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The Christmas season of 2001 was a very
exciting time for gamers. The Microsoft XBOX and Nintendo's Cube
were poised to make their debut, and the best selling game system
ever was about the get one hell of an upgrade. I'm speaking of
course about the Gameboy Advance. Gladly I stood in line with the
unwashed masses to shell out my $150.
That wonderful smell of new plastic and
treated cardboard filled the room as I readied my new portable
system for its first test run. The graphics were absolutely
stunning... at least I was pretty sure they were. Herein lies the
problem with the GBA: You can't see the damned screen!
Having owned the original Gameboy as a
kid, I instinctively twisted my neck and tilted the GBA in every
imaginable direction. A hair too far to the left and all I could see
was a giant haze of hideous glare. A fraction of an inch in the
other direction and screen went dark. After a half an hour of this,
my squinting eyes burned and my tortured wrists were ready to give
in. At this point I realized the horrible truth... out of the box
the GBA simply doesn't work.
I bought a GBA cover and light
attachment from the local Software etc. and tried it; No good, it
placed a little blob of glare in the middle of my GBA screen and the
rest remained too dark to see. Next came the magnifier with the
flip-up light; Worked okay in low light, but part of my screen was
cut off and it ate up AAA batteries like Sally Struthers at the
Hometown Buffet. At about this time the rest of the nation realized
how tough it really was to play the GBA, and the asking price
dropped to half.
Take heart, fellow gamers. All is NOT
lost. I went searching on the 'net for an internal light kit and
found something which would eventually solve all of my portable
gaming woes. Even better: since the announcement of the GBA SP, this
little kit has dropped in price.
Don't toss your old GBA until you read
on:
The Afterburner backlight kit showed up
at my house about two weeks after I ordered it online. (http://www.tritonlabs.com)
I'd already read up ahead of time about some of the dangers of
installation and how to avoid them. Naturally I ignored the warning
on the very first page of the instruction manual; it had informed me
that I needed to read the entire manual before attempting
installation.
I bought the recommended screwdriver
and found my old soldering iron. The instructions called for a
dremel tool. What the hell is a dremel tool? My neighbor Jerre is a
carpenter, so naturally I take all of my stupid, white-collar tool
questions to him. As it turns out he has no dremel tool, but offers
to make the cuts with a standard razor knife. Beefy.
My neighbor does an admirable job of
modifying the plastic case of the GBA to allow the light to fit. The
electronic guts of this thing are still back at my house, so I mosey
on back. Before checking to see if the light fit, I hastily exposed
the adhesive surface attached to the light. On the next page of the
manual it says to make sure it fits, I check, it doesn't. So it's
back to the neighbor's house to have him touch up his cutting work.
Several minutes later I make a second
attempt to place the light and force one corner in, if only just a
little. Some dust had settled inside the GBA where I had exposed the
sticky parts.
The soldering was a breeze, as I
already had some experience doing it. All together I spent about a
half an hour installing this thing. The moment of truth came and I
hesitated... Would it work or was my GBA toast? I flicked the switch
and reveled in my own filthy glory as my GBA screen proudly
displayed a crystal clear, frontlit image.
To say that the image on my GBA is
perfect would not be entirely truthful. There are a few specs of
dust in there that are amplified by the light, which is entirely my
own stupid fault. When tilted at a certain angle there appears to be
some type diagonal reflection effect, which is probably because I
became impatient and crammed the light in. If someone with a bit
more patience than myself had installed this kit it could have been
flawless, I'm sure.
There are some who claim that the
Afterburner kit "washes out" the GBA color, I did not find this to
be true in the slightest. The overall drain on the battery life is
also negligible, especially if your GBA is always charging when not
in use.
Despite the fact that I basically
botched the installation of the Afterburner kit, it is still by far
the best thing that ever happened to my GBA. Every gamer I have
shown my modified GBA to has gaped in slack-jawed awe of its beauty,
I kid you not. It fills me with such a warm feeling to know that my
GBA finally has the true potential to wipe out every iota of public
boredom.
This solution is not for everyone, and
takes some considerable effort, so make sure you're ready to undergo
the surgery before you order. For those of you willing to take the
plunge: get ready, because your portable is finally going to deliver
everything it's been promising since you got your grubby little
hands on it over a year ago.
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