Cygnus Announces Game Boy Devel Environment

GB Fan writes "Cygnus announced today their new development environment for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance that is expected this fall. You can read more about it at GB Station. "

Comments

Re:Game Boy Advance

[Anonymous Coward]

It lacks a backlight because backlights suck down the juice so quickly. Also, the GBA will be out in Japan a few months earlier. There have been rumors that the GBA will be released as early as June of 2000 in Japan. I'm sure more details will be released at E3 2000.

Re:Your link doesn't work!

[torpor]

Its bung.com.hk, not bunk. Sorry about that!

ROM Burner too...

[torpor]

http://www.bunk.com.hk has a ROM Burner kit, and ROM's that can be purchased... if you want to transfer the code written with the aforementioned IDE's to your Gameboy, it can be done.

Note however that these ROM Burners aren't supposed to be sold in the US because of some lawsuit - apparently they were being used to pirate Gameboy ROM's. Lame, but oh well.

s/bunk/bung/

[torpor]

DOH!

Sorry, that URL should be:

http://www.bung.com.hk/

Gameboy Advance?

[Indomitus]

I've never even heard of this thing. I still can't believe that the Gameboy/Color Gameboy is the best selling piece of gaming hardware ever. I never thought that thing would last even when I used to play Tetris on my old one for hours at a time.

Any ideas why the Gameboy did so much better than the technically better Atari Lynx (which had color like 8 years ago) and all the other handheld machines? It doesn't seem like any handheld has done that well besides the Gameboy.

Re:Gameboy Advance?

[Andy Dodd]

Yeah... Back a long time ago, there were a bunch of reviews discussing the Game Boy vs. Lynx and Game Gear.

Basically, the GB won out for two reasons, despite being the only one with a monochrome screen. Battery life (The big plus of having a mono screen), and size. The Sega Game Gear and the Atari Lynx were just a bit to big... The Game Boy fit in your pocket, even the original one. (Although you had to have a reasonably large pocket.)

The other systems would only have been able to fit in the pockets of pants like those that a friend of mine wears. He can put an entire N64 in his pocket. :) Said ultra-baggy pants didn't exist at the time of the GameBoy vs. All wars.

Note that these are two of the main reasons that the Palm Pilot destroyed the Newton. The Newton was too big and chewed up batteries too quickly. Apple just tried to make it TOO powerful. (Palm vs. CE is a different story - WinCE just plain sucks. :)

Re:Gameboy Advance?

[Smack]

1) Long battery power, especially when compared to any of the other color ones.
2) Good pack-in game, Tetris.
3) Came out when Nintendo was still top of the gaming world. Playstation wasn't around yet, and Sega was just catching on. So the most popular games of the time, Super Mario and Zelda, were only available on the Gameboy.

Re:Gameboy Advance?

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Now I have to disagree; I think Windows is crap because it's unstable and resource intensive, not because it hasn't improved over the years.

I think Gameboy is great because it's small, easy to use, has a long battery life, and some great games-and there has been no need to change these features other than minor evolutionary refinements. The screensize grew, the clarity and brightness of the screen improved, it's become even smaller now, and it has even better games available, with faster processor and more memory addressable and the availability of color.

Very similar arguments can be made about the Palm Pilot as well, in terms of why it is a good device where others have failed

-AS

Re:Gameboy Advance?

[m3000]

I've never even heard of this [Gameboy Advance]

Well, let me enlighten you to this wonderful piece of hardware:

Nintendorks.com (includes "exclusive" GBA picture ;)


DMGICE


IGN Pockets' GBA FAQ


Nintendo's Press Release

As for your question as to why it did better, the answer is games. The games on that sytem rock. It has my two favorite games (Tetrix and Super Mario Brothers Deluxe), a ton of cool RPG's and 2D games, and Pokemon is one of the fastest selling and biggest videogames of all time. It's consistantly number 1 and 2 on the weekly sales charts. The GB is far from dead, and since the GBA is going to have backwards compatiblity and bring the possiblility of internet connection to a handheld, it's going to keep on going.

