Nintendo brought its touring van to Sacramento State on Friday as part of a 17-city tour to show off the new Game Boy Advance portable system and games. Hornet reporters had the opportunity to check out the system and some of the games that will be available for the 32-bit system’s June 11 launch date.

Nintendo employees Cory Conner and Karen Tetherow pulled into a Sac State parking lot around 12:45 p.m. and broke out several of the small Game Boy Advance (GBA) units. The system is under six inches wide, a little over three inches high, under an inch deep, and weighs less than half a pound.

The games demonstrated for the GBA included Super Mario Advance, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.

Also on hand were copies of the two new Legend of Zelda games, titled Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, released Monday for the Game Boy Color. The system can play both GBA-specific titles and older Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges, and will retail for $99.95.

The GBA games made available were all colorful, detailed, fun and easy to play. There will be 17 games available at the system’s launch, which include those already mentioned and others, such as a version of Sega’s puzzle game Chu Chu Rocket and Ubi Soft’s Rayman Advance. About 60 games are scheduled to be released by the 2001 holiday season, and will retail for between $29.95 and $39.95.

The GBA is “the most powerful 2-D system ever developed,” said Conner, and features a 2.9-inch, full-color LCD screen capable of displaying 512 colors simultaneously out of a palette of 32,000. Games run at 60 frames per second, compared with the original Game Boy’s 30 frames per second. The systems can run for 15 hours on two AA batteries. The GBA also features an option to link up to four of the units together for multi-user play with a link cable. Though some games may require multiple cartridges for multi-player modes, others, such as Super Mario Advance and F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, can be played by up to four people with only one copy of the game.

“You’ll have a multi-player option with only one cartridge,” Conner said.With the coming debut of Nintendo’s highly anticipated128-bit Game Cube system scheduled during next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo and the imminent release of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo looks set to be major competition for Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s coming X-Box this holiday season.