Page 1

Advancing frontiers

Denver International Airport. You will never find a more wretched hive of boredom and monotony (at least not in this reviewer's opinion.) Having learned my lesson in years past, it would be a cold day in hell before I flew through there again. Still, facing the prospect of spending my hours on the airplane next to a senile old geezer blabbing on about his mythological exploits in 'da war', or a cute, energetic, precocious child that everyone aboard wants to strangle, I splurged on entertainment this year.

Now as nice as it would have been to get a $2000 Toshiba notebook and play Galactic Civilizations for the entire flight, it didn't *quite* fit into the budget. Rather, on the way to the airport we stopped by the store and picked up a Game Boy Advance. With some recommendations from friends, I went in looking for the backlit SP model and three games - Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Advance Wars. Unfortunately the service monkey at the store had no clue what Advance Wars was, so I decided on just the other two games.

Box shot top front

Box shot top back

Box shot front

Angry Kitty

Already dreading the crowd onboard the airplane, I'd wisely brought my headphones in preparation for the battle of noise. Of course, the Game Boy Advance SP is notorious for its lack of a headphone jack. The Nintendo giveth light, and he taketh away the sound. The only solution to this is to purchase an additional adapter pack. Rather than settle for the overpriced, under-featured Nintendo release, I picked up the Mad Catz bundle.

The major problem with the Nintendo headphone adapter is that it blocks the battery recharger port. The Mad Catz version of course pops into the battery recharger port like the Nintendo one, but in addition to creating a headphone jack it also recreates the recharger slot. This allows players to enjoy headphones while charging the batteries. Also present in the Mad Catz pack is a car recharger and a set of rather uncomfortable earphone buds.


Finally, Mad Catz included a nice, black carrying case for use with the Game Boy Advance SP. The case easily holds the SP and several cartridges, though it's not equipped to hold the earphone buds, car recharger, headphone adapter or even the OEM Nintendo battery charger cable.