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."

Comments

Does anyone else hate its name?

[stevens]

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." :-)

Re:Does anyone else hate its name?

[Xenex]

Yeah, we didn't have a 'Game Boy Colored' either...
I guess 'ed's just aren't cool enough... :-)

And anyway, Nintendo spelt 'Colour' wrong too ;)

/me dons the flame suit

Re:Does anyone else hate its name?

[coaxial]

> And anyway, Nintendo spelt 'Colour' wrong too ;)

Hey. Can Nintendo and the US help it the rest of the world are bad spellers?

Or for our european (and european colony (ie
Canada) brethren:

Hey. Can Nintendo and the US help it the rest of the wourld are bad spellres?

Re:battery life?

[CybrGuyRSB]

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.

Re:Looks like a sega gamegear

[Xenex]

Yeah, it's basic design is very similar (Control, Screen, Buttons) but it is ALOT smaller. In August last year when Nintendo first displayed the GBA the presentor (I cannot remember his name, but he is a fair way up the Nintendo chain of command) pulled the GBA out of his jacket pocket. It is very tiny, but the screen itself is bigger then the current Game Boys.

Also, it's battery consumption is FAR lower then the Game Gear. Ten years of technological progress helps that, along with no backlight...

Re:Go Zilog!

[spectecjr]

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

GB is faster than GG

[yerricde]

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).

Re:Hmm.. 90%?

[The_Messenger]

The Nomad and Lynx sold very poorly. The Virtual Boy did even worse -- I'd be amazed if they sold one. The Game Gear was mildly successful but was never as popular as the Game Bou due to its higher cost, lower battery life, and lack of good games. I say this as a former Game Gear owner... there were some awesome games (such as Sonic 2 and Mortal Kombat) but they couldn't keep good games coming out consistently.

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.)

--

Developing

[donglekey]

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.