Custom Backlit Game Boy Advance Review - 8 Bit Evolution - Rerez

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There’s a company called 8-Bit Evolution that makes custom Game Boy Advances and I got my hands on one. In addition to getting a custom designed shell for your GBA it also comes with a backlit display. To see exactly how it performs I compared it to an original Game Boy Advance as well as the Advance SP 001 and Advance SP 101. Here’s what happened.

The original Game Boy Advance doesn't really enter into this competition because it didn't have a bright display. Like at all. But the Game Boy Advance SP did and there were two variations of the Game Boy Advance SP. The first one is 001. This is the first model of the Game Boy Advance SP that was released. It had a front lit display and this screen was bright but it wasn't super bright. However the Advance SP 101 had a backlit display that was a lot brighter than the original. However this new display that's being used by 8-bit evolution is brighter than even the brightest SP screen that was released.

8-Bit Evolution has done a great job of making this feel like a real Game Boy Advance and pretty much it is. It's got the same innards and technology but it's got a much brighter backlit display than what you're probably used to from the original model. Now one of the problems I have with the Game Boy Advance SP is that it doesn’t have the built-in headphone jack. But this Game Boy Advance, utilizing the original shell design, actually has a headphone jack and that's a plus for me. There are games that I like to listen to the soundtrack a little bit closer and having the ability to have a backlit display on something like this with the headphone jack just makes the idea of playing this thing a lot more interesting. You can go out and buy third-party upgrade kits to put a backlit display on a regular Game Boy Advance but I don't really like to dive into that myself. Mostly because I don't like getting dust underneath the screen and a whole bunch of other stuff. For me I prefer to pay a company to do it.

There are a couple of key design elements in here that bump it up a step compared to the original Game Boy Advance. First things first the Game Boy Advance that originally came out did not have a glass front display and this one does. The glass really doesn't affect much but it's a little bit harder to scratch. 8-Bit Evolution’s Game Boy Advance plays all the Game Boy Advance games that the original did and it plays Game Boy games as well because it's essentially still a Game Boy Advance. What I think they did is they went out and bought regular Game Boy Advances and just put the components from those systems into their new shells. The one thing I don't like about the unit is that you don't have the ability to adjust the brightness on the screen. Which sucks because you can do that with a Game Boy Advance SP. I guess everybody at 8-Bit Evolution was trying to copy the original design of the Game Boy Advance to a tee so they didn't include any extra buttons to adjust the brightness. One of the cool features of the 8-Bit Evolution model of the Game Boy Advance is that the buttons are a little bit less squishy compared to the original Game Boy Advance. Now this is totally up to preference but personally I like 8-Bit Evolution’s buttons a little bit better than the original Game Boy Advance’s because they’re more clicky and that reminds me more of buttons on an arcade machine.

So there you have it. The Game Boy Advance from 8-Bit Evolution. Surpassing Nintendo's original in many ways but it doesn't surpass everything that Nintendo's done in the years that have followed. Still though this is a great device to own and I recommend it if you ever find one of these out in the wild or if you want to go to their website and buy one.

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