Title: Gameboy Advance SP (Custom Kirby shell)
Classification: Utility (modded)
Date obtained: July 29th, 2023

Description: i mentioned in my very first entry in this tab of the site that i had a custom GBA SP that i broke. so what's the deal with that thing, huh? well here it is, the custom Kirby SP. it really is a beautiful little thing, i love the translucent blue and it comes with these awesome magenta buttons that just rock my socks. i love this thing from a pure aesthetics point of view. but just about everything else about it is total ass. so let's discuss that!

well how about those buttons? do they feel good? the answer might surprise you: it's no! they do not feel good at all! it constantly feels like the system is fighting me to get any input in, especially when im trying to do diagonals on the d-pad. not to mention, the buttons (as well as the shell as a whole) are made of the world's softest plastic, so things are constantly bending and feel extremely mushy. i guess that's my fault for buying a custom shell on the cheap, but... i didn't have a job at the time. sue me. and speaking of that extremely cheap build quality, the screws may be the worst part of the whole thing. i foolishly decided that using the screws from the extremely cheap shell replacement kit was a good idea, and boy did i regret it. because upon putting it all back together, i realized i had put the hinges in backwards. no big deal, just open it back up and switch em out right? well, no. because when i went to unscrew the battery cover, i discovered something horrific. the screws were so cheap and soft that just trying to unscrew the thing completely stripped the screw beyond any hope. like, there was no drive, it was just a circle. so i was completely locked out of ever getting into this thing without resorting to destructive methods. not only that, but sometimes it'd lose the ability to output sound randomly. (the SP speaker isn't attached with a wire or ribbon cable or anything, instead it's just raw contacts held together by the screws holding the rest of the console together, so if it's not put back together exactly the way it was it's gonna get funky. i'm sure you can imagine what the problem was with my thing.) and then sometimes, it'd just... randomly shut off. now, to be fair, the more i used it the less it did this. but it was still extremely annoying when it did.

so this thing wasn't perfect, whatever. at least it functioned for the most part, right? correct! until it didn't! one day i decided i was done dealing with all these issues, and made the executive choice to fix all of them. and in the process, i fucked it up even more. i still didn't have the ability to get into the battery compartment, so i just sort of... unscrewed everything else in the hopes that i'd be able to make something work. (big surprise, i didn't) and in the process of trying to pry it apart, when everything was put back together it just... no longer turned on. i still haven't figured out what the issue is, and it's driving me nuts. if anyone has any suggestions on what to do... uh... let me know when i get some form of contact set up.