There is no mistaking it anymore, Nintendo does better in the United States than in Japan. Nintendo sold more than twice as many Nintendo 64 game console in the United States than in Japan.

The launch of GameCube was a notable dud in Japan. But Nintendo of America sold out when it launched the game console.

And Game Boy Advance? Nintendo of America predicted that it would sell 10 million units by the end of 2002. It sold more than 11 million.

Things have not gone so well in Japan. Nintendo sold 2.7 million units in the first half of 2001. And sales have fallen since, to just over 1 million a year later.

And the Game Boy business is Nintendo's bread and butter.

Something needed to be done, and that something is a new Game Boy. Or, if not new, at least improved.

In February, Nintendo will launch Game Boy Advance-SP, a Game Boy with a lighted screen. Rather than using a back-lit screen, something similar to the liquid crystal screens used in laptop computers, Nintendo chose to use an edge-lit screen. The illumination of the lights around the edge of the screen is reflected by material behind the screen, creating even lighting.

This front-lit screen is the answer to an ongoing problem that has vexed Nintendo since 1989: how to provide a lighted screen without compromising battery life?

Nintendo found that in the long run, battery life was more important than the clarity of a lit screen. The screen on the original Game Boy Advance was dim in airplane lighting and pretty much useless in shaded environments, but it could run for up to 12 hours on two AA batteries. That meant that you might need to squint and hold your head at the right angle, but you could run a Game Boy Advance nonstop from Narita to Los Angeles International and have battery life to spare.

Other hand-held game system manufacturers such as Atari, Sega, and NEC placed a higher value on screen luminescence. The results were nice screens that you could see in the dark, but which came with a strong appetite for batteries.

Sega's Nomad, a wonderful hand-held that plays Genesis cartridges, burned through six Duracell AAs in two hours. It goes through lower-quality batteries in less than half the time.

I once brought a Nomad on a trip to Japan. I had a container with 24 cheap batteries that I purchased in Akihabara. My Nomad burned through those batteries at the rate of six every 45 minutes. I only got two hours of gameplay, although they were a bright two hours.

Game Boy Advance-SP, which has a built-in lithium-ion battery, runs for 10 hours at full brightness, and you can coax 18 hours out of it by switching the screen light off.

Aside from the light, the system has the same 4-cm by 6-cm screen it always had. It's a good screen in proper lighting.

Other things have changed. The new version has a clamshell design. The screen is built into a lid that opens like the mirror on a woman's compact. When closed, it is a modest 8-cm square. (The precise measurements are 8.5 cm high by 8.2 cm wide by 2.4 cm tall.) Because of the flip-top design, the new version has the vertical format of the original Game Boy -- the first Game Boy Advance was held lengthwise.

The screen controls, speaker, and cartridge slot are in the base of the unit, which weighs in at 40 grams.

Nintendo allowed me to test the unit on several new games and my impressions are favorable. Except for the lit screen and vertical format, the gaming experience was indistinguishable from the experience of playing the first Game Boy Advance.

The only limitation I saw with this new Game Boy is a missing earphone jack. Players must plug earphones into the power jack, meaning they cannot play games and recharge the system's batteries simultaneously.

Game Boy Advance-SP will be released in Japan on February 14 for 12,500 yen and in the United States on March 23 for $100. Nintendo will continue to market the original Game Boy Advance in Japan for around 8000 yen and in the U.S. for around $70.