Released in February 2003, the Game Boy Advance SP is an upgraded version of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. The 'SP' stands for Special. It ran an ARM7 CPU with a Z80 co processor. It is compatible with all Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges.

Released in 2001, the Game Boy Advance was Nintendo's first handheld game console in a landscape form-factor. It used a 32-bit ARM RISC processor with a Z80 for backward compatability with existing Game Boy software titles.

Cutting short the life of the Game Boy Color, released only a couple of years before, the console was an immediate success, with the launch games showing a huge leap in visual and audio capabilities than its predecessors were capable of.

The screen was large, but unfortunately difficult to see in moderate light, and its shape did not lend itself to having external lights fitted.

This led to the redesign of the GBA into this GBA SP, which returned the Game Boy to a portrait layout, but crucially added a front light, which could be turned off to prolong the already impressive battery life, also the 2 AA batteries of the predecessor were replaced by an internal lithium battery.

A model only released in Japan and Hong Kong provided a backlight to the console, giving a much more evenly lit screen, and a far superior picture, this model was the AGS-101.

Huge third party support and Nintendo's own quality software, kept the machine relevant in the market place up to the launch of the Nintendo DS in 2005.

The serial number of our Game Boy is XEH11426019.

Manufacturer: Nintendo
Date: February 2003

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH33656. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.