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GBA Internal Light Ready?
Dark Paladin writes "Looks like Portable Monopoly , the internal Gameboy Advance light, is finally ready to move beyond Vaporware and launch. The price for the kit? $35. Finally - me, a dark night, and my GBA. " Perhaps with this, we can revoke GBA's current title holder as "Worst Screen Ever". Still, Golden Sun is a great game.
Does it support the euro ? :)
> Still, Golden Sun is a great game.
Wow... That didn't go with the rest of the description at all... "The screen's getting better, but at least they have a good game!"
...Nintendo sues the poor guy for making an "unlicensed" GBA add-on?
The GBA is simply highly dependant on the art on Feng Shui and contortionism. All you have to do is position it in the right manner, especially in relation to any light sources in the room, and it becomes clear as a bell. It's even easier outside, just make sure that there are no large objects preventing the suns rays from striking the screen.
It's not just a game, it's applied art!
-Space for rent
Still, it doesn't change that the GB(A|C) should never have been released with such a poor screen.
I can finally justify getting a GBA... now, the question is, is it too late? Is something bigger/better coming in the next few months?
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
This is great, I can now go old school and play on my GBA under the covers of my bed. Just need to make sure the girlfriend doesn't get wind of it, or even better get her a GBA, and a copy of Mario Kart and Advance Wars. Only today I was in a queue for tickets and was gagging for this - the lighting was less than wonderfull, I had to relegate Tony Hawk to my bag.
:-)
But seriously, I hope that this is very successfull and Nintendo take note of the the popularity and get's it sorted in the future, as the screen is great most of the time but there are always times when it could be JustThatLittleBitBetter(TM). Even so the GBA is an awesome toy
I just hope they start shipping soon, otherwise I am sure the Pocket Game Cube will be out =P
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
Long live 2D platformers! Screw 3D!
Yay, getting Linux on a GBA was hard enoughin the dark, i'll tell ya. Now i can actually SEE what i'm doing! Yay.
Admittedly, the screen is small, and not backlit, but I've been able to play it for extended periods of time by folowing a simple rule for reading.
Plenty of ambient light. Yes, the very same light one uses for proper book reading is more than adequate for GBA-playing. I've played it comfortably on airplanes, on my couch and yes, even on the can.
The small screen lends itself to problems, but that's what makes it portable. It's a trade-of at this point, until LCD screen technology imporves.
The bottom line: I spent $100 a while ago, and have enjoyed it plenty since.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
With this internal lighting now available, I might finally plunk down the $$$ for my own GBA.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
It's not the screen that's the problem: it's only with certain games (Castlevania, Circle of the Moon being the biggest offender).
...you probably have no idea what the point is here.
For the uninitiated, the GameBoy Advance lacks the internal backlight present in the older non-advance GameBoys. This makes it very difficult for some people to play in some lighting conditions.
Such as, for instance, everyone, everywhere.
Visual Aid
--
Free the Pink Halfling!
. . . they have gay pr0n for the GBA now?!
~~~
Forgive me, I couldn't resist.
I wonder if their patent idea ever panned out for them. When they were first starting out with this project they made noise about some of the delay being due to a patent application for the process. I always wondered: Patent for what? Cutting a piece of off-the-shelf (albeit specialized) plastic and shoving it into another company's product? Always sounded kind of egotistical and greedy to me.
Nice to see the released product is reasonably priced. It's a shame Nintendo didn't bother with it themselves. The GBA screen is a travesty.
Much like the PS2 vs. X-Box...
The GBA is backwards compatible and has more games out than any new comer. So I'd buy this... you can't go wrong.
And with the addition of this backlight, I'd ACTUALLY think about buying one of these (played it in Target (that's TAR-JAY! to you) and hated the screen... played Tony Hawk with my little cousin, and still hated the screen)
Now what *I* can't wait for is when people start buying GBA's in bulk, buying the Portable Monopoly backlight in bulk, put 'em together, and sell 'em on E-bay for a quick killing...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Makes me wish I had some sort of manual dexterity so I could install it.
I checked the faq and unless i'm missing something, i did not see any mention of effects on battery life.