Ohh ooh, connect your Palm Pilot to the GB

[dustpuppy]

Just read the Linux for Gameboy post. What if the GB games file could be loaded on to your Palm Pilot and your Palm could be connected to your GB.

That way, if you were working a long shift on New Years Eve :), and you got bored with the games you have you could connect a modem to your palm pilot, download new freeware GB games, and then power up your GB and away you go ...

Okay, I'm getting carried away this idea ... back to work.

Will Nintendo like this?

[MenTaLguY]

A friend of mine who does GBC development told me that Nintendo (like most console/handheld makers) makes money by selling their stations/handhelds at a loss, and making up for it by the licensing fees they charge developers. Consequently, they have a pattern of working hard to crush the "hobbyist" development community, since hobbyists don't generally pay licensing fees. As if Nintendo really needed the additional money...

Re:SOC/RO -- Gameboys

[ralphclark]

You've obviously taken LSD today and are having a bad trip. I can assure you the visions you're having of dead animals are NOT REAL. I hope you manage to find medical assistance before you hurt yourself. Try dialling 911.

Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

Re:Tools that are avalible now

[JamesKPolk]

This isn't for the current Game Boy, or GBC.. it's for the next portable that Nintendo has in the works, scheduled to be released later this year.

Re:There are better "toys" out there than the Game

[stump]

Sure there are better geek toys out there. But for about $70, nothing touches a Gameboy Color. If you're just speculating that it sucks without actually spending some time with one, I'd suggest you go check one out.

The Palms and other PDA's are great for what they do, but for games they just don't compare. Do you really think a kid's gonna save up ~$400 for a Palm V just to get a couple mediocre games?

gameboy screen size

[delmoi]

Actualy the gameboy screen size has never changed, The case just hot smaller.

"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",

Technical superiority...

[delmoi]

Well, a game-gear lasted about about 30 minutes on a set of 6 new generic brand batteries, whereas the the gameboy lasted about a week.

The GB also weighed a fraction of the GG, and it was a lot smaller.

The GG/lynx might have had pretter graphics, but they were pretty much usless for what they were intended for. There's more to technical superiority then CPU speed

"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",

Re:If Windows is so crappy...

[Foogle]

Well, truth be told, it's not because they captured game developers. Until about 1995-97 most games were written for MS-DOS, because Windows' support for games was lousy. They had only recently come out with their "Games SDK" and it wasn't until about 97 that they renamed it DirectX and made it an API to be reckoned with.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:Legal questions

[Junks Jerzey]

This is a development environment. It does NOT mean that:

1. You will have access to Nintendo's technical documentation or examples.
2. Anything you develop will be approved by Nintendo.

If you do manage to get hardware docs and hack a game together, you really can't do anything with it except try to find a publisher or distribute it to other people who have hacked hardware. Note that Cygnus is in the development tool business, and they've done custom gcc ports for other platforms as well, including the PlayStation. This has nothing at all to do with enabling home programmers to write games for closed hardware.

Re:There are better "toys" out there than the Game

[W Parasyte]

More info?

I've never heard of the Neo Geo Pocket.

OK then. A while ago, I forget when, SNK decided to get into the pocket console business by releasing the Neo Geo Pocket. I don't know much about that; It was 16-bit, but grayscale, though I'm not sure how many shades of it there were. (I think, at least. The existence of monochrome games for the NGPC somewhat supports the existence of this, though I'm not sure and can be wrong)

A few months ago (probably a little longer), they released a better system that had color, the Neo Geo Pocket Color (heh, inventive name, eh?). Anyway, you can buy it at SNK America or most stores that sell video games; I know I've seen it at Software Etc, Electronics Botique, K*B Toys, and Wal-Mart.

One of my favorite things about the system is the joystick; it's got a good amount of resistance, not too much and not too little. It's almost like a hatswitch, there's a sort of dimple on top of it that your thumb fits comfortably into. It also clicks when you press any direction, so you can accurately time moves in fighting games.

