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Game Boy Advance Screen Shots
Anonymous Coward writes: "IGN Pocket posted the first ever screen shots of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. The images' quality is quite poor, but you can clearly see that the console is able to push out about twice as much color than a Super NES."
The last three years have seen the Tamagotchi and Pokemon take children in the United States by storm. Please, please, God, do whatever you have to to keep hamster simulators from catching on.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Game Boy Advance
CPU: 32-Bit ARM with embedded memory
Screen: 2.9" TFT reflective screen, 240x160 resolution, 65,535 possible colors, 511 simultaneous colors in character mode; 32,768 simultaneous colors in bitmap mode
Size (mm): 135w x 80h x 25d
Weight: 140g
Power: 2 AA batteries
Battery Life: 20 hours
Software: Cartridge format, GB Color compatible, Game Boy compatible
This post sponsored by Ninja Burger. "
Who cares about the gameboy advance??? THERE'S ANOTHER ZELDA ON THE WAY!!!
*chokes on own drool*
:-)
Gfunk007
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
You can clearly see? You can tell the difference between 16k and 32k colours from a 240x160 screenshot? Congratulations. You've obviously got better eyesight than me and the vast majority of the population...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I once had a possibility of having to do some GameBoy Color work. I saw the raw specs and was quite impressed and a little surprised that games for the GBC were not better than what I had seen.
I then saw the constraints on the system and it was so heartbreaking, The real killer was that you can't write to the display while the screen is updating. There were so many things that I'd learnt in my C64 days that I had planned that suddenly I couldn't do.
In many respects I would have prefered a C64 Handheld over a GBC.
So it has a decent CPU and it has pretty Screenshots, but as this link shows, even the GameBoy Color can do pretty pictures. It just can't move them very well. The proof of the GB Advance pudding will be when we see the moving images or the full hardware spec (With the big N the latter is hardly likely).
On second thoughts, What I would really like to see is A C64 handheld. Surely we have the tech to do one well now. Of course there are a few little changes that could be made here and there just to spiff things up a little.
Provide changable rgb defs for each of the colors.
Let the border be turned off without the hacks.
On third thoughts, what I would like to see is the video chipset from my second thoughts filling a frame buffer like a video signal and an Arm for the CPU. Then you'd have the possibility of
1. Run the Fancy Chipset emulate a 6510 on the arm and play old c64 games (cool)
2. Run the Fancy chipset and use the arm natively. (Lots and lots of tricks available then)
3. Just let the Arm write to the framebuffer directly (lets you do things the boring way).
On fourth thoughts, When are we going to get an Amiga Handheld?
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
There's a link to Cecil Adams's Straight Dope on gerbil and hamster stuffing at my Hampsterdeath page.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
From the IGN GBA FAQ:
The GBA Specs:
From Compaq and Handhelds.org:
The iPAQ Specs:
Okay... the same processor helps emulation, and the difference in resolution/bitdepth is addressable (unlikely, but possibly even in hardware) by dithering - which can be coded blazingly fast in ASM.
A and B on the right two buttons, shoulder buttons on the left two, remappable for various games and left-handed users. The 5 way pad on the iPaq is (I assume) a "click + 4 directions". I'm just wondering if that's 4 directions true, or if you can combine up and left for "upperleft". Map Start and Select to a key combo - maybe far left + both right for Start and inner left + both right for Select. For fighting games that use combos, you'd need to rework that, but IANAFGP... RPGs and sims are the only things I play.
The really neat thing would be if somebody packaged the emulator with a iPaq accessory sleeve that allowed you to pop in GB carts. Bleem vs. Sony seems to indicate that it could be done legally.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
There is also real hamster, but I certainly hope it is not from the makers of real doll.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I am sorry to say so, but you are wrong. The PsOne (handheld playstation) is very bulky for a handheld, it is bigger than your average portable CD player, it doesn't come with a screen. You have to purchase it. The cost + the screen is over kill. The battery life is a joke. The gameboy is doing well because Nintendo has been very smart. Look at atari lynx and the handheld sega, they had superior technology and color, but their battery life sucked, they were bigger than gameboy. In the world of handhelds, battery life + smaller size is what reigns. The same reason why palm pilot is a success. :-)
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Count on it, MAME will be ported to it. ;)
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
one thing that wasn't mentioned in the specs was the screen ratio: 16x9. at least, as close as 16x9 as one can get using multiples of 16.
as any movie enthusiast knows, 16x9 is the dimension of a theater screen. interesting possibilities, no?