Any idea how long it a pack of batterys would last? I believe the GBA runs for around 15 hours without any backlight.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
GameFAQs is referer protected. Following a link from another site to a GameFAQs URL that does not end in "/", ".html", or ".asp" produces a server error. Try this link instead.
ObTopic: The light improves the Golden Sun experience tremendously.
Will I retire or break 10K?
For the uninitiated, the GameBoy Advance lacks the internal backlight present in the older non-advance GameBoys.
The Game Boy didn't have a backlight. The colored-case Game Boys didn't have a backlight. The Game Boy Pocket didn't have a backlight. The Game Boy Color didn't have a backlight. The only backlit Game Boy systems were the Game Boy Light (released only in Japan, not in America or Europe) and the Super Game Boy (which required a Super NES and a TV and did not have a link port unless you got the rev.2 model, which again was sold only in Japan). You're confusing the Game Boy Color with the Sega Game Gear.
Now that the GBA is backlit, and Sonic the Hedgehog is appearing on GBA, does that make it a Game Gear Advance?
Will I retire or break 10K?
they have gay pr0n for the GBA now?
The GBA has a JPEG viewer library. You're free to construct your own slide-show program and either burn it to a flash cartridge or send it over the link cable. See gbadev for more details.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Combine this with the TV-out modification
p ?c ategory=6&products_id=1496&
and you will have the coolest GBA available.
http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/product_info.ph
Anyone with an overclocking kit?
The $35 price tag is very reasonable when you compare it to $1000 for lasec surgery.
If you use a referrer filter (such as WebWasher), then the links work fine.
Perhaps on GameFAQs, right now, they might, but in the future, they might adopt the behavior I've seen on other sites such that it won't give you the page unless a Referer: header exists and is valid. Don't believe me? Try typing in the URL of a picture on an 8m.com member's web site.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Let me put in my vote against the common conception that the GBA screen is horrible. In fact, it is nicer than all of the previous Game Boy screens. Some games (Castlevania) have made the mistake of having really dark graphics -- but this was true even on the GBC (Paperboy?).
I can see my GBA fine as long as there is a light on or I'm outside. I might get the backlight for playing in the dark, but I've had plenty of fun playing through several games with its screen as it is!
I forsee lots of over-caffinated nerds with burns and broken GBA's, myself included.
Their site states that (in the US anyway) it will cost $35 +7 for shipping. $42 to add a light to a unit I can buy for &79??? sorry but I cannot see paying over half the cost of the unit for a light mod kit that I have to do myself. I could almost see the extra cost on a brand new unit w/ warranty that I took out of the box and it just had the light incorporated, but not for a hack. (probably why nintendo did not do it in the first place)
Looks like this guy is going back on what he had stated in the past about posting the steps needed on the net for all to see, so that he can make some money (nothing wrong with making some $$ but be up front with people about it from the start, quite a few people sent him money to help with the research expecting to see the details released to the public) I had been watching the site hoping to see the details on the hack so I could try it but I'll have to try it on my own now I guess.
The GBA has a reflective LCD screen, hence the reason it needs a direct lighting source. And had you bothered to read the PM FAQ, you'd know that this mod is a frontlight, not a backlight.
Warranty be damned! Having to sit under a direct light source all the time is such a hassslleee. My only worry is how much it sucks out of the battery life.
Oh, wait, no, that goes to DivX.
The light is not ready. They are finalizing info with the manufacturers and wont even be shipping until mid-April.
Of course, I'm buying one, but get the info straight. Maybe that should be the job of the slashdot editors: double check the accuracy of info before they front-page it...
[move
well I tested my good old game boy and I got convinced the clue is u have to position it right and it shines like a golden sun ;)
Jesus Christ!
If you want 'stuff that matters' read the Reg [theregister.co.uk]
Stupid little backlights for kids toys don't really count for much in the scheme of things.
Register headlines at the time of this posting include:
Lover's Guide at a PC near you
Something saucy for Valentine's Day
14 February 2002 8:22am
Enjoy our Valentine's Day computer books love-in
Romantic opportunity Buy books and win chocolate
14 February 2002 9:15am
Am I annoying or not?
