Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance arrived in Japan on the 21st of March, 2001, at a price of $99.99 in North America, and within its first week in the United States it became the fastest-selling video game console in the country. Five hundred thousand units moved in those opening seven days. Nintendo had spent about $75 million marketing the system in North America, and the gamble paid off. In the United Kingdom, 81,000 units sold in the first week, surpassing the PlayStation 2's previous record of 20,000. What made a handheld screen worth that kind of enthusiasm? And how did a console with no backlight, criticized by reviewers on day one, end up selling 81.51 million units worldwide?
When the original Game Boy launched in 1989, rivals like the Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear already had color screens. Critics of those machines, though, pointed to poor battery life and bulky size as fatal weaknesses. Nintendo's gray-scale machine had better portability and longer battery life, and those qualities carried it to dominance. Nintendo publicly pledged to develop a color version only when the technology was ready. Behind closed doors, a team led by Satoru Okada, who had also worked on the original Game Boy, was already running experiments. Their early 1990s prototype, codenamed Project Atlantis, combined a color display with a 32-bit ARM-designed processor. By 1997, the team shelved the project, unsatisfied with the results. When the Neo Geo Pocket and WonderSwan entered the market, Nintendo's response was pragmatic: pair the color screen tested for Project Atlantis with a faster version of the existing 8-bit processor. That compromise became the Game Boy Color, launched in 1998.
Pressure from competing handhelds pushed Nintendo to plan a true successor to the Game Boy Color. The internal project carried the codename Advanced Game Boy, abbreviated AGB, and it would finally use the 32-bit processing power that Project Atlantis had demonstrated. Details surfaced publicly at the Space World 1999 trade show in late August of that year. On the 1st of September, 1999, Nintendo made an official announcement with system specifications, naming Japan as the first launch territory. On the 21st of August, 2000, IGN showed images of a development kit running a port of Yoshi's Story. The following day, Famitsu magazine in Japan published pre-production images. The GBA's most visible departure from previous models was its form factor. Earlier Game Boys held the screen above the buttons; the Advance placed buttons to the sides of the screen in a wide landscape layout. That redesign was the work of French designer Gwenael Nicolas and his Tokyo-based studio, Curiosity Inc. On the 24th of August, 2000, Nintendo revealed the final design publicly, confirmed Japanese and North American launch dates, and announced ten launch games.
Nintendo's engineers built the GBA around a custom system on a chip called the CPU AGB, manufactured by Sharp Corporation. The chip contains two separate processors running side by side. The ARM7TDMI runs at 16.776 MHz to handle GBA games. The Sharp SM83 runs at either 4.194 MHz or 8.389 MHz to handle backward-compatible Game Boy and Game Boy Color software. The SM83 is itself a hybrid of two older processors: the Intel 8080 and the Zilog Z80, borrowing registers from one and programming syntax from the other. The ARM7TDMI connects to 32 kilobytes of fast on-chip RAM and communicates with 256 KB of motherboard RAM over a 16-bit bus. When bus width dropped to 16 bits, the processor switched to the THUMB instruction set to maintain efficiency. The display measured 2.9 inches diagonally, 61.2 mm wide by 40.8 mm tall, at a resolution of 240 by 160 pixels in a 3:2 aspect ratio. The screen could render up to 32,768 colors, with 511 simultaneously in character mode and all at once in bitmap mode. For sound, the system paired two PCM sample channels with a four-channel Audio Processing Unit inherited from the original Game Boy. The APU's four channels covered pulse waves, arbitrary waveforms from RAM, and white noise.
Hardware performance roughly matching the Super Nintendo Entertainment System gave developers a familiar target. The launch lineup was substantial: 25 games in Japan, 17 in North America, and 15 in Europe. Titles included Super Mario Advance, a remake of Super Mario Bros. 2 and Mario Bros.; Castlevania: Circle of the Moon; and ChuChu Rocket!, a port of the 1999 Dreamcast game. Cartridges for the Pokémon series sometimes used colored shells to reflect the game inside, with Pokémon Emerald offered in clear emerald green. Some cartridges built in physical sensors: WarioWare: Twisted! used a tilt sensor, Boktai used a solar sensor, and Drill Dozer added a rumble feature. The GBA retained full backward compatibility with older Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Unique cartridges with built-in solar, tilt, and rumble features became part of the GBA's identity. The last officially released game in Japan was Final Fantasy VI Advance on the 30th of November, 2006. In North America, Samurai Deeper Kyo, released on the 12th of February, 2008, closed out the platform. Then in April 2026, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution reached players, representing the console's true final game, its development having halted in 2004 before resuming in 2023 with the original code.
