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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.
...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
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
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!
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?
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?
No. And if it were, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference - GBA's predecessors have seen off superior technology in the past without blinking. If you think MS has a monopoly on the OS market, it's nothing compared to what Nintendo has in handheld gaming. :)
About the only thing that could make a dent in that would be Sony and/or MS entering the handheld market, and that isn't going to happen for a while, if at all.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
The $35 price tag is very reasonable when you compare it to $1000 for lasec surgery.
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!
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.
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
Actually I think the sony psone combo unit (the little white unit thats battery powered and comes with a 5 inch lcd) is sonys testing of the waters so to speak. If I hadn't wanted FFX so bad, I probably would of bought one of those. I mean think about the psone combo, its quasi handheld, it already has 600+ games and can also be plugged into a television. Damn cool gadget.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
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.
Hold on. The games are great, fine, but many are saying that the screen was bad (I don't think so). That's a valid reason for some people not to buy one. I personally have several, because this issue, while valid for others, is irrelevant to me.
Will I be buying an add-on screen? Maybe, but I want to witness one in action first (and use other people's experiences as QA). Would I buy a new officially-released GBA with a switchable light already built-in? Yes, but not because I'm dissatisfied with my old units...I'd buy it for the additional ability to play in otherwise total darkness. If people want to wait until such mechanisms are standard before making their buying decision, that sounds sensible to me.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
I predicted the early 2002 launch and $200 price of the PSOne LCD combo unit in a /. post last year, but I've come to realize that it's still not worth it for the price, especially if it's being compared to the GBA or Dreamcast. It's about 4x bulkier than a GBA without a battery (walkman-sized unit, screen w/speakers, controller(s), and power cable), it has problems with shock, and if you consider that the 5" screen costs $130 on its own, the PSOne in the combo is still $70 (which is $20 more than a superior Dreamcast base system).
Sony's marketing mantra of "wherever, whenever, forever" regarding the PSOne seems to be indication that Sony really wants the PSOne to remain a competitive platform, but IMO it's just a ploy to milk as much from this now obsolete platform as possible. (By "obsolete," I refer to the fact that PS2s are backwards-compatible, just as GBA is backwards-compatible with GBC, another "obsolete" platform.)
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
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.
Hiya Lawrence,
You of all people should know that the screen isn't the problem (it uses little power, looks better in sunlight than a backlit screen would, etc.); it's the fact that Nintendo didn't include a switchable internal front light of their own. I'm fine with it, but I keep hearing about how the screen sucks, and it just doesn't IMO.
Unless, by "travesty," you mean, "travesty relative to other reflective LCD screens," I think there's a little bit of an oversight being made here. IMO, the PCE-GT/TurboExpress screen sucked (because individual pixels burned out easily and the backlit LCD drew lots of power), but I'm willing to bet that there are people here that would claim the opposite, just because they could play the thing in the dark. Same thing goes for the GameGear and Nomad, although I've never seen either with a dead pixel.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
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