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MP3 for Gameboy
sluggo140 writes: "Cnet has an article regarding a new startup called SongPro that is devloping an add-on for Gameboy and Gameboy Advance. The add-on will play various music formats including MP3."
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sounds like that rubber-band powered jet plane.. that also had jet engines.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
To play this MP3, you must complete Bonza Land level 3 or get 350 gold coins.
I see two and a half proprietary file formats in there and zero non-proprietary (read: Ogg Vorbis) formats there. Not to carp on xiph.org or any other developers or marketers for Ogg Vorbis, but this is the kind of platform and opportunity that could help to make a free-as-in-beer, open source audio codec like Ogg Vorbis a player in the portable audio world.
Hey, it's not like it isn't possible. This thing can do multiple file formats. Why not another with Ogg Vorbis?
... such announces are made. I remember such an product being announced for the Neogeo Pocket Color. Does anybody know if the maker of this one has a significant financial backing? Do they have a chance of making a well-distributed product, or will this just be offered on some catalogs and bought by geeks?
It's going to do the same thing as MP3 players for Palm units I'd imagine. All the processing and hardware will be offboard and the only thing the gameboy will provide is the interface.
I can't see that it's any great advantage over a standalone MP3 player - the majority of the price point of portable players seems to be the amount of memory included which is hard to work around, no matter which platform you're on.
Small standalone players like the Samsung YEPP are tiny, can run for hours on one AAA battery, and are slowly decreasing in price.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Richmond said the screen will also be used for advertising, meaning that some content could actually be offered with a free, ad-supported model.
Aside from that, considering the installed base of Gameboy owners and their relative age category(ies), I wonder if this will revive the desire to merge computer graphics and digital audio and bring it to mass-distribution like was tried so many years ago with CD+G.
Perhaps it will also mean "albums" paired with games.
Sounds kinda neat. But the "screen for advertising" angle makes me wonder about exploitation. The latest Korn and Doritos Munching Game anyone?
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The Gameboy Advance has two 8-bit PCM channels. You might as well be listening to MP3s through an old SoundBlaster card! It isn't going to sound anywhere near as good as even the lowest-end portable MP3 player.
Can you say "waste of time?" Yeah, I knew you could.
Nathan
As long as it doesn't display ads on my own music I rip, I think this is a very good idea. A way to get free music to listen to while "paying" for it at the same time. Just hope that format is of decent quality.
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Has anyone seen any of these reputed SongPro stations?
:wq
Hmm...
:)
Run this under GameBoy Advance - then run the Gameboy Advance Emulator under Windows - then run Windows under VMWare - hmmm......
It's a hall of mirrors!!
-Rick
What is the advantage to getting one of these over a standalone player? The thing protrudes from the Gameboy, so size payoff is minimal. Cost may be a slight payoff, but what kind of battery power does this suck from your gameboy? I think one interested in the world of MP3s would be better off investing into getting a large HD-based player such as the iPod or Archos. I have an Archos, and it's great! Plus the new opensource firmware for it (Rockbox) is coming along quite nicely.
First you convert music to digital information that is an approximation of the original sound and you say "No, it's still good!" Then compress and stream the music and it's like "No, it's still good!" Now you are playing Digital Compressed Music through Gameboy speakers? What's the point? This is like taking a painting and then running a guassian blur filter on it.
Is that a Gameboy Advance with an MP3 attachment or are you happy to see me?! It would have been better if they incorporated the SD cards in the same space as the board (if it was possible)...
over a 1" speaker? HA! That's like saying you can play an Xbox game on an Atari without having to have an adapter for the CD!
"SongPro(TM) has developed a multimedia player plug-in module that turns pocket entertainment systems into powerful multimedia and digital music players." -- HA!
How is a GB possiblly going to play an MP3, I doubt it could go fast enough considering the 10mhz processor in a TI-89 is faster then the proc in the GBA, not to mention that the maximum sound thuroughput it can do is the equivilent of playing System of a Down's Toxcisity on a 16 bit-rate mp3!
Erutangis ym si siht.
Whoopdie dooo.
