my GBA SP. My mind was playing tricks on me and thinking the GameGear was better than it was. I played Sonic on the GG and it is so slow compared to the GBA, not to mention the very low number of colours!



The GBA SP is much more powerful than the GG.