Game Boy Advance Video is a novel way to deliver animation to kids in a portable medium. The best thing about this technology is that it requires no separate accessories…all you need is the video cartridge and a GBA. It’s easy to use, and the videos are priced about the same as VHS releases, with about 45 minutes of content for $19.99. In other words, GBA Video works pretty well as a kid product.

Older and more discerning technophiles will not be satisfied with either the video or audio quality. The picture isn’t grainy, but it has the blurriness so often seen in heavily compressed digital video. It’s most noticeable in detailed, zoomed out images, which is one reason that anime works better in the format than live action footage would. Thankfully, the video is smooth, with the effect being most noticeable for anyone who has seen the choppiness of most digital videos found online.

The audio has survived compression in similar condition. It’s clear enough to hear what’s going on, but there is considerable static and distortion, which certainly isn’t helped by the GBA’s awful speaker. Headphones provide stereo separation and relief from the tinniness, but the background static is even more noticeable.

GBA Video provides some common navigation features, although they don’t work as well as what you would expect from a DVD player. A simple either/or menu on the front end lets you choose which episode to watch, and the GBA’s buttons are used to navigate thereafter. There are no chapter select menu or subtitle options, and there are no special features at all, so this technology obviously isn’t a full substitute for owning the content on DVD. However, you can control the flow of the video fairly well, with the shoulder buttons skipping through chapters and the D-pad searching back and forth. This search function is poorly implemented though, as it basically works just like the chapter skip but with much shorter chapters. In other words, the video doesn’t flow smoothly when rewinding or fast forwarding, and aside from looking bad, this chunky sort of search can be disorienting. Finding a particular scene in the video is just more difficult than it should be, but again, the young target audience probably won’t mind.

A curious flaw in the GBA Video technology is that it is not compatible with the Game Boy Player. Sure, the video would probably look much worse when blown up, but it would have been nice for friends to gather and watch on the big screen. Instead, all you will see is a dead-end “Not Compatible with Game Boy Player” screen. This omission hurts any argument for GBA Video completely replacing your child’s VHS collection. To add insult to incompatibility, Nintendo includes a paper advertisement for the Game Boy Player in the packaging of each GBA Video title.

As of this writing, the GBA Video library is limited to children’s animation with shows like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Spongebob Squarepants, and Dragon Ball GT. In the future, Nintendo plans to offer titles for an older market, though the choices will probably remain animated only. There are also plans for a larger version of the technology, which would allow for full-length feature films (well, if you consider 90 minutes to be “full-length”).

It bears repeating that GBA Video is really suitable only for small children who can overlook the lack of audio-video fidelity and features the rest of us have come to take for granted with the DVD format. However, if you are a fan of this kind of content or have kids, it’s a nice alternative to buying cartoons on VHS. The portability is a big selling point, and the two formats are evenly priced.

Anyone looking for more versatility and long-term value might want to check out my review of the GBA Movie Player, a third-party accessory which lets you play practically any digital video, audio, or text on your GBA system.