Best Buy is selling Guilty Gear X Advance Edition for ten bucks this month. If you trade in one of your fifteen copies of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt into Funcoland and round down the difference, it's pretty close to free. And since it's really free, you probably don't need an Internet nerd's opinion on it. In fact, there's a good chance you already read a review of it on any gaming site ever made before you had even heard of the GBA. It was even released on the DreamCast, for crying out loud. Remember, it's the “hi-res sprite fighting game” - the one with the guy that has a paper bag on his head and throws donuts? It probably already has a couple of sequels out by now.

To get right down to business, the game itself is average. The GBA version has a couple of cool exclusive features, as well as the expected ones; there's tag and 3-on-3 mode, survival, training, and a color edit mode. It was pretty considerate to put those all in a little handheld version. There's even a sound test, which goes forgotten all too often in video games in general. Other than the new stuff, it's almost an exact port.

Besides the usual jabbing, slashing, whacking, and comboing that fighting game characters tend to do, here's what happens in a typical fast-paced game of GGX:

• Double jump - every character can do this, and airborne trickery abounds

• Dead-Angle Attack - it's a precision timed parry that uses a Tension meter

• Dust Attack - this is just a wacky name for a launch-into-air-combo

• Faultless Defense - use some super meter to activate a powerfully fruity green shield

• Roman Cancel - stops your character's attack instantly so that another move can be performed for expert combos

• Instant Kill - you can risk use of your super bar for one shot at instantly winning the round

It's fairly technical. On that note, it seems like things comboable on the GBA are just a little bit "loose" or somehow different; for example, it's easier to connect certain moves after others. Just a little bit. It probably won't be a big deal to most people, but a couple of hardcore players might find it… erm, tragic.

In the Tag mode, characters can be switched by rolling down to forward with K + H, which can even be done in the middle of a particularly diabolical combo. The GBA game includes cute “team” win quotes, too.

In 3-on-3 mode, there's no tagging, but a character can be called out to assist with a special move at the price of one half of the Tension Gauge.

In Color Edit mode, well, character colors can be edited. Sammy elitists may hilariously point out that some characters, even on the GBA version, have way more colors than Capcom vs. SNK 2 characters.

Compared to its console and arcade big brothers, the graphics actually keep up really well. The mostly flat-shaded anime-styled characters look really sharp, and all of the original backgrounds and huge character portraits are included. Even all of the weird scrolling marquees on the character select screen are accounted for. The screen doesn't zoom in and out, but that's no big deal. It looks superb.

However, the soundtrack sounds like some sort of 8-bit disaster. They tried to actually port a soundtrack that you'd normally bang your head and party hard to into some sort of low-grade MIDI. It doesn't work. The character voices are included, but you can hardly hear them over the noise and music.

GGX only uses four buttons, so the GBA is already all set in that regard. It's configurable, too. However, it seems entirely too difficult to activate moves requiring a shoulder button and a thumb button together. I'm sure I'm doing it right, but it just doesn't activate most of the time. The console ports don't need that kind of precision, and it's just a little awkward to time with the shoulder buttons. The developers seem to have known about this - you can set a special button for the mode or character switches that would require smashing a lot of buttons at once. But... another button must be sacrificed.

Overall, the game is good, even if it seems to induce a bit of apathy. It's terrific for the price though. Despite a couple of faults and general fruitiness, this port really excels in other areas. It's not for everyone, so be aware of what you're getting yourself into.