Slashdot Mirror
Portable GameCube
Bodero writes: "After Slashdot ran a story about the Portable N64 over a month ago, many of us have been enlightened to the idea of portable home console systems. The Portable N64 was more of a novelty item whose cost and development factor outweighed its feasibility. However, IGN Cube is running a hardware review on the Interact Mobile Monitor 5.4, a 5.4" LCD that hooks up to your gamecube, providing a screen and power from either AC or an included car adapter. All that for only $150. For only $50 more, Interact sells an optional battery pack, which IGN claims can power the GameCube and monitor for up to three hours."
Over at Emugaming.com they have a short but informative article on IGN's portable GameCube. Includes some nice pictures.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
I used to work for InterAct Accessories, Inc.
;) In conclusion, I wouldn't purchase this product, it's most likely produced by STD, and will probably break for you in the not so near future.
First off, let me tell you that Interact has a very close business relationship with IGN. IGN/Snowball now hosts their website. In turn GameShark provides them exclusive codes, and other perks. So I don't trust this review very well to begin with.
I no longer work for them now, but I can tell you this, InterAct products are not of good quality. In fact InterAct makes no actual products. They are outsourced from two major companies, one, STD based in China, and Datel based in the UK. Datel makes semi-decent products (eg, GameShark), but STD makes shit products. For example, STD produced a Lightgun for the Dreamcast, not only was the Lightgun made of poor housing materials, but the aim wasn't accurate. It would shoot about an inch to the upper left of where you actually were targetting. When Interact gave STD a call to ask what was up about the lightguns, STD's response was merely, "Sorry, we're not very good at making lightguns." I'm glad I didn't work in customer service, because they god a beating all the time. Nintendo 64 GameSharks will fry randomly. Interact really didn't bother pressure Datel to figure out why, and just kept making them.
Secondly, InterAct/Datel has violated the GPL multiple times. Anyone that's listening, the GameShark that was produced for the PC (another horrible product, and has been discontinued), includes an MP3 player. The MP3 player is not of their own creation, but merely a hacked up version of FreeAmp, which they sold and never released the source too. As you can see I have a lot of greif with this company, so my views are a bit slanted myself
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
As if you can really get into a good game of Quake on a small device like that.
/. article says so.
Actually you can, this
Anyway a portable GameCube would be sweet.
you can get Doom for the Psions and, as the Psions come with a Keyboard, you can get a dam good game out of it.
Mlk
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
About 2 years ago in my last semester of college I got pretty deep into a few RPGs for the PSX. Since this was back in the let's-recruit-every-college-grad-that-knows-Java days, I had to fly out to job interviews every other weekend, which seriously hampered my game playing progress.
(hey, it was senior year...time to goof off a bit)
I had this great idea of taking my PS along and playing during the evenings in those nice hotel rooms they put me up at (now of course they fly you out 5 minutes after the last interview). I mean the alternative would be...what, going out and drinking? So I embarassingly packed my PS along in my carry-on bag, which I'm sure the x-ray peeps would love today -- "can you turn that on please?" -- and tried to hook it up to the TVs in hotel rooms. So apparently a large number of hotels really do not like their guests bringing their own electronics. It was a repeated nightmare trying to get physical access to the back of a TV, and in some cases they did a great job making sure the original cables could not be easily unplugged (plastic boxes screwed in around the plugs, etc) for the use of other devices. There were a few times when I had to dig out the swiss army knife i never otherwise use to really go to work, sometimes wreaking havoc on the cable TV setup -- all for my gaming habit/addiction. And I never stayed at a hotel with TVs with convenient RCA plugs in the front.
But I guess the point of my lame story is that it's sometimes a pain in the ass to assume that just because there's a TV, you can play your XBox/PS1/PS2/N64. It's more worth it to just get a Game Boy with Harvest Moon, or maybe even go out at night in a new city (imagine that).
indeed. they were designed to fit into a child's backpack.
:-P
i guess little kids know what LAN parties are too
Well, I don't have an exact number on the amount of data that can be stored on the little dvds, but it is still quite substantial for a game. Somewhere around 1.5 Gigs should be plenty for a majority of games out there for the near future. The only thing that takes up tons of space is FMV, and if you want a game with tons of that, put it on a couple little dvds. They can't cost that much.
Besides, by doing this, Nintendo is essentially free from piracy.
Here's a link to the 1.5 GB estimate.
First off... I believe that all the consoles out now are being sold at a very small profit. Perhaps a dollar or so. I've heard that only the Dreamcast was sold at a loss and even then it wasn't a very big loss.
A game console is not a computer. A computer is not a game console. Although one can serve as the other, it cannot do the same things as well. And, of course, if you want to play Pikmin, Halo, or Metal Gear Solid on your PC... uh... well, you can't.
The GC, PS2, and XBox can all pump out better graphics than my $1200 laptop, not neccesarily because the hardware is better, but because the hardware is specialized. The games are written specifically for it and it is designed to do ONE thing (I leave it to your imagination to figure out what that is)
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!