Digital Trends

Although a pioneer in the interactive entertainment business, when it comes to dollars and cents, Nintendo doesn't play around.

Depending on how you look at it, the company's either been revolutionizing or bleeding the handheld market for nearly two decades.

First to arrive was the monochrome-screened Game Boy in 1989. Nine years later, the Game Boy Color, complete with a rudimentary visual palette, followed.

Enter Game Boy Advance — a unit which actually sported graphics in vibrant hues, versus washed out shades of gray or tinted outlines — in 2001. Don't forget the Game Boy Advance SP, a clamshell casing and rechargeable battery-equipped update launched circa 2003, either.

Surprise, surprise... Now it's 2005, and another revision, the Game Boy Micro, is upon us. Sleeker and more stylish than predecessors, plus packing better visibility, the device is also way smaller. Not to mention, at least for those concerned with style or portability, a welcome tagalong, if not necessarily essential purchase.