15th July 2024, Canvey Island UK
Who loved the Game Boy Advance? Nintendo's Game Boy hardware absolutely dominated the gaming scene, captivating players across the whole world with many amazing games. Amassing over 100 million consoles sold for the platform in the process, over both the GameBoy and its successor, the GameBoy Color, the 8-bit hardware was really showing its age after 12 long years at the top. In 2001, the time was right for something new.
Packing 32-bit architecture, boasting backwards compatibility with the previous line and sporting a new, sleek, landscape design, the GameBoy Advance would also be home to some truly mesmerising experiences with some of the finest pixel-based visuals ever seen - which still hold up well today, nearly 25 years later. This absolute powerhouse of a handheld only had short lifespan on the market, but left an imprint on many a player, and so it's only right that it gets a coffee table book championing the best of the platform and its games. And that's where GAMEBOOK: ADVANCE comes in.
Having already covered the original GameBoy platform in 2023's GAMEBOOK: The Unofficial DMG Companion, and the Color successor in 2024's GAMEBOOK COLOR, Paul Murphy is back to complete his GAMEBOOK trilogy with a tome dedicated to the GameBoy Advance. Revisiting many games from the vast repertoire available, what you get here is pure, unadulterated love for the 32-bit successor in the GameBoy line.
As well as a quintessential list of the best GameBoy Advance games, there will be a historical dive into the platform as well as more in-depth retrospectives on many of the titles that defined the handheld. There's a nod to myriad of SNES games which were ported to the hardware, a comprehensive, hand-drawn timeline and the retrospectives will be written by some outstanding freelance writers which go into more detail about the definitive GameBoy Advance games, with these iconic franchises accompanied by some mesmerising artwork, as also happened in the first two books. If you loved those, then you'll both love this and know what to expect.
A wide range of contributors will be chipping in with the writing, including:
Tim Street (Former NOM Editor-in-chief), Faith Johnson (Retro Fusion), Liam Robertson (Did You Know Gaming), Ryan Craddock (Nintendo Life), Dani Cross (Freelance Journalist), James Tocchio (Freelance Journalist), Matt Poskitt (Freelance Journalist), Nolan Good (Freelance Journalist), Nathan Ellingsworth (Dexerto), Nick Thorpe (Retro Gamer), Shaun Hughes (Lost in Cult) and many more still to be commissioned.
The illustrations that accompany the features will be beautifully created by:
Jay Cobs, Jonathan Traynor, Thiago Radice, Iago Machado, Sarah Jones, PewZero, Raphaella Silva and many more yet to be commissioned. We aim to have many of the same artists that worked on previous GAMEBOOK entries so there's continuity and familiarity with the artwork. We also aim to have more features and art than in the previous books!
GameBook Advance will cover the GameBoy Advance era, which runs from 2001 to 2006. Beginning with the original AGB-001 model and all the redesigned systems launched after. It'll also tackle the Game Boy Player and even a smaller feature on the DS: it did play GBA games after all! We will touch on the competition too, with a small look at the N-Gage. If we hit the stretch target, we will also cover the Pokémon Mini micro console which launched during the GBA's lifespan too.
As well as some interesting pieces alongside the best games, it's also going to have some brilliant photography inside the book as well. The book will be 21cm x 21cm in size, identical to its predecessors, the GameBook and the GameBook Color. Coming with a hardcover finish, the book will be finished with high-quality, uncoated paper stock and all sorts of cool content across a target of at least 300+ pages. We anticipate that this will be the largest book we've made so far, showing the hardware the respect it deserves.
The funding target for the book is set at £20,000 which has already been achieved, with a proposed launch in January 2025. The book is already 50% complete. This funding will cover all the production costs and ensure that the project breaks even. If we surpass that initial target, we have set some additional targets to add additional content or add more things to the package. That will start with a free art print, and moves to adding more games, more retrospectives and even a Pokémon Mini section.
The campaign can be found on Kickstarter via the link below and has already hit £29,000 in funding.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nintymedia/gamebook-advance-the-unofficial-agb-companion
Disclaimer and Fair Use
GameBook Advance: The Unofficial AGB Companion is an unofficial review/reference material which is analysing retro/legacy software and hardware from Nintendo's GameBoy Advance platform. With more than 40 games featured with critique and commentary, this falls under fair use as a review, criticism, and research product detailing the last 25 years of handheld history.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act in 1976; Allowance is made for "Fair Use" which is a doctrine in United States / and relevant United Kingdom copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for purposes including:
Commentary, News Reporting, Criticism, Teaching, Scholarship and Research.
It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work such as GameBook Advance: The Unofficial AGB Companion.
All images of the software and hardware is obtained personally, any artwork has commissioned exclusively for the book and any copyrighted terms used are recognised for journalistic purposes.
Nintendo ® and GameBoy ™ Advance are registered trademarks of Nintendo. The rights of any games featured within this book remain the property of the original copyright holders and are not affiliated with Ninty Media or GameBook Advance: The Unofficial AGB Companion in any capacity whatsoever.
Artwork and designs shown in this Kickstarter are for illustrative purposes only and may not be indicative of the finished copy.
About the author
Paul Murphy quit his job working in a school in 2021 to pursue writing about games for a living. His first writing project was a book dedicated to Nintendo’s amiibo range, called the unofficial amiibook. The Game Boy was his first true gaming love and decided to write about the classic handheld in a series of books, with this being the follow up to the GAMEBOOK and the GAMEBOOK COLOR, with one showcasing the Nintendo DS planned for 2025.
Interviews and affiliate links are available on request, please contact paul.murphy@nintymedia.net for more information.