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If Nintentdo is trying to mature their image, mabye they should consider porting such PC classics as Leisure Suit Larry to their Gameboy Advance.
acm
Actually, calculator games are quite good. They are also free, so the total investment is 130-150 for a TI-89 and 17-24 for a Graphlink, unless you build your own for 4, for a total of 134-174. You can get a game boy and 5 games for that price, but that's it. With calculators, all games are free, so, economically, calculator games are better. Also, calculators, at least the TI-89, TI-92, and TI-92+, have much more powerful CPUs. Depending on the hardware version, its either a 10.5 MHz Motorola 68000 or a 12MHz Motorola 68000. If I remember correctly, the Game Boy series uses a Zilog Z80 or a derivative of that architecture, which is much less powerful, although I have seen some wonderful things done on TI's Z80 calcs (TI-73, TI-81, TI-82, TI-83, TI-83+, TI-85, TI-86).
The main problem with calculator games, particularly on TI calculators, is the lack of corporate support. TI has provided assembly execution capabilities, but has not released a development kit or much else. All that they have released is a list of ROM calls. From what I've heard, HP provides full support for assembly coders, which makes games on those calcs run much better than on TI calcs, despite the HPs' inferior hardware.
Include a reason for the rejections maybe?
The PSOne is portable, but not a handheld. It does not have a battery, and is designed for use in non-primary TV areas - e.g. rather than being on the Living Room TV, it's on a bedroom TV or used the LCD screen that you can get for it.
The Gameboy advance is a handheld and will have a long battery life (i.e. 10 hours or so), which is what made the original GB so popular in the first place.
It's probably a good thing you're an anonymous coward, because your name would probably be headstuckupass. I'm not sure if you noticed, but IGN also included seven games coming out for the Game Boy Color.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The PS1 is hardly hand held, if even portable. It dosn't have a battery to talk of and the screen is extra.
Not to mention that you have to plus in a controller to it, versus the GameBoy's built in one.
Plus the PS1 is awfully expensive compared to the GameBoy.
I don't even think they were ment to compete in the same market. Right now the only ceompetiton Ninendo has is from NeoGeo Pocket and I don't think that will put up much of a fight.
How much memory? Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes a zealot to port Linux to it? Come on, you know someone will try it...
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Let's see one of those newfangled Next Gen systems try to last half of that time.
Playstation (1, not 2) is 5 years old this year.
Rob.
However, as a company, I don't like them, I suppose for the same reason you do. Nintendo seems to be continuing to market to the same age group as always, while the die-hards that grew up on video games (like me) continue to get older.
Of course, Nintendo has Pokemon, so there's no chance of them disappearing anytime soon, but the Playstation succeded despite its terrible loading delays and poor 3D graphics [1], because Sony recognized that the NES generation has aged ten years over the past ten years.
[1] Pitiful when compared to the N64's.
I am scared. Really scared.
First that human id thingy and now a Game Boy
that actually seems worth buying.
I tell you, there's some strange things happening.
The end of the world is drawing near.
Now I will have to stop hating Game Boys. What's next? Getting a real haircut? Getting a life? Lying under that big round bright burning nuclear reaction in that room outside my window?
Please tell me that this is a hoax. I don't want to give up hating Game Boys. And someone please turn off that burning thingy. I'm scared of it. I mean they turn it off every day. Can't they just keep it turned off? I don't even want to know how much it costs the taxpayers to keep it burning.
Can you tell I need a coffee?
I'll buy it if someone ports MAME and gets most of the pre-85 games to work with it. I'd be in retro heaven.