The LCD is 160x152, and is capable of displaying 146 colors out of a possible pallate of 4096. In the hardware itself, the screen can be extended to deal with 256x256 at once. It has a Toshiba TLCS-900H cpu, 16-bit, and a separate Z80 for sound (which comes out sounding like the GB does). Memory isn't stored in the game cartridges, but on the system itself (which makes me wonder how much memory is on there), which is backed up by a (included) CR2032 battery. It runs for "up to" 40 hours on 2 AA batteries, and my experiences confirm this... as long as the sound is off. Which you might want anyway. The LCD is very clear in light, even dim light; it uses the same reflective LCD technology used in the GBC screen.

One of the more interesting things for it is the link cable to hook up certain games to a Sega Dreamcast. These are King of Fighters R-1, and SNK vs Capcom CFC and MOTM. They unlock secrets in KOF:DM 1999 and the upcoming SNK Vs Capcom for the Dreamcast.

There's not that many titles available for the NGPC; they're all very good though, coming from SNK, Capcom, and Sega. A partial listing:

• SNK Vs Capcom. There are actually 3 different games of this( Well 2 I guess...): Match of the Millennium, the fighting game; Card Fighters Clash SNK, where you get more SNK cards and there's one exclusive card, and CFC Capcom, where it's like SNK but more Capcom stuff. These last two are like Pokémon in a way; it's a card game like Magic:TG, and you trade cards with CPU opponents and other people with the game.
• Sonic's Pocket Adventure. It's a game like Sonic, but with all-new maps, and some of the focus is more on exploration than on speed sometimes.
• Dark Arms: Beast Busters 1999: This sounds cool. A shooter/RPG where you can catch and evolve bio-weapons... kinda pokémonish.
• Magical Drop: My favorite puzzle game in the Arcade (and NeoRageX...), now on the NGPC! I'm getting this next time I get my allowance :)
• Pac-Man. Like the arcade :) Includes two viewing options: Scroll, or fit it all on the screen :)
• Biomotor Unitron: RPG. Sounds cool. I need more money :)
• Metal Slug: First Mission. Like the arcade, except it's all new missions are no longer linear... you choose where to go next :)
• Various other arcade ports, like KoF, Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, and Crush Roller. A full list of available software can be found at this page, http://www.snkusa.com/hw.htm.

All of this makes the NGPC my favorite portable, and the best on the market. Sales have been decent, though as might be expected the GBC is selling more hardware and software.

Not likely.

[trapkit]

The Gambeboy Advance could be deemed as yet another non-stateside hardware release. The chances that this portable will make it to the states is slim to nil.
The reason of this is basically because there is something like 30 million gameboys [? correct me if I'm wrong] and converting this many people over would take years and years. Most console upgrades only concern a few million users, and that is done fairly easily.
Upgrading to gameboy advance could be viewed as changing from cd to dvd-audio. It would take years, and people would fight it.
I'm not opposed to a great piece of new hardware, this would be really great if it got released stateside, but the 64dd was also a good idea, and look what happened.
The development tools for linux are pretty cool, but coding for smaller hardware is usually done in assembly due to the ram limitations. Anyone owning a ti-calc will testify that asm is quicker than ti-basic.
Basically all that is going to happen here is either:
a. delays [n64 anyone?]
b. no stateside release [64dd]
c. massive success [gameboy]

I'm rooting for #3, but i'm not getting my hopes up.

copyright/sales questions

[BlightX]

With the writeable GB cart still under contest, and the lawsuit still pending (as far as I know) the functionalities of this program may be fairly limited for now, or at least a little more costly. But, with the dawn of gameboy programming accessories, does this mean that people have free reign to distribute these games, in a nonfree form? or does it require some sort of liscence from Nintendo? And what would be the consequences if some person or company produced and sold a game and didn't have the required liscencing? Also, do free things have to be liscenced by Nintendo? -"What're you eating?" "nut n' bitch" -Saturday Night Live

I know you are trolling but

[Corrinne Yu]

I know you are trolling but there is a factual technical answer to your question.

