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It's unfortunate that the unofficial Game Boy Advance tools are no longer sold through them either. There is a big community of budding game developers out there, but with the prices Nintendo asks for the official development kits, the unofficial tools are their only way of getting started.

Of course, tools like that will always find their way. Unfortunately also the site of the company that makes them is either hacked or taken down. Anyone know which?

Jouni

except one thing - the lack of it being for pc.

I saw PS2, GCN, Xbox. So in a way it's on PC. And if they do decide to make a game for the Game Boy Advance, it'll be a drastically different design (due to the GBA's hardware support for 2d but only software support for 3d), but it'll at least be playable on PC with a cart reader and VisualBoyAdvance.

I take it you don't have a flash advance card. That would be higher up on the list than a simple light. I personally prefer the Flash 2 Advance to the stuff made by Visoly, but they are harder to find. I heard there are problems with customs seizing these things from some of the larger companies (e.g. Lik-Sang) especially when shipped via UPS, but if you go with a smaller company and ship via EMS Speedpost (assuming it's coming from Hong Kong) there are fewer problems. The place I bought mine from was cool enough to put down that it was a gift worth $30 on the customs form and it was shipped with no mention of a company on the return address.

..on my GBA for over a year. A Flash Advance card from these people running this is one of the best investments I ever made.

biut it doesn't matter you can STILL buy a n64

You can still buy lots of NES consoles on eBay. Nintendo has long used the existence of eBay against the "preservation" and "but piracy of no-longer-available software is fair use" defences. (I'd give you a link, but it appears to have disappeared in the 2001 redesign.)

emulating the c64 would be a wonderful use of new hardware... emulating the n64 would be piracy

Actually both would be piracy, unless you have specific license contracts that state that you may freely copy and redistribute software for the Commodore 64. Unlike patents, copyrights do not expire.

On the other hand, how did Nintendo 64 software developers develop and test their software? Emulation isn't piracy if you own the copyright on what you're emulating. Even Nintendo has recently realized that that highly substantial non-infringing uses for flash cartridges make the flash cartridges in and of themselves no longer illegal, and has removed the "emulators exist ONLY to play pirated games" language from its IP FAQ.

As a followup, this definitely "brightens" the already vibrant homebrew development scene.

The Visoly flash linker and carts are great, and available from (your friends and mine) Lik-Sang, GameGizmo and Easy Buy 2000 (all no-referral URLs).

The multi-boot cables (for downloading small apps to your GBA without needing to flash a cart) are cool, too, and have been exploited to turn your GBA into a handheld terminal. Check out the PDF on that last link; much nicer than reading the page, with pictures. Wish there was someplace within the continental US to order a couple non-ugly ones from, though. Those MBV2s are just too unweildly to use in sexy handheld terminal demonstrations.

BTW, I hadn't ever even heard of a Flash Advance linker, but bought one for my kid the day of the Slashdot story on Zophar's store.

You mean this story

He loves it, and has been copying games like gangbusters--he probably bought his last cartridge.

I have a Flash Advance linker and a 256 megabit flash cartridge. I use them mostly for homebrew development, which is the primary purpose for which the manufacturer markets them. (Here's what I've done so far.) I don't pirate Game Boy games unless there is a clear indication that the publisher has no intention of bringing them to store shelves in the United States. (Yes, I'm referring to the Noddy and Kururin games.)

The problem is that this site (and many others) make it fairly obvious that "this is a copier" and "we are going to copy illegal stuff with it".

The manufacturer's web page clearly states that "The Flash Advance 256M is furthermore the perfect choice for any professional Gameboy Advance developers or even home developers - Create your own games using your PC (free software is available) and simply use the Flash Advance 256M to show your game/demo to friends or test it on real Hardware." Heck, every single page links to gbadev.org (a homebrew site).

Distributing copies of the game is clearly copyright infringement.

Not if the game has been released as free software (or even free as in beer). Nintendo's titles aren't free, but mine are. I put my proofs of concept and short utilities under the Expat license and my full games under the GNU GPL. It's only copyright infringement to redistribute binaries of GPL'd software if you neglect make an offer to distribute machine-readable source code at cost.

Developing and using free software constitutes a substantial non-infringing use of the Visoly Flash Advance Pro cartridges.

ZD didn't inport the flash linkers at all; they were bought from a US supplier. (I wanna know who that is!)