Indeed, but if you'd read the original comment, you'd see that it was being compared to the Super NES, not the original NES. The SNES has 16K colours, and the new gameboy has 32K. Thank you, and thanks for playing.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Sega Nomad? I would love to get one (or more) of those for my kids, but it seems they only sold them for about 2 months. Can you still get one?
I was going to get one for my kids for Christmas, and they abruptly disappeared, which is a shame because I was waiting for Sega to make one for years, seeing as how the Game Gear was essentially a portable Master System.
I thought the Game Boy looked dated when it first came out. Imagine it still being popular in 2000. Heck, I thought it looked like an minor update to the Microvision from about 1980 (which was extremely cool in it's day, but now you can get better stuff on a $5 key chain). But I guess If there's decent games for it that's all that matters.
The new screenshots look nice, but I'll stick to Total Annihilation and Nethack on my laptop.
Personally, I think the ultimate hand-held would be an HP Jornada with a CE port of MAME and a nice plug-in controller. It can certainly handle emulating almost any game worth playing. We can all dream.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The others failed because they weren't one or more of the above. When you make a portable console you can't have it weighing the same as a brick and eating batteries like there was no tomorrow.
Ninetendo got it right by making something that was portable and useable. Lets hope their new console takes the same approach.
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Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Is not Handheld
First of all, on the GBA you can only display 32k colors in bitmap mode. I don't expect that people are going to use bitmap mode much, especially not at first. To my understanding, the SNES doesn't have such a bitmap mode (and I have a set of documents for programming the SNES in front of me).
So, in character mode we get 512 colors, except color 0 is a transparency bit, so really only 511 colors. By comparison, on the SNES, we have sprites that are made up of tiles. Each tile can display 16 colors. I believe that you can get up to a total of 256 colors between all the different tile palets on screen.
So, the difference between 256 colors and 511 is pretty obvious. Also, the different between 256 colors and 32k colors is even more obvious.
I'm assuming that you are getting you 16k and 32k numbers from the fact that the SNES is a 16bit machine and the 32k colors from the fact that the GBA is a 32bit machine. However, this just isn't the way it works. For starters, if the number of displayable colors and the bit depth of the main processor lined up, then the SNES would display 64k colors (2^16), and the GBA would display over 4 billion colors (2^32). However, processor bit depth and and on screen colors don't always line up. If they did then the N64 would be able to display 2^64 colors, but alas, it is limited to 2^24 (with 8 bit transparency. I'm not sure if the transparency can be used to eek out more colors, but I'm inclined to think not). Actually, pretty much every machine in existance could display more colors than it currently does (with the exception of SGI's Onyx2, which can display 64bit color and it is a 64bit chip).
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
I'm doubting it's running at 206 MHz; Does anybody have any semi-concrete rumors? At least we might find out fast of a web server it'd really make.
Unfortunatly, not many people would be willing to pay true cost for this device. Thus, to get people to buy it, they drop the price below the manufacturing cost and make their losses up on game royalties. If anyone can program the machine and if games are easy to download, then there aren't any game royalties to be made.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
I'll take $US1.00 bets. E-mail me the year, month, and day (zulu) that someone will announce, and show proof of, Linux running on a Gameboy. Winner gets 50% of the pot, the remainder to the person(s) who actually managed the feat.
Next stop, the new HP...
Mr. Ska
I have one question since the original GB (or at least since the color ones) came up...
Why didn't anybody try to port some of the good old C64 Games to this little machines?
I've always dreamt of being able to play Elite, Bubble Bobble, Pirates, Commando, Boulderdash, or even Maniac Mansion on these small devices.
Can you imagine how *cool* Pirates on a gameboy color must look like?
... crusher[kreaPC]
i just can't wait for the new mario games, and multiplayer tetris to come out.
Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich.
In the age of constant cuthroat competition between video game systems and companies with constantly expanding technology and hardware, the longest lasting console is the minimalist Game Boy. IIRC the Game Boy is over 10 years old, still going strong with only minor updates like the GB Color and now this. Let's see one of those newfangled Next Gen systems try to last half of that time.
