In a brand-new column, Karl brings you commentary on the week that was... in 2003!
Hello and welcome to the very first edition of Transmissions from Planet GameCube, a look back on a week that was.
The premise is simple: Every Friday, I'll pull an article from this very week 10 years ago, provide some perspective with my 20/20 hindsight, and even get some commentary from the article's original writer. Got it? Good. Let's start.
The day was Saturday, January 11, 2003, and a scant two days earlier, our esteemed founder, Billy Berghammer, phoned in impressions on the one, the only, the Game Boy Advance SP. Among the earth-shattering details were that the SP stood for "Special," that the screen was lit from all sides (and not just horizontally, as was the case with the Afterburner) and, interestingly enough, that the SP was not a replacement for the existing GBA, and instead was targeted toward older gamers.
That last part is really the most amusing bit. Only a year later, as we started to hear rumblings of Project Nitro (the prototype that would eventually become the DS), we'd get the same "third pillar" talk. It's quite strange that Nintendo's always been so sheepish when introducing clearly superior hardware.
Of course, history would show that they didn't have anything to worry about. The GBA SP would go on to sell over 40 million units (just over half of all of the GBAs sold) and re-released with some way bitchin' variants.
Myself, I loved the SP. Everything, from the ergonomic form factor to the super-bright screen to the tough-as-nails case made it a huge improvement over the original GBA. I was also lucky enough to own the super-swank Zelda Edition SP, seen here.
And that'll wrap it up for the first edition of Transmissions from Planet GameCube. Be sure to come back next Friday when we'll be talking about the week of January 18, 2003. Until then, did you buy an SP at launch? What were your thoughts on the system? Let us know in the comments and we'll spotlight the top post in next week's column!
