lately ive been playing alot of GBA games on my phone via emulator and i forgot how amazing of a console it was. Games like metroid fusion/zero mission, zelda LTTP/minish cap, mario advance 1-4, advance wars, fire emblem, golden sun, pokemon ruby/sapphire/emerald were all amazing and i feel like the system is under appreciated and was replaced too soon. 

Why did nintendo release DS only 3 years after GBA, were they threatened by the PSP and wanted to get a system out before it? i personally think gba sp would have done fine against psp in 2005 due to a much lower price and huge library of games. I think nintendo should have released DS when Lite came out at $129 with NSMB, nintendogs, brain training and metroid prime hunters in the first year. Could GBA have passed 100 million if it wasnt replace 2 years too soon and why didnt it ever get an original 2d mario game?

More like 3 and a half years. Anyway the GBA was a bad design. It wasn't until the GBA SP that it caught on. And yes Nintendo was worried about PSP. Sony made the PS1 and completely dominated with their first attempt so they expected the same in the handheld market.

its more the fault of the original gameboy and that the gba was released too late..

You're right; it's pretty well-known that Nintendo prematurely killed the GBA in an attempt to fend off the PSP with the DS. GBA was still easily outselling both of them for their first years or so, though. It would've flown by 100m and maybe even original GB numbers given the typical 5 or 6 years that a platform gets.

They did release the GBA Micro after the DS... To little success. I picked up this version though and I am happy.  Don't really like the small size for games like F-Zero or Mario Kart but it is perfect for Advance Wars and other games.

Was the DS really only released 3.5 years later? That's crazy, I still remember when I had to save up money for my GBA. Got the Ice Blue version with Golden Sun the first in a bundle. Never knew what Golden Sun was, but man was it an amazing RPG. Beat that game like 3 times. Now I barely was even able to beat the third.

DS was originally meant to be a 3rd pillar, besides the GBA and GameCube. However when it got those crazy games like Brain Training and Nintendogs, plus the Lite redesign, it simply took off like crazy and replaced the GBA altogether.

i think gba was released appropriatly and gbc was released too late, it should have came out in 1996

maybe it would have been more successful if its successor wasnt already on the market for nearly a year when it released

im pretty sure it was meant tp replace gba, they just werent sure if the touch screen/2nd screen would catch on so they said that just in case