ell, it's about time. Nintendo's popular portable gaming system finally has a light for its LCD screen that makes gamers feel like they're playing a game on TV instead of straining their eyes, even when playing next to a 300-watt lamp. The good news is that now that it's finally here, Game Boy Advance SP is a sleek, cool system that was worth the wait.

Many years ago, Nintendo managed to beat out Sega, which produced the lit, full-color Game Gear system at the same time Nintendo made the more affordable Game Boy system, had less power, but longer battery life. The unlit screen can't really be designated as black-and-white—more like light brown-and-dark brown.

Then came Game Boy Color, which added a few colors to the mix, the key word being few—there were two or three different colors at once. Finally, Game Boy Advance added full-color to the mix, but the screen was still difficult to play with, even in conditions comfortable enough to read Dostoyevsky in.

	The tiny GameBoy Advance SP fits into Jeremy's pocket like flip-top magic.

Finally, the Advance SP is here to make portable gaming a brighter, more successful experience. It isn't a new system from the Advance—it plays the same games with identical screen size and pixels—it's simply a better machine with which to play games from the Game Boy formats.

The machine is backward compatible, and a test with "Motocross Maniacs" for the original Game Boy proved successful, with flawless gameplay and random colors that aimed to bring life to the game's former palette of brown gradients.

The most impressive aspect, besides the light, is the size. With a flip-top screen, the SP compacts into an approximately three and one third-inch square just under an inch thick, and weighs five ounces. The term "pocket gaming" is finally literal, as anyone with standard pants pockets can walk around with the machine as easy as they could a cell phone.

The layout is similar to the original Game Boy, with the directional control and buttons below the screen, with the additions of the Advance's L and R buttons, which are controlled with the index fingers. The buttons are easily reachable below the joint where the screen opens up.

A rechargeable lithium battery supplies 10 hours of play after three of charging, with eight more if you turn off the light. But after a taste of the light, you won't want to turn it off. The only power problem occurred while using the Game Boy-to-Gamecube connector—it blocks the power plug, so if you run out of battery, you have to charge up again before resuming play.

"Super Mario Advance," a port of two old Mario games, presents a version of "Super Mario Bros. 2" (or "Doki Doki Panic," if you remember my previous exposé) that looks better than it did on the old Nintendo Entertainment System, and the SP lets us truly enjoy those graphics.

So, yes, the screen looks great, gameplay is comfortable, the machine looks cool and it can fit in your pocket without any odd bits stabbing your leg or causing your pants to rip. The combination of all these design improvements is a system so groovy that my comparison to Sega's old system didn't hold up. "No way! This is way cooler than a Game Gear," a coworker informed me. It's also cheaper, retailing at $99.99.

Nintendo has once again had the last laugh, as the folks at Sega, now out of the console-design game, are left shaking their heads and wishing that they'd waited 10 years before lighting the screen, when they could have done it right.

jeremy@red-mag.com