Slashdot Mirror
Game Boy Advance Arrives
Gary writes: "Nintendo begins shipping its next-generation handheld game in Japan this week. Nintendo estimates that it holds a 90 percent share of the portable game market, though some analysts believe that percentage to be even higher. It is the first to have a horizontal alignment, and it is 17 times faster than the Game Boy Color, which was released in 1998." This is the first portable gaming system I'm really tempted by -- horizontal alignment is The Way Things Should Be on such things;) Update: 03/21 03:53 AM by T : And Prabhjeet "The One" Singh writes: "According to Gamespot, Activision will be releasing a version of DOOM for Nintendos upcoming Game Boy Advance. No game has given me more sleepless nights. Now its time for sleepless plane rides, mall trips, etc. I can't wait."
This thing is laid out almost exactly the same as the ill fated sega game gear..
Looks killer though
Neu
So this is the one where they are reselling all their SNES games, instead of the one where they are working on reselling all their NES games? I looked at Shadowgate for Game Boy for about 10 whole seconds before I realized it was an identical port of the NES version.
The emulator/abandonware folks aren't going to like this that much.
I hate the name. It's like they're asking us to adopt pronunciation mistakes made by non-fluent English speakers.
Come on, "advance" isn't an adjective, it's a verb. It should be "Game Boy Advanced" if anything.
And if they wanted to be funny while misusing the language, it should be "All your game boy are belong to us." :-)
Don't forget about the Lynx and others..those were great systems. I believe that Game Boys are long since due for a major, major upgrade. Yes, Game Gear ruled. Buy a TV tuner card and you have a portable TV + a portable gaming system, with an adapter that supported the old Sega Master System games...all happening about 7 years ago - amazing.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Yup, and the Atari Lynx had it years before that.
All that, in addition to the networking of up to (IIRC) 8 players. Too bad the software guys didn't release much...
"It is the first to have a horizontal alignment", implying the first Game Boy not the first handheld console.
Are you people just trying to find 'mistakes' where there are none?
According to Nintendo, GBA will have about a 15 hr. battery life. (5 hrs. more than Game Boy Color) Of course, I guess it depends on the quality of the batteries, etc. You can read about it on their web-site. I don't think any third party has tested the system out yet, so we just have to trust what Nintendo says for now.
Did anyone hear about the handheld microsoft is supposed to release after the Xbox? I just read about it somewhere but it didn't go into any detail.
What really needs to happen is for Sony and Handspring and Palm to dump their proprietary module formats and get Palm OS to support Game Boy cartridges. Oh, yeah.
Actually, the Turbo Express was vertically aligned.
It also played the same hu-cards as the TG-16.
"It is the first to have a horizontal alignment", implying the first Game Boy not the first handheld console.
Are you people just trying to find 'mistakes' where there are none?
Actually, the sentence was rather ambiguous regarding whether it referred to the first handheld, or first Game Boy. Details matter in a world where marketing relies on word games.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Anyway, last I heard the GBA includes the GBC chip with it so it's 100% backwards compatible with all the old games (unlike Sony's poor effort with the PS2 playing PS1 games). But then, I might be wrong, I haven't read up on the GBA much since it was shown off last year with the GameCube...
15 hours for AA batteries and 10 hours for the rechargable battery pack made by Nintendo. The GBA also lacks an AC adapter port, instead the AC adapter is designed to fit into the battery compartment in place of the batteries.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Yeah, I think of the GBA as something in the middle of the SNES and the N64, it's 2D is almost on par with the N64 (one of the original demos Nintendo released for the GBA was what was pretty much a stright port of Yoshi's Story on the N64 [bad game, nice graphics]). However, it's 3D is nowhere near up to the N64, but Nintendo have said that this thing is not for mass 3D games.
I can't wait to replay alot of classic SNES games with updated graphics and levels, it'll be like a flashback to my childhood :)
No it does not have a backlit display. It has a reflective screen.