There is a GB force feedback/audio speaker amplier/rechargeable battery add-on pack, that provides force feedback directly proportional to audio volume.

Get a Bung Gameboy development system. Code a short simple app that plays audio at high volume. Hook up your gameboy to this peripheral. There you have it.


Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer

SOC/RO -- Gameboys

[Anonymous Coward]

SOC/RO Update: Well in my opinion the GameBoy is good for only one thing: Poke/Mon. Let's face it, Poke/Mon is the #1 recreational activity among foreign computer science graduate students in the US. So what should we assume will be written with this new GameBoy development environment: Open/Source Poke/Mon. There will be more Open/Source Poke/Mon projects than you can shake a dead cat named Belfry at! Is this a good thing for the Open/Source movement? Like everything else, no. Let me give you an example: suppose I give you a box, and a dead cat named Belfry, and some salt and a molecule. Now if you translated the vertices on the box and subdivided the surfaces, you could have a ball that you could keep the dead cat named Belfry in. Then whenever anyone tried to give you shit, you'd be all like, "Dead cat named Belfry, I choose you!" and throw the rotten, diseased and broken body of Belfry the dead cat at them. But watch out! They may also have a dead diseased animal they can throw back at you. Then they have to fight. Whichever one wins gains experience and becomes a much better dead diseased animal. When you and your adversary decide that the fight is over, make sure you pick up the correct dead animal, because they can be kind of hard to tell apart after about 2 months of proving Bohr's sillyness. It is quite embarrasing to get home and discover that you have taken the wrong diseased cat carcass, let me tell you! "What is your point?" Well I think I am pretty clear here, but in case you didn't catch it, my point is that there can only be one true champion of Poke/Mon dead cat fighting. Now I will give you a little treat, since you have been such patient readers so far. Here is a tip from one championship Poke/Mon dead cat figher to the next: only with proper care and maintenance will your Poke/Mon dead animal carcass last the grueling two years until IPO and the Poke/Mon championship (held in Tampa, Florida in the Tampa Bay convention center, July 3-7 2001, get your tickets early). "How do I properly care for my diseased animal carcass?" Well I am a man of first impressions, myself. I think the first impression is what someone always remembers of you, so it is important that you impress upon them a sense of style and class about your diseased animal carcass. Now, everyone knows that the smile is the first thing that someone sees of you, so I think proper dental hygiene is absolutely imperative in a diseased carcass if one is going to make the proper impression on the proper people. It is important that you always get the proper kind of toothpaste. No, not that cheap shit that you use for your model airplanes, the $4.67 high-roller brand. "But my diseased carcass's teeth have all fallen out," you are saying. Well then put them back in, silly! "But I lost them!" Did you check the trunk of your car? "Yes, they weren't there." Hmm well, what about your chinese torture chamber? "No not there." Well anyways, if you can't find the teeth, you can just squirt out all $4.67 worth of toothpaste and rub it in real good all over the carcass, just make sure that no critical parts come off. If they do, you may be able to find Open/Source parts on the internet. Check your local dealer too, or your local WB. Then you can print out the pages on your local University's color laser printer, free of charge (assuming you are a foreign graduate student).

Re:SOC/RO -- Gameboys

[Signal 11]

Could you please use the P tag in html because otherwise you make this really long paragraph that is difficult to read and also enforces the super-long-sentence syndrome that is very irritating to watch and I think that anyone who writes in that style should be taken out behind slashdot and beat soundly about the head and shoulders with a copy of the closest webster dictionary (or optionally a Heritage if you do not have a websters) for the simple reason that doing so will likely jar the brainwax loose and allow them to think clearly; So please, if you're gonna write super-long run-on sentences could you please shoot yourself first and save us the trouble of doing so and having to clean our shoes afterwords?

Hell yes, even better: amateur game developers

[torpor]

See this page for more details:

http://www.bung.com.hk/html/2nd_results.htm

Already exists...

[torpor]

http://www.bunk.com.hk/

Note that they also have a pretty nifty voice recorder accessory for the Gameboy too, which has just recently been hacked to be able to play back movies on the GB Color.