Chris Evans leads celebrity slapdown
11 February 2002 6:05pm
'BOFH II - Son of the Bastard' set to top Reg bestseller list
Devilish spawn indeed
28 January 2002 5:39pm
Salmon Days goes live in US
Episode One Upwardly Mobile
21 December 2001 10:44am
Core Java 2, Volume II - Reg Book of The Fortnight
And there's more... Four other titles with 20 per cent off
6 February 2002 12:45pm
All intensely important, gripping news to be sure.
Every news site has filler. Relax.
Every time the GBA is mentioned there is a vocal minority that springs up to badmouth the screen. I really don't get it: Unless you are a little kid trying to play your GBA past bedtime, a reading light/desk lamp/etc is more than adequate. I think the reason you don't hear from the (majority) of people pleased with the GBA's screen is because we are too busy playing Golden Sun to have time to post rants on Slashdot ;)
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
They had a GBA-like device called the Wonderswan that could interface with PSX games like GBA will be able to with GameCube games (and the Sega Dreamcast VMUs could with the Dreamcast).
As far as I know, it realy hasn't set the world on fire.
If anyone else has more details, please post!
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
You have to understand why he chose this domain name in the first place. It was initially setup to be a place to sign a petition to ask Nintendo to create a version of GBA that didn't have a screen which sucked. And well, I personally think the description of this is fits Nintendo well? But over the past couple of months, after R&D'ing like a madman, the PM site owner realized that he could forgo the petition and just DO something about it, and it seems as though he has come through. But the site remained. He just kept updating it. Anyway, if you're talking about the name of the actual product. Not sure what it's called yet.
I don't mean to nitpick, but it's not a backlight, it's a frontlight (or a type of reflecting side light).
The site used to have a whole history of events since the launch of GBA, but he seemed to have taken that part off the site. Not sure why. I thought it was an interesting/entertaining read for those who wanted to know more about how this whole project got started and what he had to do to get here.
In the FAQ, a question about the light "burning out" is asked. The reply states that the LED's last for thousands of hours and do not create heat. I though light without heat is impossible. Sure, maybe it is a very small amount of heat, but some heat is surely generated here.
This topic has been beaten beyond death already, so I'll make this brief. As stated before, the GBA's screen is darker and harder to see because Nintendo used a different screen (presumably one that sucks less power, though in my experience that's not the case). So, in some games, such as Castlevania:COTM, Columns Crown, and older GB/GBC titles, the screen appears darker than initially intended. The selection of games which do not suffer from this problem is increasing every single day-- for example, Sonic Advance, Advance Wars, and Super Dodge Ball just to name a few are very vibrant and easy to see regardless of where you are positioned.
Furthermore, it isn't exactly a wise idea to be playing games in the dark anyway. It's hard enough to focus on the small screen, and having it be the brightest thing in your field of vision will definitely screw up your eyes fast, regardless of how well-lit the screen may be (this I can say from experience; playing Mario's Picross on a GBC while running movie projectors for a year prompted the need for new glasses).
So, to recap what was said close to six months ago, don't play in the dark. Play outside, if you can, or by a window. A product like this, while admittedly nifty, is ultimately counterproductive.
Oh, and yes, I am aware of the cynic's truth that now Nintendo will probably release a backlit version, but the easiest way around that dilemma is to simply not buy the backlit version. That will either teach Nintendo to get it right on the first try, or us to stop complaining.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
More technical details about this mod can be found at www.portablemonopoly.NET. This includes some of the photos of the frontlit GBA screen that was previously up at www.portablemonopoly.COM.
To me, the screen looks eerily washed out (though this is always conviniently blamed on photographic technicalities, I'll believe it when i see it). Also, a slight portion of the right side of the screen is cut off to make room for the lightning strip. About 10 pixels or so are missing, which to me would be quite annoying, particularly with side scrollers.
It's also amazing to me that Adam (the portablemonopoly.com guy) is even TRYING to patent this... he is simply using a pre-existing lighting system developed for PDAs. A light guide sheet of plastic over the reflective screen guides a side light to light down at the screen.
Also, FYI, the www.portablemonopoly.net site is actually a rip off of a IGN Pocket Boards attempt at creating their own frontlight without having to wait for Adam to get his out.