The battery life is 15-20 hours.
was the gameboy advnace released somewhere else already?? I found an emulator page for it:
HERE
Am I the only person who didn't realize that the GB still used a Z80 processor still?
Actually, it's not a Z80 -- it has a couple of specialized instructions, and is missing the exchange register set. But it's pretty damn close.
Actually, it's pretty close to an 8080 with different mnemonics, but I digress.
Check out here for the instruction listings, if you'd like to know more, or here for info on D-I-Y original gameboy and gameboy color development.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The machine uses the same LCD idea as the Gameboy Color (no backlight to save battery life), but with a larger resolution vs. a paltry 160x120 with 64 colors on screen at one time (Gameboy Color), it's hard to see. You can only go so far with upending resolutions on a not-backlit screen before people start to notice.
There are a couple of obvious design flaws. The cartridge stickers actually face *in*, so you can't see what game you're playing from the back when you turn the until off. The L and R buttons are a bit of an odd touch (traditionally, to use L and R you have to take your hands off the back of the device -- which in this case, would cause you to drop it). When you plug a normal Gameboy or Gameboy Color game in it sticks out the top of the unit.
Couple that with the Hello Kitty colors and the small-buttons, and you don't exactly have a game machine that's going to tie over the Playstation masses. If Sony ever decided to make a handheld device that could play PS One games (which has been rumored for years now), they would win over a lot of adult gamers. All they would need is a battery to recharge a small CD player, and a cost-effective screen like the Gameboy Advance.
P.S. Doom on Gameboy Advance is going to be like Doom for Super Nintendo. That is, slow frame rates, using Mode 7 to generate pixelated graphics. No texture smoothing. Just blocky goodness (and a tinny sounding speaker to hear the grunts).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I'll vouch for that. Final Fantasy IX runs like a dream on my PS2 (and with texture smoothing on it's absolutely delicious).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Activision issued this press release today, detailing plans for a GBA DOOM game!
Question - Given that this is for a Nintendo platform, will this be butchered as badly as I'm told Castle Wolfenstein was?
I'm told that Nintendo has some pretty draconian content restrictions.
A relife for the 16 bit era? could the SNES 'time of light' be once again upon us? It looks that way- from the game lists anyway. But it makes me wonder-- very few things nowadays are done for the 'fans'- they're done for the $'s and the Advance seems too good to be true.
Does anyone know if tey confirmed the FF4-6 remakes yet?
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
The new Gameboy will plug into the upcoming Cube to act as a controller... a controller with a seperate screen. Wonder if you could use this to set up a second view?
Selecting plays for american football is a different matter entirely. But the Dreamcast did this how long ago? *cough*VMU*/cough*
Will I retire or break 10K?
I suppose that it is once the terms of the original copyright run out, don't you?
Copyrights expire? Where'd you get that idea? Anything copyrightable first published on or after January 1, 1923, is under perpetual copyright in the United States.
Will I retire or break 10K?
has everyone forgotten about the ill fated Sega Game Gear??? 3.58 mhz of pure gaming speed, who could ask for more!
Sega Game Gear has a 3.58 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor (and a reduced Sega Master System chipset). Zilog Z80 has several "advanced" instructions that are on the die but were not fully tested (or documented) in the first run of chips. Nintendo Game Boy has a 4.0 MHz Sharp Z80-clone processor with a different set of "advanced" instructions. Game Boy Color can overclock the gb-z80 (as emulator developers call it) to 8.0 MHz on newer games for more performance.
