Biggest generational leap for Nintendo

[Jumpin]

V-r0cK said:

Personally, the GBA SP.

It had backlighting where before that you needed an attached a light to play in the dark. It had built-in rechargeable battery, no more buying batteries! The best part to me was that it truly felt portable; where its new clam design made it fit into any pocket without looking bulky while protecting the screen, and didnt take up my entire pocket space either. I was just blown away when it first came out and the best console mid-gen redesign by a long shot. It made the original GBA looked very outdated even though it was the same system.

The only other portable devices that felt "portable" after the GBA SP was the GBA Mircro (which was an odd choice of Nintendo, but I guess they just wanted to see how much further they can push it, tho i still preferred the SP) and the PSP Go.

I feel like GBA SP was the beginning of Nintendo’s new style choice that became prominent in the Wii/DS era (with the DS Lite, at least). But I completely agree on how important those two features (backlighting and internal battery) were to the handheld experience. Game Gear had done backlighting before, but it ate 6 batteries every two hours to do it.