IGN Pocket Boards is also where Adam's project got started. It was pretty much a group effort documented by Adam on his site till he decided to patent and cash in and took basically all the technical info off the site.
A large part of the complaints about the GBA lighting situation seem rather gratuitous to me.
In almost every situation I've used it, the GBA has worked fine, and I've had no light issues. It depends greatly on the games color scheme honestly. Advance Wars, for example, has a really bright color scheme, and I can play it with incredibly poor, minimal amounts of ambiant light. Almost all my games I can play with just normal ambiant light, no need to sit under a lamp or use a light add on.
Then there's Castlevania: COTN. This game requires the perfect lighting conditions that you see all the bitching about.
I wonder if the Castlevania game didn't exist, how many complaints about the lighting would there be. (And how many from actual GBA owners, versus the sorts who just go around panning Nintendo with or without reason).
Lik-sang.com and other Asian retailers have been selling cold cathode lights for the GBA for several months now. I imported one awhile back and have been in love with it ever since. Zero glare, plugs into the external port, and radiates a perfect soft-on-the-eyes light... WITHOUT having to open up your handheld. The best part? Only $8.99. - John
There is no backlit GBA yet either, and I hope there never is one. Since the GBA screens are reflective they require an external (front) light source. The internal lights that portablemonopoly.com and portablemonopoly.net (different folks!) are talking about are front light sources, although for a while .NET and .COM were using different technologies (the .NET guy has since ended his plans of competing with the .COM guy...dumb story).
Basically, a GBA __with its current reflective screen__ and an internal switchable front light is the ideal portable gaming solution for many reasons, far better than a backlit system. Reflective screens fare better in sunlight than backlit screens, reflective LCD screens use less power than backlit LCDs and are inexpensive, and in the presence of ample lighting, you can turn the internal light off to conserve power (you can't turn the backlight in a backlit LCD off and really expect to be able to see anything). Nintendo perhaps should have done this from the beginning, but they made the trade-off in order to cut manufacturing, design, and support costs.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
The existing screen isn't bad. It's fantastic in sunlight, better than a backlit screen would be.
The only thing that's bad about it is that everybody expects to use it in the dark or near-dark. People are using it in less-than-ideal lighting conditions, which is bad for your eyes anyway, like trying to read a fine-print book in the dark, only the words are in different colors and are moving around the page. With a front-mounted internal light, you get the best of both worlds, for reasons I stated in another post.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
There is no backlit GBA yet either, and I hope there never is one
Details, details. Anybody who has read the article knows what yerricde's talking about. He meant "frontlit."
yerricde's own Game Gear Advance joke implies otherwise. You did not read his post responsibly.
Please don't put words in intelligent people's mouths, especially incorrect ones, anonymously. From his posts, it seems that yerricde is largely familiar with the gaming business; however, the fact that there is no backlit GBA stands.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
The sole reason I go to my Visual Basic class. The room has near-perfect lighting - you can even play castlevania in there.
When i first saw the Gameboy Advance come out i thought it would be great. From what I've heard its pretty good. But I never got my self to buy because of the light issue. I have a Gameboy Color and i think its ok. Now that I saw the Portable Monopoly light I'm thinking of buying a Gameboy Advance. And I was also wondering what good games it has. For some reason I can Never manage to pick out a good game. Whenever i go out and buy a game it turns out to be a crappy one. So what are some good games out for the Gameboy Advance? And is it worth it?
Is something bigger/better coming in the next few months?
Yes. But it might take more than a few months to get here.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
sorry, LASIK doesn't make you see in the dark, so I would have no impact on seeing the crappy screen in the GBA
if you look at the pm.NET site you can see he did a lot of work on finding a light for the GBA long before he even mentioned the IGN threads.
pm.NET _IS_NOT_ a rip off of the IGN Pocket Boards forum, he didn't even know they existed.
I can't believe how many people are complaining about the screens. None of the Game Boys ever had a back light because they would have consumed ridiculous amounts of battery power. They've always *wanted* to put the light, but it's never been practical. Look at the Game Gear, which did have a light but consumed horrible amounts of batteries. I don't know how this new thing will deal with this problem, but I'd be interested if it's an energy-guzzler.