The VCSp SE vs. The Gameboy Advance
SP!
Well,
it's about time!
Almost
one and a half years has passed since Nintendo released its last
incarnation of the Gameboy, and I was getting worried. Since they've sold
approximately 11 Gamecubes, I figured they were about due to find yet
ANOTHER way to get every Gameboy owner to buy their system all over again
to make some quick bucks.
![Harry Truman not included](Eleventh%20Gamecube%20Sold.jpg)
Enter
the Gameboy Advance SP Now, you may ask, "Why couldn't Nintendo have
made a backlit Gameboy back in 2001? Or 1989 for that matter?" Well,
you obviously didn't know that backlighting a portable game unit was a
scientific impossibility until 2003. The lineage of deceitful and faux
lighting in portables until that time is a story shrouded in secrecy and
shame...
Some
of us old-timers remember the Mattel Football and Baseball portable games
of yesteryear. Ah, the memories, coming home from kindergarten, watching
Smurfs or Knight Rider and then, engaging in a pulse-pounding sports
game with players (and balls) rendered by no more than glowing red
squares...
But,
were they TRULY glowing? Much like ancient Egyptians building pyramids,
how could primitive (1983) gaming companies actually produce a backlit
game?
Some
theories exist that, much like the Pyramids, these devices were actually
built by highly advanced alien cultures who visited Earth for fun. Other
suggest witchcraft. A thorough investigation by The Atari 2600 Portables
Site reveals, however, that the glowing red squares were actually lighting
bugs that had been genetically altered by the Pentagon for use in Granada.
After spending billions on the bugs and having the war only last a month,
the Pentagon had no choice but to license out the technology. Mattel bit,
and the Football and Baseball games were born.
Many
years later, Nintendo, not wanting to sell-out to unproven and potential
national security-breaching technology, did
the honest thing in 1989 by releasing the un-backlit, spinach-colored
screened Gameboy.
An
immediate success around the world (except in Alaska where it's dark for 6
months of the year) the Gameboy had a stranglehold on the portable market,
then and forever. But, there was another...
The
same group of people who designed the Amiga (which had a backlit screen
but cheated since it was a monitor) design a portable system called the
"Handy". Atari dug around in the couches in its corporate break
room / bathroom and found enough money to license the unit. Thus, the
Atari Lynx was born!
Both
Lynx owners were astounding as they turned on their Lynxes (is that a
word?) and discovered - light! Surely this must be a mistake, as the
Gameboys owned by everyone else at school were dark and dim...
Well,
for you two people out there, I've come to set your minds at ease and end
the sleepless nights that have plagued you since MC Hammer was popular.
The Atari Lynx may have seemed to be backlit, but in reality (which
bites) it used thinly ground depleted uranium smuggled out of Russia after
the fall of the Berlin Wall which, when actuated by a resonator, created an
effervescent glow that APPEARED to make it a backlit system.
In
the end, a full 124 years passed between the invention of the light bulb
and the creation of a true backlit portable game system.
Nintendo,
being the forthright and responsible company that they are, decided that
it was time to bestow upon the world a savior... a backlit Gameboy!
-
The
Gameboy Advance SP New Features List! -