That would be Visoly Inc

GBA flash cards are considered illegal

How are GBA flash cards any more illegal than SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards?. If I load only free software onto a Visoly flash card for Game Boy Advance, whose copyright am I infringing? Yes, free software for GBA does exist, and copying the Nintendo boot logo is legal under Sega v. Accolade. (Read More...)

...when you combine this with the description of Visoly's other Flash Advance products. It sure sounds from the visoly site's description of those products that they are marketing them for copying first, and developing second. The first paragraph of the Flash Advance description states: "Once you have sent games, demos or programs to it's memory using the Flash Advance Linker, it can simply be plugged into the Gameboy Advance and it will act like an original game -- there is 100% not any difference!" Not until the fourth paragraph do they chime in with: "The Flash Advance 64M is furthermore the perfect choice for any professional Gameboy Advance developers or even home developers" I know this doesn't invalidate the legitimate uses of the Linker, but it can't help their cause to have language in their other products' descriptions that seems to advocate piracy using the Linker.

rule #1 NEVER buy ANYTHING valued over $20 at best buy. best buy comes from bizzaro world

NEVER may be too strong of a word. My friend bought a Game Boy Advance system at Best Buy (was $90, now $80), and it works fine, even with third-party development add-ons from Visoly. It should be safe to buy factory-sealed Nintendo products anywhere.

Just like PC games and Console games are in a different catagory.

Not anymore, thanks to the Flash Advance Linker which lets you copy binaries from legitimately purchased games into a computer, and VisualBoyAdvance which lets you play them.

I don't think you can really count calculators and palmtop software as direct competitors until you see it on Toys R Us and Funcoland racks

Why would TU need to carry TI-89 calculators? Students probably already have them.

and you start to see crossover software.

On this page alone I see clones of Mario, Zelda, T*tr*s, Asteroids, Beetle Mania (from SMRPG), Breakout, Bomberman, Boulder Dash, Bust-A-Move (Puzzle Bobble), Command & Conquer, Doom, Final Fantasy, Mario Kart, Memory, Minesweeper, Pong, SameGame, Simon, Sokoban, Streets of Rage, Taipei, Worms, Yahtzee, baseball, blackjack, checkers, chess, light cycle, labyrinth, poker, reversi, snake, solitaire, and more. Is this not an extensive library?

(Tony Hawk for TI, yes!)

And yes, there is a skateboard game; it just doesn't have Tony Hawk®'s name on it.

The point is that you can carry these into class with you, which can't be said of a Game Boy.

I don't think the fact that a kid has a badass calculator would keep him from asking his parents for a GBA for christmas.

Likewise, I don't think the fact that a kid has a badass PS2 would keep him from asking his parents for a GameCube for christmas.

lik-sang.com THE hong kong importers. the actual flash stuff (most popular at least) comes from visoly.com

It was posted in another comment, but here's the important links--

http://www.visoly.com/fa_linker.php
http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/product_info.php?c ategory=6&products_id=1051&

This is a link to both Visoli's homepage (which has downloadable software for their products, plus manuals and product descriptions) as well as a link to Lik Sang, who apperently sell the 64M Flash Card for $109 US, and the Flash Advance Linker (the actual 'ripper' of the carts, connects to your PC via your parallel port) for $35 US. They ship internationally, and it doesn't seem that expensive really. =)

I also understand that a 128M Flash Card is in the works, so it might pay off to wait awhile and see what comes of it.

..aside from the glare reducers, 'plain' screen shields, screen magnifiers, lights (both marketed for GBA and actually designed for GBA -- the GBA using less power for the bulb and requiring a better one), stickers (which could be good for the white system which is damn bright in the sun, seriously so), hand grips, and joystick extensions available, (try www.liksang.com) there are also a few other things going on with GBA that are technologically impressive for its so recent of a release date. There is a lot of homebrew and open source GBA development going on, which aside from the emulators is aided by the '64mbit Advance Flash card and Advance linker'. It connects to the PC Parallel port and transfers ROM images to its somewhat small 8MB memory. GBA supports 256MB or even larger per cart (bankswitching baby) so a larger card is necessary, but try www.visoly.com for obtaining one and there are also a few good links to the development stuff going on there. Additionally, I would like to add I and many other GBA enthusiasts would pay damn good money for a better system. I would prefer one that is very small, and uses a passthrough to a genuine GBA cart for backing up [ahem] savegames as well as passing through any potential lockout chips, and also contains a PC Card type 2 slot supporting both SmartMedia and Compact Flash via adapters cards. Or just support one or the other, just make it please! ;-P here karma karm a k a r m a