In early 2003, Nintendo addressed the original GBA's most common criticism: its dark, unlit screen. The Game Boy Advance SP, model AGS-001, folded into a clamshell roughly half the size of the original and added a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an internal front-light that could be toggled on or off. On the 19th of September, 2005, Nintendo released model AGS-101, a revised SP with a backlit display rather than a front-lit one, toggling between two brightness levels. That same month, September 2005, a second redesign appeared as the Game Boy Micro. Smaller and sleeker than any previous model, it let users swap colored faceplates to personalize the hardware. Nintendo explicitly targeted audiences outside the typical gaming demographic with that feature. The Micro could not play original Game Boy or Game Boy Color games. Among third-party accessories, the Afterburner from Triton Labs installed an internal front-light at the cost of disassembling the unit and voiding its warranty. During the 2002 holiday season, demand for the Afterburner exceeded supply. Nintendo's own e-Reader accessory, released in Japan in 2001 and North America in 2002, scanned specialized cards to play classic games including Donkey Kong and Excitebike, or unlock content in titles such as Animal Crossing.
By June 2010, cumulative sales of the Game Boy Advance series reached 81.51 million units worldwide. Of that total, 43.57 million were Game Boy Advance SP units and 2.42 million were Game Boy Micro units. As of the 1st of January, 2008-36.2 million units had sold in the United States alone. In 2008, the GBA remained Nintendo's most widely installed handheld globally. It was only in late October 2008 that Nintendo announced the DS had officially surpassed the GBA in worldwide sales, and in the United States the GBA held the lead until late 2009. The successor, the Nintendo DS, launched in November 2004, retained a dedicated GBA cartridge slot on original and Lite models so players could keep their existing libraries. The Nintendo DSi and DSi XL dropped that slot, ending backward compatibility. Digital releases extended the library's life further: in April 2014, the Wii U Virtual Console added GBA titles including Advance Wars, Metroid Fusion, and Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. In February 2023, Nintendo Switch Online's Expansion Pack tier added GBA games with online multiplayer emulation, the first time players could experience GBA multiplayer in emulated form.
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Common questions
When was the Game Boy Advance released?
The Game Boy Advance launched in Japan on the 21st of March, 2001, and reached international markets in June 2001. It was later released in mainland China in 2004 under the name iQue Game Boy Advance.
How many units did the Game Boy Advance sell worldwide?
By June 2010, the Game Boy Advance series had sold 81.51 million units worldwide. Of those, 43.57 million were Game Boy Advance SP units and 2.42 million were Game Boy Micro units.
What processor does the Game Boy Advance use?
The Game Boy Advance uses a custom system on a chip called the CPU AGB, manufactured by Sharp Corporation. It contains an ARM7TDMI processor running at 16.776 MHz for GBA games and a Sharp SM83 running at 4.194 or 8.389 MHz for backward compatibility with older Game Boy titles.
What is the Game Boy Advance SP and how does it differ from the original?
The Game Boy Advance SP, released in early 2003, is a redesigned version featuring a clamshell form factor roughly half the size of the original, a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and an internal front-lit screen. A second revision, model AGS-101, released on the 19th of September, 2005, upgraded the display to a brighter backlit screen.
Who designed the Game Boy Advance's shape?
The landscape form factor of the Game Boy Advance, which placed buttons to the sides of the screen rather than below it, was designed by French designer Gwenael Nicolas and his Tokyo-based studio, Curiosity Inc.
What was the last game released for the Game Boy Advance?
Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution, released in April 2026, is considered the true final game for the Game Boy Advance. Its development originally halted in 2004 due to lack of a publisher before resuming in 2023 using the original code and hardware.