Thanks to Diet Game-Online News for this great news! You gotta love insiders sometimes :) ! GBA could make it out in Japan as early as the Summer of 2000! Hell yeah! Any predictions on import prices? Hmmmm. Oh well...here's the good news (Pokemon news to follow):

Game Boy Advance is much closer than we have been led to believe, according to our most reliable sources inside the games industry. A global launch of Christmas 2000 has been mentioned by Nintendo, however its ailing Japanese presence will receive the attention it needs way before then.

We hear it on good authority that Game Boy Advance will be in Japanese stores as early as summer 2000, possibly sooner than that. The rest of the world would get its share of machines toward the end of the year. One source explained that it is simply because of Nintendo’s weak position that it must take this course of action. It would certainly steal some of the thunder from PlayStation2 were it to launch sometime in the spring.

As for the quality of games, our sources have also let slip that we should expect visuals to match those of the best Super NES (Super Famicom) titles. Indeed, it was also mentioned that many developers, including Nintendo itself, are planning to release slightly modified versions of existing Super NES hits. This would certainly enable Nintendo to get the new system in players’ hands with a substantial line up of games while original projects have time to reach completion.

Bottom line is Nintendo cannot afford Sony to have it all its own way with PlayStation2 next spring. Even if Game Boy Advance were to hit retail a couple of months behind the PS2 date of March 4th, it would be enough to make a world of Pokemon crazed kids think twice.

Also, Not like it would take a genius to figure out the fact that Pokemon will will make it onto the Dolphin somehow, you can also predict the same thing with the GBA. Here's what Diet Game-Online News predicts.

We saw it coming, but maybe not so soon. Looking at Nintendo’s difficult situation in Japan right now, and how the only thing really saving the company is Game Freak’s phenomenal Pokemon series, there can be only one way to go from here.

Game Boy Advance will not only take the fight back for Nintendo, but it will do so with its most powerful ally – in case you didn’t believe your eyes the first time - Pokemon.

Pokemon on Game Boy Advance has been brought to the attention of enough of our friends ‘in the know’ to have us convinced: its reality a sure thing. More than that, these same people are quite clear that Pokemon will shout the 32-bit hand-held’s arrival in no uncertain terms. Highly placed Japanese insiders have told computerandvideogames.com that Pokemon will be a launch game.

Thinking in terms of how Game Boy Advance will be able to download files from the Internet via cellular phone, imagine the impact of a Pokemon game on this new system. Trading Pokemon on a global scale via email. Battling pals on another side of the globe. Characters made available for a limited period only from Nintendo’s official Website. We can hardly contain our excitement here!

More, soon as there is more. And there will be more soon - like first screen-shots before March 4th are hardly out of the question.