However, the project was eventually cancelled due to concerns of it being too big, having a drastically decreased battery life (to approximately 1 hour) as LCD color displays required a back-light at the time, and too expensive to manufacture.

[5] Shortly after Nintendo released the Game Boy Color, the team experimented with touchscreen displays for the first time.

Although Nintendo EAD general manager and video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto liked the concept, it was eventually cancelled as it wasn't well received by the rest of Nintendo's management due to making the system's screen too dark, as it didn't have a back light.

The CPU itself took more than one year to design, mainly due to feature requests from both Nintendo and external developers, which required certain functions be implemented directly in the processing unit.

Regardless, only one major CPU redesign occurred during the course the handheld's development As for the display's aspect ratio, in order to facilitate bringing ports to the system's library from home consoles, the team decided on implementing a widescreen, a common feature of televisions at the time.

In terms of its external design, the team made a drastic change from the Game Boy Advance's predecessors, opting for an horizontal-oriented system instead.

Then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was approached by his successor Hiroshi Yamauchi who requested him to implement two screen on Nintendo's next handheld, in the same fashion as the dual-screen Game & Watch.

In a 2017 interview, Okada confessed he now believed that pushing for a direct successor for the Game Boy Advance was wrong and was glad Iwata followed with Yamauchi's input.