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Sony _could_ have revived the 'walkman' name with a stylish portable mp3 player.. remember when everyone had to have a walkman? but sony was at odds with itself over DRM etc etc.. the last thing they wanted to be making and selling was a product that could be used to illegally trade mp3's. so, there were a lot of people trying to make a name in the portable mp3 market, and that's when apple hit with the ipod. and the ipod it was good, and people loved it, and the ipod became the 'walkman' of this generation. 'oh you're not cool, that's just some crappy mp3 player, too poor to get an ipod huh?'

The cat is already out of the bag, and yeah, sony was well aware of mp3 players, and had the hardware and engineering guys who could have designed an efficient one. they were banking on the mp3 format to 'just go away' so their record label could make more money selling CDs. or something like that.

Besides sony was focusing it's effort at dominating the video game sector, they've done an awesome job at it, and they've managed to 'launch' the psp (against nintendo's iron grip on the handheld market) in every major country except the UK. And all this for a system that won't have a respectable* game title for another year, and has no back catalog of compatable games.

I know people who are very happy with their PSPs but most of them have hacked the firmware and are playing ROMs on emulators... frankly I'd rather buy a flash linker and play them on a cheap GBA SP, since DS linkers are still immature, and GBA linkers work with more systems than DS ones. http://www.gameboy-advance.net/nintendo_ds/neo-fla sh/neoflash-review.htm

for $300(or less) i can get a very nice car/portable dvd player with detachable screen(s). and i don't need to buy movies that only play on a psp, plus i can play dvd+-r's i've burned, or movies i've rented from netflix. so the movie playback capabilites don't impress me.

the NDS however has several games i love, and several i wouldn't mind owning.. plus works with my old gba titles, which i have about 20 of or so. I am still worried about nintendo's long term strategy, but they've beaten everyone else out of the portable market, so if they keep on making awesome systems with awesome games, then sony will remain the 'other' portable gaming device.

*= IMNSHO psps launch titles suck, a look at gamefaqs doesn't show much promise til you look at games with no us release dates, or release dates a year or more from now.

They also have 32 Megabytes of on-board ram, making these a dream for homebrew.

Its no real suprise to see the DS fly off shelves, a touch screen has been badly needed for handhelds for a long time, and the two screens, once you're used to them, you cant go back to using a single screened handheld again.

I predict the same when the Nintendo Revolution hits the scene.

Some random urls:
teh skeen
ds dev
supercard (can't find the M3 and G6 pages longer)
wifime
some info about m3
Emulators for NDS
whatever

I dont know about you guys, but all you need is a 1 Gb "backup / homebrew" memory card (such as Flash 2 Advance Ultra) and a Game Boy Micro and *cough* backed up copies of oh say EVERY SINGLE NINTENDO GAME EVER MADE (which you of course have, just collecting dust, right?)

Let me make this crystal clear:
YOU COULD PUT EVERY SINGLE NES GAME EVER MADE ON A SINGLE GBA CARTRIDGE AND PUT SAID CARTRIDGE INTO A GAMEBOY MICRO.

Reflect on this for a moment - I would assume you guys would appreciate this far more than most.

How?
Slap 128 megs of games (256 if you get the 2 Gb version - thats nearly 1,000 NES games), load up PocketNES http://www.gameboy-advance.net/emulated/nes_roms_o n_gba.htm and go to town on an original NES controller sized micro NES with built in color screen, auto saving and toggleable turbo buttons built in (GBA has 2 shoulder buttons, why not use them for something :))

Of course you could also just buy (or build) an USB NES Controller and emulate them yourself (to prevent damage to the original games, i'm sure). Not as portable though, and saving and restoring the state is tougher (gotta use keys).

For extra kicks and giggles, anybody remember the old AGI Sierra games? (Think Leisure Suit Larry 1, Space Quest 1,2, Police Quest, Kings Quest Series, etc).

Some programming genius made a AGI --> GameBoy converter, called GBAGI. http://www.bripro.com/gbagi/index.php

Throw all of those on there too if you like, and even check out GREAT Fan made games that are arguably even better than the original SQ's - Space Quest 0: Replicated http://wiw.org/~jess/replicated.html and Space Quest: The Lost Chapter http://www.frostbytei.com/space/

Man these things have come a long way in just 20 years. I look forward to what the next 20 will bring - and it had better not be a Xbox 360 the size of a standard xbox controller or I am going to be PISSED.

Not too pricy.

It also allows making backups of your games and running homebrew code.

Not too pricy.

It also allows making backups of your games and running homebrew code.

Not too pricy.

It also allows making backups of your games and running homebrew code.

I modded my GBA before the SP came out,
http://www.gameboy-advance.net/accessories/gba_aft erburner_internal_light.htm
much better light than the GBA SP but I did manage to get a few specs of dust that got sealed in permenantly during the upgrade than now glow white like undead dead pixels.