Taking a cue from Sega Genesis and Sony PlayStation 2 (the latter just recently came out where I live), Game Boy Advance contains a 4/8 MHz gb-z80 processor (and the rest of the original GB hardware) as an I/O controller. There's also a 17 MHz (?) ARM processor, sprite-scaling hardware (think Super NES with Super FX acceleration) with 511 simultaneous colors, and two digital PCM channels (left and right); software expands this to 16 or so voices (think .mod players for SB).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anyway, last I heard the GBA includes the GBC chip with it so it's 100% backwards compatible with all the old games
(Sega did the same thing with the Genesis, to play Master System games.) There was actually one title that required the original (green screen) Game Boy because it included a keyboard that plugged into the serial port on the side and didn't fit into the smaller connectors on GB Pocket and GB Color. This title was Workboy; it foreshadowed the modern PDA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Game Boy was successful because of its games and its steadily dropping price. It may have also had something to do with the fact that the Game Boy never tried to do too much. Each new version has built slowly and steadily upon its predecessor, while maintaining backwards compatability. The Game Boy Pocket had a smaller chassis and a much sharper/clearer screen. The Game Boy Color added a faster processor and basic color support. The GBA is their biggest leap forward yet, but unless it completely sucks, I think Nintendo has the name recognition to pull it off. (And hell, it's about the only name recognition Nintendo has left.)
Anyway, I think that 90% is actually a bit low. Six or seven years ago, they probably had 60-70% of the market. Today, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo has 99% of the handheld market. Their few competitors have dropped off the face of the earth, and they keep on releasing more popular games. (Donkey Kong, Pokemon series, et cetera. I don't play GB anymore but my 12-year-old brother is a GB nut and I can tell what's popular from what he and his friends play.)
--
--
I like to watch.
Question - Given that this is for a Nintendo platform, will this be butchered as badly as I'm told Castle Wolfenstein was?
Only four things were changed in Wolfenstein 3d: Germany ==> Master State; Hitler ==> Staatmeister; Hitler photo ==> developer's mug; Swastika ==> Eagle. (Note: butcher is also the last name of the guy who claims to have created Precious Moments.)
I'm told that Nintendo has some pretty draconian content restrictions.
SNES Mortal Kombat's blood was always light gray. When Nintendo realized that the red blood code (a b a c a b b) on Sega Mortal Kombat was selling Genesis consoles the way pixel-perfect Street Fighter II had sold SNES consoles, it wisely allowed configurable red/green/no blood in Mortal Kombat II and subsequent games. There was a relatively unaltered Doom port (a few levels and a lot of framerate were lost in the 2 megabyte cartridge) to SNES+SuperFX, which is incidentally the model Nintendo uses to explain the graphics power of GBA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
but lets set the minimum requirement as needing a 500MHz PIII or better and at least a Geforce2 or Radeon. Anything cannot be considered an innovation
All those first-person shooters seem to be innovating off each other ;-)
or cutting-edge in any way...Unless it meets those requirements, it's not breaking new ground.
Not everybody has US$2500+ to spend on a mobile system that meets those requirements. US$100 for a Game Boy Advance system buys you an awful lot.
C'mon, now...the GBA raises a sub-NES quality game system to sub-SNES status now.
Bull. GBA is as powerful as the Super NES ever was, and it's easier to code for because of good C compilers for ARM (the Super NES's 65c816 is very NOT C friendly). It's even more powerful because GBA includes sprite scaling and rotation, which required Super FX acceleration on Super NES. We're talking 3DO or Saturn graphics here.
I saw people playing one of those ancient Atari 2600s a while back (ATTN: 70% of slashdot readers werent even born when these things were in use...so stop talking about them, they're DINOSAURS) -- it gave me a headache just looking at that awful blocky crap
Atari 2600 had backgrounds of 2 colors (out of about 16) per scanline and 40x100 pixels. It also had only 128 bytes of RAM and half a scanline's worth of VRAM. Heck, it was just barely Tetris-complete[?]. GBA, on the other hand, has a 240x160 display with 511 simultaneous colors and sprite scaling and 384 kilobytes of RAM.
If you want the best graphics, get GIMP, WinGIMP, or Photoshop. If you want the best animated 3D graphics, get a DVD player. If you want gameplay and don't want to waste money, get a GBA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
FYI, 'Mode 7' doesn't exist on the GBA, only a better implemenation that results in the same, but better effect
Mode 7 is rotation and scaling of background scanlines to produce planar 3D effects. See a demo of Mode 7-style effects here.