:)
I'm not a big fan of games myself, so I won't buy one, but I must admit that the industry and its evolution is very interesting. I just like that a portable mini-system can outlast the heavyweights of the industry. But to be fair, software support always makes or breaks a system too, which is why the handheld brethren of the Game Boy (Lynx, Virtual Boy, GameGear, and TurboExpress) are all in their respective coffins now.
Maybe I'll get one as a gift to my teenage brother so he'll stop wasting his TI-89 with those cruddy little calculator games
Emerson Willowick: Thinker, Writer, Human Being.
Your point? The SNES used 8-bit palletized color, except it chose those colors from a larger array of 32,768 colors. (Ultimately the most it could display at once was 256, and that was only in specific screen modes, usually ones not that friendly to developers).
About the photos, they look VERY nice, better than I imagined they'd look. Definately something I plan to buy when it's released (hey, I'm a Mario Kart addict, so sue me).
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
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tobam'i: foo for the masses.
I'd appreciate to read some specs about that little thing: not a word about them, just two games screenshots.
/.: is it a pocket SNES? Or just some hardware that has about the same abilities than the SNES, but has nothing in common with it?
Perhaps I've missed something, but I can't remember having read something about it on
What about battery life ? Technology used for the screen?
Stephane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
That is not what I expected. I figured on seeing the actual gameboy advance itself. The screenshots of games for it are nothing surprising. SNES level games, with slightly lower quality display than a tv.
BTW, will this thing play the huge library of (Colour)GameBoy games?
Intolerant people should be shot.
This time round, they will be up against the PsOne (the handheld playstation), and I think they'll lose. Those screenshots look ok, but Nintendo have historically been able to price their handheld games very high, and I've alreadty got a dozen better playstation CDs already in my collection.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I hate to break it to you, but Nintendo is changing; they have to. They lost this generation in part because of the public's perception that they're a "kiddie" company. Hence they're trying to change that image slightly. They're still making regular good family games like Mario and Zelda, but they're also allowing some more "adult-oriented" games too. They recenting announced Sin and Punishment for Japan, and they're allowing several risque games to come out from Rare (second party) like Conkers Bad Fur Day, which might be one the raunchiest videogame ever released, and Perfect Dark. The days when they ban blood in the games for their system are long gone.
here's another new pocket console.
Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich.
Any chance of porting any of the Sid Meyer games to it? (e.g. Civ, Civ II, Colonization, Alpha Centauri, et. al.) Or better yet -- FreeCiv!
Give it an external PC/MAC-linkable port (USB, 1394, or Ethernet...hell, even RS-232) and I'd shell out some buckage for it.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Castlevania, Zelda, Kid Icarus, Gradius, R-Type, Turrican 2, Mario, Sonic, MasterBlaster, Ikari Warriors, Contra, MegaMan! All these are still better than all this FPS crud coming out. Quake 3? I'll pass, Doom was fun, but the industry didn't need to go any farther. Give me Castlevania 50!
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
Actually, I thought the shots looked markedly better than the SNES. And it is actually 9 bit graphics. That or 15 bits, but programming for 15 bits is going to be a pain because the processor is slow and for 15 we have to handle our own sprites instead of letter other hardware do it.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
First there was Hampsterdance, then GUWAME Hampsterdeath, now this? Damn.
No more penis birds! Adopt a normal bird today!<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Indeed, but if you'd read the original comment, you'd see that it was being compared to the Super NES, not the original NES. The SNES has 16K colours, and the new gameboy has 32K. Thank you, and thanks for playing.
Your welcome, but it dosn't chage the fact that you are completly and utterly wrong, since the The super nintendo could only display 8bit graphics. Think about it, were there many 14bit graphics cards out there in 1991?
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Now *that* is a marketing phrase i've never heard before. "able to push twice as much color".... you don't need more then the color available on a SNES for low-resolution, you know..
