The
Game Boy Advance is one of the gaming platforms that means the most to me. Without a doubt, it belongs in my personal top three of all time. The
SNES is another one of my defining platforms, and I've always been a handheld gamer. So when Nintendo essentially released a portable SNES, it felt like a revelation.
The GBA entered my life before I was even a teenager, and it stayed with me well into my early twenties. Because of that, it accompanied me through many of the most formative periods of my life. It's also the platform I associate with countless "firsts":
- It was the first console I eagerly anticipated before its release.
- It was the first console I bought almost immediately at launch.
- It was the first gaming system I purchased with my own money.
- It was the first platform I extensively emulated on my PC.
- It introduced me to ROM hacks for the first time.
- It was the first platform for which I bought a flash cartridge.
- It was the first platform where I searched the internet for guides, cheats, and secrets instead of relying solely on gaming magazines.
- It was the first console I ever opened up and modified myself.
Growing up in a family with limited financial means, the GBA is also closely tied to memories of making the most of very little. To afford one shortly after launch, I sold my PlayStation along with a large portion of my game collection at a local flea market.
By the late 2000s, I didn't own any of the current-generation consoles, and my PC had become too outdated to run modern games. Instead, I started playing GBA ROMs through
VisualBoyAdvance, and discovered many games I haven't played on original hardware before. Also, I discovered ROM hacks—especially Pokémon hacks—which opened up an entirely new world for me.
In the early 2010s, shortly before starting university, I moved into my first apartment with my girlfriend—now my wife. Money was still tight. She owned a PlayStation 3, which I could use, but buying new games regularly simply wasn't an option. Around that time, however, I managed to find a
Game Boy Advance SP NES Edition for only €20. I paired it with an
EZ-Flash IV flash cartridge, and that marked the third major chapter of my GBA journey.
If the first phase was my childhood and early teens, playing on original cartridges, and the second was my teenage years discovering emulation and ROM hacks, then the flash cartridge era became the phase where I explored countless overlooked games that I had completely missed before.
The final chapter came during university, when refurbishing Game Boy Advance SP systems became a way to help finance my studies. In Germany, the
AGS-101 model—the one with the superior backlit screen—was mostly sold in pink. As a result, Facebook Marketplace and similar platforms were full of scratched-up pink systems bundled with what sellers dismissed as "girls' games." Most people had no idea that the AGS-101 was the most desirable version.
I regularly bought these consoles for between €10 and €30, replaced the worn-out shells with inexpensive aftermarket housings from AliExpress, and resold the refurbished systems on eBay for around €80 to €100 each. It wasn't enough to pay for my living expenses on its own, but with that many I could have a small budget for hobbies.
As meaningful as those later experiences were, it's my childhood and teenage years that remain the most nostalgic. Naturally, I spent hundreds of hours playing Pokémon, but my strongest memories revolve around multiplayer.
On every school trip, class excursion, or youth hostel stay, many of my friend group brought their Game Boy Advance along with a Link Cable. We spent countless hours trading Pokémon, battling each other, or playing games like
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords and
Yu-Gi-Oh! together. Those multiplayer sessions perfectly capture what I remember most fondly: a carefree childhood spent gaming with friends.
), but my brother got a GBA when he was like... 8 or 9.
