Presentation :

The Game Boy Advance, often shortened to GBA, is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China on June 8, 2004 (excluding Hong Kong). Nintendo's competitors in the handheld market were the Neo Geo Pocket Color, SwanCrystal, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, and the N-Gage. Despite the competitors' best efforts, Nintendo maintained its majority market share with the Game Boy Advance.

History :

In 1996, magazines including issues 53 and 54 of Total! and the July 1996 issue of Game Informer featured reports of a new Game Boy, codenamed Project Atlantis. Although the expected release date of "early 1997" would make that machine seem to be the Game Boy Color, it was described as having "a 32-bit RISC processor" and "allowing similar to Super Nintendo Entertainment System standard games-playing to be played in the palm of your hand"—a description that more closely matches the Game Boy Advance. It also may have referred to the unnamed, unreleased Game Boy Color successor prototype that was revealed at 2009's Game Developers Conference.

Technical Specification :

• Main Processor : ARM7TDMI 32 bits RISC arch based (16.78 MHz, (2^24 cycles per second), developped by ARM Ltd. with memory onboard, without MMU (Memory Management Unit)
• Co processor : 8 bits CISC Z80 like clocked 4.2 MHz or 8.4 MHz for old gameboy's game compatibility.
• Memory : 96 KB VRAM, 256 KB EWRAM (External Work Random Access Memory), 32 KB IWRAM (Internal Work Random Access Memory)
• Display
  • TFT color screen 2,9"
  • Resolution 240 x 160 pixels,
  • screen size : 40,8 mm X 61,2 mm
  • 511 color in char mode, 32 768 couleurs in point mode
  • Display refresh : 59,73 Hz
• Size
  • width : 144,5 mm
  • height : 24,5 mm
  • length: 82 mm
  • weight : 140 g
• battery : 2 LR06 battery.