GBA on the streets

We've been wandering around the streets of Watford again, trying to find people sneaking out to buy GameBoy Advance on their lunch hour. Hanging around Electronics Boutique we uncovered a number of people eyeing the racks. One chap, Ted Dunsen, told us that he was actually buying Colour GameBoy games to play on his new console. "There's naff-all of interest yet. I'm buying this for Mario Kart and Mario 3, and those'll be out by Christmas." Why the interest in buying it at launch then? "If you can afford it, it always pays to get the expense of the console out of the way first then shop around later for your extras. I probably won't even play this much for the next few months but at least I won't have to fork out during harder times." Another shopper, a young lass named Jill (who refused to give me her surname, perhaps she thought I was chatting her up?), told us that although she'd kept Tetris, the rest of her GBC games and the console itself had gone. "As soon as I knew when this would come out, I sold them to a friend. I was quite fond of the puzzle games, so I hung onto Tetris, but things like Metal Gear Solid and Street Fighter - they were more my boyfriend's than mine - and I want to play with this on the bus on the way to work." Along with a swanky Arctic GBA, Jill was buying "Tony Hawk's to try and console my boyfriend! Oh, and Mario Advance. Well, you have to, don't you?" We did manage to uncover one old hand who wasn't buying it to help keep his GameBoy collection growing. Kevin Robson claims to have been messing with computers and consoles since the days of the Spectrum. "It was actually my son's Spectrum that first caught me eye. Before long he was just using it to play Wriggler and I was messing around with Basic. Since then my favourite console, apart from the Dreamcast, has been the Super Nintendo, purely because of the RPGs." But there are no real RPGs in the launch line-up, surely... "No, but there's Castlevania. I need no further invitation," he frowned, "but then again, that Breath of Fire... can't wait for that. I guess I'll have to sit there with the SNES and the GBA trying to spot the difference for my little BoF website." Slightly scared by this bizarre display of rampant pointyhatism, we escaped into the back of the shop near the till and quizzed a staff member. "We've had tons of pre-orders, and they were mostly collected this morning between opening and just before you arrived." But what's the most popular game, we wanted to know. "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, without a doubt. It's the closest thing to brilliance on that console, although people should stop bagging on Mario Advance's origins and actually play the thing; it's really good." "The most popular console colour is the see-through Glacier one. We sold out of that a month ago. The pink one.. I think we've sold three in total. You could have one now if you fancy it." Thanks, but we've already got a pink one, because we're elite. Related Feature - The Portable Avant-Garde