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Personally, I think the screenshots looked pretty good. Definitely better than the long-forgotten Sega Game Gear. I just hope that the sound is also improved. I've found that with both the Game Boy and the Game Gear, I've had to turn the sound all the way down most of the time just so I could stand to play the game. However, it's really the quality of titles that are released that matters. That's one of the reasons I kept my original dot matrix Game Boy a lot longer than the Game Gear...
Moi, a stupid bitch?
Sometimes I can be annoying and a little whingey at times, but a stupid bitch? I fear not.
(And what a way to make my Slashdot debut, defending my good name against such heartless claims!)
"Clearly there was a huge opportunity to do that and clearly you're going to see an interface between the Game Boy Advance and Dolphin that is more than happenstance and doesn't require a mechanical device, and probably uses the modem and our online capabilities. And having those two pieces of gear grow software -- growing software on one, trading data, raising the level of performance, will make Dolphin a very different kind of dedicated gaming machine."
His entire speech can be found here.
This post sponsored by Ninja Burger. "
So if you have this implant and sit around and watch TV a lot, it's a Couch Potato Chip?
Regards, Tommy
My father always speaks of the technological advances in his time. Granted, I don't feel that I can possibly top what he has seen in his time (he's in his 50's now). But take the last 20 years. If you really want to see how technology has advanced (rather, if you wanted to SHOW someone how it has advanced), you need only to look at the game industry -- specifically the consoles.
<p>
First there was Pong -- two long rectangles and a circle. Couldn't get any simpler than that. Now you have this? This is a handheld device! For God's sake....this is a mark of technology right here.
(And I must agree with a few of the comments abou the longevity of the Game Boy)
Now if only SGI would make a gaming console...
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The specs are much nicer, and the games will obviously be more advanced because of it. But graphically, it looks like they're still finding new tricks with the current Gameboy. Check out these shots of the upcoming Alone in the Dark:
Ok, let me explain something. In the life cycle of every major game console, the company almost always releases a smaller more cost-effective model near the end in an effort to sustain sales through the launch of their next gen effort.
There was the "new" NES, "new" Sega Master System, two "new" Genesis, a "new" SNES. Now there's a "new" PlayStation.
Since Sony's marketers are more interested in capturing the mainstream idiots, they decided to label this smaller PlayStation as "portable".
Now, certainly it is portable. The old PSX was portable. This one is just smaller (and cooler looking), and will have a seperate attachable LCD screen to be released several months afterwards.
So anyways, what I'm trying to say here is PS One is NOT a handheld or a true portable. Anyone who thinks that is falling right into marketing's grubby little hands.
(Now, on the other hand, I will eventually buy a PS One because it's so much cooler than PSX)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Does SGI really own MIPS still ?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I was actually quite dissapointed when I read the specs for this. It has an as powerful (or more powerful) a processor than the SNES, better graphics, and certainly there has been an adaptor for SNES systems to play gameboy carts for many years - so why doesn't this thing take SNES cartridges, and come with a SNES > Gameboy colour adaptor?
I would certainly have sprung for the cash to play all my old favourate SNES carts on a handheld; that it could load and play my gameboy carts would have been a bonus, but I *have* a gameboy, and only recently bought a gameboy colour - why should I now buy yet another "improved gameboy" when there will almost certainly be "extended super improved gameboy" or "N64 Gameboy advance adaptor" a year from now which will take my current gameboy cartridges and the new "Game Boy Advance" cartridges (which I *can't* load on anything else at the moment) as well.......
It's an incremental improvement that offers little to tempt me - yes, it's better, but not leading edge, even if it is impressive for a handheld. It *could be* and *should be* better, and I am dissapointed in it.
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-=DaveHowe=-
Well, to be factious, they do. It is called the N64. But seriously, SGI makes more than just the main CPU for that system.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
...because, they of all companies, have stuck to the values they set forth in front of the public. They are obvious believers of pacifism and for that I praise them. Not many companies stick to the values they espouse, but Nintendo, IMHO, has done a damn good job of it.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"