Fantastic system. I'd compare it to the NES or SNES with its catalog of games. Essentially the last hurrah of gaming that valued innovative and creative experimentation over graphics. 3DS and also had this to a degree, but it never had the sheer amount of games due to smartphone competition.
Obviously there was a LOT of shovelware, too, but man, what a great handheld. A+++ everyone should have one and a rom cart to play downloaded games, even if they're younger than it.
Only downside is that it's square and if you're not very young your hands are going to hurt after a while. You can get a gripper thing that resembles a traditional controller for that, though, but that's another thing you should probably buy sooner rather than later since the system is so old now.

You want a DS? We have that at home

>>83199
Never really liked the GBA. It has some good games, but never really reached very far

>>83202
It's a portable SNES what's not to like?
You said it yourself, it has some good games. Many actually. Massive library.

>>83206
I think it might have been that the ROM piracy thing was still in its infancy, at least as far as I was aware as a kid. I did have something, but it used a cable resembling those old IDE computer cables and was extremely awkward, slow, and didn't work half the time.
I remember the screen being too dark, too, like the halfway point between the infamous gameboy and the DS that finally allowed you to play games outside of direct light.

I remember the first time I saw one that the kid next to me on the school bus during a field trip had it and he knew I could draw so he handed me the stylus and I got in trouble for drawing a naked girl.

>>83206
portable snes? it only has 2 face buttons god dammit

>>83212
Sorry you can't play Street Fighter.

>>83208
The GBA SP solved this issue. It has a built-in backlight. Anyways I could play the GBA just fine hiding under the cover in my bed after nighttime as developers intended.

My favorite DS game by far is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Echoes of Time. The cute mysterious cat filled all my anime wife desires.

>>83214
Never played that one is it like tactics?

>>83215
Not at all similar in gameplay since it's not turn based, but I like Tactics too.
I don't care for any of the main series, only the spin-off Ogre Tactics clone and Crystal Chronicles.
It's a bit like Crystal Chronicles on GameCube, but no chalice mechanics. It's a rather simple game.
Overall I'd say I'm more fond of Tactics, but I've only played the GBA version not the DS one.

I've got a copy of JP Ogre Tactics for the SFC I'm planning to give a go once my nihongo gets better. Interested to see how it compares.

>>83199
GBA SP is great. Compact design, backlight, and chargable.

>>83198
>I'd compare it to the NES or SNES with its catalog of games
You are vastly overestimating the NES library and somewhat the SNES one. The DS is the PS2 of handhelds.
Also, the phat model is rounded and pretty comfortable in adult hands, it just makes the screens look minuscule in comparison to the rest of the brick.
Also also, the 3DS has full compatibility the DS (well, outside of like two games with unique hardware attachments) and can be hacked incredibly easily so unless you're an extreme retro purist that's the far better option.

>>83196
GOAT 4ever

>>83231
One downside of the phat model for an adult is that the stylus is both shorter and thinner compared to the Lite and the 3DS, making the stylus harder to hold.

Overall, the 3DS is a decent option, but there are some downsides to using it for GBA and DS games.
One is that the position of the dpad directly below the circle pad makes the dpad uncomfortable to use for a long period of time.
Another is the screen scaling. By default the image is scaled up to fill the higher-resolution screens, which makes the image look blurry and ugly. There is a pixel-perfect option, but this makes the image appear even smaller than on the original GBA model and the original DS model because the pixels are physically smaller.
And you miss out on functionality in games that use the bottom GBA slot for anything. This includes those games where it's required like those with unique hardware attachments that you mentioned, but there are also quite a few games where the bottom slot enables bonus functionality like transferring Pokemon from Gen 3 to Gen 4, unlocking a music video in WarioWare Touched, getting rumble in Ouendan 2, instantly unlocking all the cases in the Japanese Phoenix Wright trilogy, etc.
There's also a small portion of GBA titles that currently don't function properly on a softmodded 3DS.

After my first 3DS broke (shoulder buttons somehow) I waited and got the 2DS XL. The 3D part of the 3DS was a gimmick that was quickly abandoned and I never liked it that much in the first place, so the 2DS that was cheaper was a much better option.
It's pretty comfortable when compared to previous incarnations, but the speaker placement is horrendous and you often block it with your hand. I really don't know what they were thinking with that one, it should have been enough to scrap the design and start over.

>>83255
Had to keep the tradition of the 2DS looking like a total joke so the rest of us can laugh at poorfags, I guess. I very rarely turn the 3D on, but I still went for the N3DS XL because it looks better and has sensible speaker, home button, and camera placement instead of looking like a smartphone taped to a control pad.

>>83235
>the dpad uncomfortable to use for a long period of time
XL doesn't have this problem, you can hold it with a normal grip on the d-pad instead of needing to pinch the bottom left to keep your hand in position like with the OG 3DS. It does add to the scaling issues if you're a purist, but I'll gladly trade some sharpness for a more comfortable grip and being able to see the screen better with my old eyes, especially with games that focus on the touch screen and stylus controls.

I know GBA emulation is still shaky, but I thought agbfirm ran GBA games natively, so it's weird to hear some don't work.