If you ask me, the Gameboy platform is a hackers delight... I know I love mine, and the tools I've gotten from the Asian GB Hacker contingency definitely make life more interesting.

Nothing like having a high-availabilty, cheap portable computing platform that can be fully hacked on. $50 at most Toy stores here in the US, full development kits available online, and life is sweet once you've gotten a ROM burner for it.

My GameBoy hacking facilities have become a veritable sonic screwdriver... :)

What about an Open Source plug-in for the GB?

[dustpuppy]

Without trying to sound like I'm jumping on the Open Source bandwagon, I was just thinking that Nintendo should release a game cartridge that would let you load a game from your PC and then release the game development toolkit as freeware.

Imagine the type of games that would be released if people who could write their own GB games ... I'm sure people could come up with better games that what is currently on the market for GB.

Tools that are avalible now

[HomerJ]

There is already a C compiler for gameboy, and gbc. There is also a IDE called Game Boy Dev Studio, that inculdes an IDE for the above compiler, intergrates with any emulator you have, so you can test code without writing to a cart.

The above SDK also comes with an gameboy Z80(gameboy's Z80 is a little different) assembler, and the debugger that's included in no$gmb is very good.

Not putting Cygnus down at all, I'm sure their tools will be great. But if anyone wants to do gb dev now, there are plenty of free tools avalible now. Including things like map and tile editors.

links:
http://freespace.virgin.net/stephen.blanksby/gbstu dio.htm for the gameboy dev studio

http://gbdev.com hosts the GBDK site (down as of this post)

Gameboy Revival

[Maul]

I can attribute the recent revival of Gameboy to the Pokemon empire. Though Gameboy itself has gone through some improvements (ie Color, though not 100% full color like the Lynx, or Game Gear), the newest batch of GB sales has been due to those annoying Pokemon. Hmph.

But I am impressed. Gameboy came out before the Super NES, and it has lived through four generations of platforms. Perhaps all the other handhelds were too fancy, too expensive, or too unsupported. Who knows. The death of the GB is nowhere in sight, even as systems like Playstation and N64 are getting replaced by successors. Who would have thought that this little Tetris-plaiying machine would last so long?

"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

There are better "toys" out there than the GameBoy

[MVoelker]

If you ask me, there's a bit too much hubub going on about this...

Personally, I would much rather have a Palm V, or even better, the decidedly cheaper Handspring Visor, oh hell, I'd even take a CE device, before I had a Gameboy.

I'm not knocking the Gameboy in any sense, but shouldn't development and programming be geared towards a device that's a little more advanced?

Just my 2 cents. Moderate as you please.

Mike

Game Boy Advance

[spaceorb]

Is slated for release in Christmas (big surprise) 2000. For those that are interested/care, it will have a 32bit RISC cpu and full internet connectivity through a cellular phone (cool muliplayer internet games on a Game Boy). But it still lacks a backlit screen. Here are some specs:

* CPU: Memory embedded 32-bit RISC CPU
* LCD: Reflective TFT Color LCD
* Display Size: 40.8mm x 61.2mm
* Resolution: 240 x 160 pixels
* Size: Approximately Height 80mm / Width 135mm
* Weight: Approximately 140g
* Power Supply: 2 AA Alkaline batteries
* Battery life: 20 hours continuous play
* Maximum colors to be displayed simultaneously: 65,000

Well, because I notice a lot of posters doing this

[W Parasyte]

I see many posters posting about how the Game Boy is aging hardware, and about how it's nice that they're finally releasing a development kit...
Please stop making this mistake.
At the risk of being marked redundant, I'm going to tell you all that THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE GAME BOY. This is about the Game Boy Advance, the new 32-bit advanced portable that Nintendo is bringing out late this year. This is an entirely different system; Nintendo is just using their name recognition with the GB to sell it. Please don't get confused. Especially since develpoment kits for the GB have been out for a very long time now.
Thanks for your time (and not moderating me down).