Will I retire or break 10K?
a paltry 160x120
160x144. Eighteen rows of twenty tiles each. Count the lines of text on the original Tetris®'s copyright screen (including the blank lines). Picky, but when you use numbers, you should use the correct ones.
If Sony ever decided to make a handheld device that could play PS One games (which has been rumored for years now)
Then they would need to invent shock protection like I've never seen. Kids. Drop. Game. Boys. And they use them in moving vehicles, where vibration and ever-changing effective-g directions are big concerns.
and a tinny sounding speaker to hear the grunts
Assuming you don't have it hooked up to the car stereo (with the big thumping 12" subwoofer; all your bass are belong to us) or Sennheiser headphones.
What I really want to see is a port of Zero Wing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This should be mentioned, if it hasn't already. There is a great gameboy advance development site at http://www.agbdev.net/gbadev/ You can find links there to demo's, and all sorts of tools and tutorials.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The Turbo Express was ever TG-16 fan's dream come true.
The problem, is that while a brand new TG-16 cost $149 in it's day, a Turbo Express was roughly $349, as I recall. The price did drop, but it dropped proportionately to the popularity of the system.
Before it's final demise, I remember buying NEW games at Toys-R-Us for $9.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I think Conker's Bad Fur Day proves they've given up on being sweet and innocent.
But then, Rareware were always really warped dispite Nintendo's previous image.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
It's even more powerful because GBA includes sprite scaling and rotation, which required Super FX acceleration on Super NES.
Rotoscaling did not require the SuperFX chip. The SuperFX was pure marketing hype. Very technically speaking, the SuperFX chip was nothing more than a 4, 8, or 12 mhz Math-Coprocessor which was added to some vector based games such as StarFox, FX Racing, and later, used to aid the Mode 7 hardware to set up the geometry for DOOM. (Bitmap rotoscaling was still handled by the Mode 7, but the vector surfaces were generatd by SuperFX, as best I understand it - a real hack.)
What's worse is that developers often refused to develope using SuperFX because including the hardware on the catridge increased the cost of the game (duh!).
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Doesn't anyone else remember old Nintendo game watches? Pop eye, Donky kong etc. Check out www.gameandwatch.com.
-- Oliver Jones - Deeper Design Limited
I got a problem with these game pads controllers, whether integrated or not in a console :
The arrow-keys are usually on the left while the action keys are on the right.
My problem is that I am used to playing with a computer keyboard on which the arrow-keys are on the right and the action key (space bar, etc) are left to these.
I am actually very bad with such inverted key configurations.
Is there a way to invert this or will I have to dismount the GBA case to invert the screen?
Of course, the best for me would be to have the opportunity to buy a "left-handed" GBA.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Presumably either RiscBSD or ARMLinux will run on this with a 'little' reworking.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Actually, Nintendo started as a playing card company many years ago. They didn't start dabbling in videogames until the 1970's, which resulted in the original Famicom system unveiled in the middle 1980's.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
While it's true that Game Boy now has the handheld market pretty much to itself, I think the Game Boy franchise was actually starting to go rapidly downhill until this thing called Pokémon (or Pocket Monsters as it is called in Japan) single-handedly revived Game Boy sales, so much so that the revenue from the Pokémon franchise most likely paid for the development of the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The writer wrote: It is the first to have a horizontal alignment which is WRONG! What about Game Gear? Lynx? Nomad? ALL of these were HORIZONTAL. The original game boy was the only one that came in a nice, compact, vertical package. I bet the only reason Gameboy Advanced came out in the format it is in was for room! I bet that, within a few years, they will be back to the original, classic Gameboy format, or a format simlar to the slimmer Pocket Gameboy.
Gorkman
My guess would be that the GBA is much more powerful than the SNES though... The SNES has an 16 bit CISC CPU at only a few MHz... the GBA has an 32 bit RISC CPU at 17 (?) MHz, and much more powerful sound and video hardware. The GBA can handle 512 colors in character mode, with any sprite size and scalable sprites, and 2*Mode7, and so on. The SNES can only handle 256 colors, with 8xN sprite size. The GBA can also handle 32000 colors at once on screen in bitmap mode. The number of voices in GBA sound is only limited by CPU power (I've read that around 12 at once is reasonable in games). The GBA can even stream sound directly off the cart. (It doesn't have to be copied to RAM first.)
