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You make my GBA whole. You make it easy to carry along. The glow emanating from my new Game Boy Advance SP fills me with delight. The difficult quest I undertook to acquire it helps it shine that much brighter.

Just days after the release of the GBA SP, I was found wanting. I thought I was patient. I thought I could wait until late April, when my birthday would surely usher in a finely wrapped package. I was wrong. It took only the faint flicker of a friend’s display to prove it. They say timing is everything. My bad timing had left me empty handed.

Darkness falls, on both the game and my GBA screen.

But I would not let hopelessness set in. I could get one of those tiny little silver systems. I had only to try. I was determined, even if resolve hasn’t always been my closest friend in the past.

Determination once led me across town to pick up that last copy of WaveRace from the not-so-local Electronics Boutique. Determination taught me how many Best Buy trips it takes to acquire a copy of Dark Age of Camelot on the first day of its release (hint, it’s no less than four). Determination sometimes does me wrong. In this one case, it did me right.

My quest began in the morning. Phone call after phone call resulted in failure. The local malls were sold out. The boutique on the corner wouldn’t be getting any more shipments for weeks. You could almost hear the eyes roll around in the clerk’s head as he let down another anxious customer. Sorry buddy, not today.

Finding this on the first day of its release was no walk in the park.

Best Buy was cleaned out, so much so that it was difficult to find the sign. Compounding my problems, I had promised to visit relatives in the hills of Pennsylvania this day. A road trip awaited. The lack of a lighted screen would be torture. Surely, I could find one on the way.

Strike two occurred at a small town mall. It seems that eyes roll there much like they do back home. Saddened by the news, I had no choice but to continue my journey. My plans were in ruin. I should have thought ahead. My old GBA taunted me from the dark depths of its screen.

Thankfully, a Walmart, cleverly hidden on a lonely stretch of road, ended my pangs of regret. The sharp eye of my wife picked out a location that needy gamers often skip entirely. The pot of gold at the end of my rainbow was a striking silver. My treasure was finally in hand and I couldn’t have been happier.

The backlit screen makes all the difference. Where I once peered deeply into my own reflection, I now bask in the bright glow of screen below. The goodies it reveals warm my heart.

There’s no game where this makes more of a difference than in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. The background is dark. The foreground is dark. Even the cartridge and package are dark. Maybe they were trying to warn me up front. The addition of a little light reveals a whole new experience. Little did I know that the walls were made of some type of heavy stone. It turns out that little thing flailing from Nathan Graves was a whip after all.

Samus is also searching for a brighter light.

And my sunny joys are not limited to that game alone. Much that was once old is new again. Happy soldiers stare back at me in Advance Wars. Ghosts shift warily behind the tracks in Mario Kart. Samus can finally spend a little less time looking for an extra flashlight in Metroid Fusion.

The included battery back and slick design round out the package. It’s truly the backlit star of the portable world. I have but one question: why didn’t we get it sooner?

A problem for Nintendo and a blessing for gamers, the SP has raised the bar for what constitutes a portable game system. Just as the Xbox will make any future console that doesn’t include a hard drive a second class citizen, any future portable system simply must include a rechargeable battery. A backlit screen may have been an option before; it is no longer.

Were my travels worth it? It depends on who you ask. If you ask my boss, the flash of silver looks much like a PDA and well, that’s all I need to know. My next status meeting just became a whole lot more entertaining.

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