Playing, oddly enough, my Game Boy Color games that I haven't finished, that I can't play on the DS

You know, you can buy a flash linker that comes with emulators... to play GB games on the DS. There are a few caveat, there are no 'ds' specific linkers, they all work for both GBA and DS, so only a handful have NES/GB emulators included, and some of the loaders GB emulators have limits to the size ROM they can play. sure, your PS has a bios hack that lets you play GB ROMs, but you have to buy memory sticks, most flash linkers use standard memory types (CF or SD)

So while you still have to buy a spendy device to use the memory... it's not like you can't play game boy games on the DS. I think the coolest thing ever would be if Nintendo made some kind of 'official' online rom distribution site, packed the roms in some kind of 'drm' protected file, and made a flash linker that could be 'syched' up to your pc's/DS/nintendo revolution for your 'legitmate' online purchased rom collection. To keep costs lower, you could use some sort of peer distribution software that could run on the revolution or a PC connected to the internet...

If you really want to use your thumb, why not keep your old PDA and make one of these:
http://www.gameboy-advance.net/nintendo_ds/dreamin g/nds-thumb-thong.htm

Besides, inasmuch as they're not big into open source, and (like PSP) use proprietary media, it's easy enough to buy a dev kit/cart and either create your own games or pirate theirs.

Thanks to IGN Pocket for its first details on Game Boy Advance game Pirate Battle, an original "turn-based strategy game" from the RIAA and Nintendo.

In the game you play an ex-RIAA agent hired by nintendo to track down and kill the evil webmaster of gameboy-advance.net with your threating e-mail powerup, which can be combo'ed with a lawsuit gun special move you can fight the evil pirates, but when you track them down eventually you will have to face their ultimate weapon, the flash card!

Thanks to IGN Pocket for its first details on Game Boy Advance game Pirate Battle, an original "turn-based strategy game" from the RIAA and Nintendo.

In the game you play an ex-RIAA agent hired by nintendo to track down and kill the evil webmaster of gameboy-advance.net with your threating e-mail powerup, which can be combo'ed with a lawsuit gun special move you can fight the evil pirates, but when you track them down eventually you will have to face their ultimate weapon, the flash card!

GBA has 6 buttons + Direction pad. A,B,L,R,select and start. All are used in games, and some emulators have even virtual keyboards. ZX spectrum on GBA

This is all well and good, but how would you get the games TO the GBA?

Obviously you're not looking very hard.

games that have no personality

I mean, really, you sound like a whiny film student...

I think they were reffering to the fact that you can emulate NES on a GBA, here are the sites: gameboy-advace.net

with the METEO Avi-2-GBA Video Codec.

Granted, your flash cart will likely only have enough storage for a few minutes, but you can encode any video data rather than depending on / paying for prepackaged content.

Don't worry, the software (windows only, I'm afraid) can also encode MPEG video.

The original GBA is an entry level machine that's still being sold because the manufacturing for it is already put together. It's more comfortable for big hands, but the not-backlit screen is a *huge* problem. Actually, the screen is the only way in which the SP is superior; I dislike it otherwise. If you're confident, an Afterburner looks better than the SP's backlight does, but voids your warranty, and if you're not careful you might get an air bubble under your screen (ugly, not damaging.) Moreover, there are palette differences in old games which make them look dumb on new hardware; an afterburner can be turned off, or with creative hardware, even just down.

But if it's for someone else, shell out the extra $20. The backlight is very important. The old AGB is kind of hard to see if you're not in the sun or directly under florescent lighting. Penny Arcade had it right.

• NES emulators for GBA
• GBA flash cartridge to put the emulator and ROMs onto
• Game Boy Player to plug the GBA NES flash cartridge into the GameCube

The portable TV feature of the TurboExpress required that you buy a TV Tuner add-on. It cost something like $120 (about the cost of a portable TV all by itself) and made the already-large TurboExpress even larger. A similarly-styled and similarly expensive TV Tuner was made for the Game Gear.

Having owned a portable TV, I can safely tell you that it works well only if you live very close to a transmitter and/or have a huge antenna. Seeing that most people didn't want to make these concessions to have a $420 portable television, I'm still not surprised the TurboExpress failed.

Incidentally, you can buy a TV Tuner for Game Boy Advance if you really want one.

Pocket NES, or the other emulators covered on this site.

It is also very possible that SNES on GBA stuff will exist soon.

Check out shops like Large Animal Games - these places have amazing ideas, there is basically no channel for them to sell their wares.

This is where Sony can make inroads against Nintendo with their upcoming handheld. Include a 32MB+ CF card (or built in memory) that can transfer games you download online, via USB cable to the handheld. All of the big name games will be in the stores, but you will have tons of independent games to make the system more attractive.

Hell, I already get all of my GBA games that way

Note: using this to hold ROM images of games (especially recent ones) you don't own is bad. ROMs are great for nostalgia, but the GBA is new and GBA games cost $30, so just buy the things.

here

I didn't even know this existed.

I wonder if anyone has had success/failure with the GameWallet with the SP? It would seem to me the form factor of the GameWallet would get in the way of the clamshell design, but maybe i'm wrong..