I've got both a Game Gear and a Nomad. On the Nomad I like the Sonic series, Vectorman, and Earthworm Jim. The thing I really like about Nomad is the ability to hook it up to a TV with the video out, plus the ability to plug a second Sega joystick into the unit for two player games.
To combat the battery issue, I use the rechargable battery pack(it clips onto your belt). Of course, I've not used it in a while, so I suspect it won't hold a charge anymore.
Considering that Doom ran on fast 386's as well in a sort of playable state, I don't think that the GBA is going to be having any problems with the game.
I don't know how the (16MHz?) ARM processor in the GBA compares against a 33MHz 486 which could play Doom well, but that 486 would not have had built-in 3Dish hardware, sprite scaling capabilities, etc, so it is coming out about equal in the end I reckon. GBA cartridges can hold 256Mbits of data (32MB), possibly even more, and it is possible that they can use data compression like the N64 (anyone know?). Should be enough space for a full version of Doom.
The general ordered the troops to advance. (verb)
The soldier asked for an advance on his paycheck. (noun)
The general sent in the advance troops. (adjective)
English allows words to change it's part of speech pretty easily, or, as my friend used to say "You can verb any noun in the language."
--
324006
SCreen is 240x160, which allows 38400 pixels, and the GBA can display all 2^15 = 32768 colours at the same time in one of its bitmap modes, so yes, you can put every colour on screen at once if you wanted.
What this actually shows is how low the prices of reflective colour TFT screens has gone. Even if Nintendo are selling the machine at a loss (possibly), then the screen (which is 50% higher resolution than a Palm m505's) isn't costing much either, say $10 - $40. Anyone know any better the trade prices for small format colour TFT screens?
Makes the Palm m505 look expensive for what it is. But you are paying for the platform there, not the hardware.
Still, if Linux/BSD/AmigaNG/QNX/etc could be ported to the GBA, and someone came up with a thin touch sensitive attachment for the GBA that plugged into the serial port, then maybe some serious PDA development could occur.
The SNES can only handle 256 colors
Unless you use the Super NES's additive and subtractive color modes, which make it relatively easy to display 4,096 colors in backgrounds. There are three scrolling planes with 16 colors each; set their palettes to redscale, greenscale, and bluescale and you can overlay them to produce lots and lots of pretty colors.
with 8xN sprite size
Super NES can display sprites up to 64x64. Up to 256 pixels of sprites can be on one scanline.
The GBA can even stream sound directly off the cart. (It doesn't have to be copied to RAM first.)
Heck, the 8-bit NES could do that; it was used for the drums in Contra and Super Mario Bros. 3 and for the explosions in Bomberman. Interplay's sound engine on Super NES could do something similar: streaming sound data from the cart to the SPC700's RAM while the game is playing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Actually the GB is usually regarded as a 1 Mhz system, (and the GBC as 2 Mhz, even Nintendo themselves says that they are 1/2 Mhz systems...), since the fastest instructions uses 4 clock-cycles to execute.
The 6502 architecture, used in NES and (in 65c816 form) in Super NES, requires anywhere from 2 to 6 cycles to execute an instruction, as it normally performs a memory access (to an 8-bit data bus) every cycle and apparently has only one ALU (no pipelining).
The slower instructions uses multiples of 4 cycles (8, 12, 16 and so on...)
Same with the Sega Genesis's 68000 processor, I'm told.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just a note, the review never calls the GBA flimsy. It calls the unit light, thin, and comfortable. But not flimsy. I think you misread "It too is tiny, and light, and thin" as "It is too tiny, light, and thin." Big difference.
Actually, Nintendo was going to change the name, but the public (myself included) PREFERRED the name "Advance". So it stuck.
PlanetGamecube covers all things Nintendo, including Gameboy Advance. Check 'em out.