Here's a better option:
Amazon has the SP90 player at $85 - $5 coupon CHNKBKAMZNLT - $20 rebate = $60 shipped. There's a simple way to hack it and upgrade the firmware.
I was in Fry's Electronics and I saw that they have a radio addon for the GBA. It plugs into the device and lets you play the radio while the game is playing and uses the battery of the GBA. Neat, but not that amazing. But unlike this, you can pick it up at Fry's tonight!
This seems to me to have the potential to be HUGE in Japan. From what they're saying it'll allow the ability to display lyrics on screen, presumably in synch with the music. From what I've read, the Japanese are nuts about Karaoke, and also about Gameboys. There could be a huge market for this thing over there, probably less so in the US.
That said, how does one go about loading the songs on the unit, and what will it's capacity be? Those are the key things I consider in a portable MP3 player. So far, I've found nothing rivaling the iPod (pause for Nomad and Rio users to chime in). At the $99 price point I'm guessing there's not much storage there.
If you checked out the website, you would have seen that they attachment offers two slots for SD cards for a maximum of 512M of MP3 music to be stored. how you get those MP3 files on those SD cards are your problem.
I did have an idea once of getting eBooks on gameboys. That would be neat for people who can't afford PDA's and convinent - cartridge based.
BTW, the article didn't say whether it was for the original gamboy (b/w screen for adverts and 'slideshows'??) or GBA.
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
everyone together now "i won't buy it, it doesn't play/support ogg vorbis"
Am I missing the point? They want 99 bucks for the device, on top of the 99 (or whatever the current price is) for the Game Boy Advance, plus the cost of a memory card. Hmmmm, or I can just spend 99 bucks a get a Rio or other MP3 player that gets better battery mileage then my GBA.
So, did you have a gameboy mp3 player on the plane? That'd be pretty sweet if you did. Don't mind me, just making fun of trolls and burning karma.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
I'm all for geeking out my GBA (I have it painted black and dark red, with the internal light from Tritonlabs.com, and have a 256 MBit cart filled with NES games to play... but I don't need yet another device to play MP3s. My watch (Casio Wrist Audio Player), my Rio 300, portable MP3-CD player, and MP3 CD car stereo do that just fine. This device has very little use to me.
The most expensive part of it's manufacture will be the memory cards that it uses, and the batteries it will chug through. It has a headphone jack, and I *assume* that it will be where the best music quality will be piped through, with it also downgraded out to the system speaker, if you really want to listen to it that way. But if you're going to use headphones anyways, get something that was MADE for playing MP3s, and don't waste the resources of the GBA like that...
Now what might be cooler is if you could plug a regular game boy cart into the Song Pro, and listen to your favorite music while playing Tactics Ogre or something....
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
To me, this is just another distraction from the once-simple concept of video games. Now we have DVDs, mp3s, real-life effects... besides all those crazy add-ons, aren't there already palm pilots and even mp3 players to do this for us? Why would you buy your Gameboy Advance to listen to mp3s?
The whole video game industry is becoming too sidetracked, in my opinion.
This was already posted at AtomicPop under the Dmusic section the exact URLs are here an here I think GameSpot has also posted it a while ago. Try searching at AtomicPop for more info.
Better yet, buy a used Rio-PMP300. It uses the same flash memory cards, runs for days on one AA and is even smaller than the iPod.
They are able to keep the price resonable, Less than $70 at Amazon. (affilate link)
They are the last of the handheld game systems, and still going strong.
They pack quite a punch into a unit at that low price. The quality of the screen, etc. is great at such a low price point. Remember all the similar units that used to be around? Gamegear, Lynx (that was nice!), etc. The only one left is the GameBoy line. I remember when the first gameboy I got was $100. Compare capabilities of the origional gamebay compared to the one today. How many other handheld devices have progressed as much, with a price drop no-less. Discmen would have spectrum analyzers on them if they had kept up this pace of advancement.
The MP3 module is just another thing added to the "wow, that's interesting" things keeping he GameBoy line going. The digital camera is another one.
Nintendo has come up with the handheld game system lineage that won't die, not that that's a bad thing.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
There was this product awhile back that was kind of an integrated low-level sound synth and sequencer/drum machine for the normal, 4-color gameboy. It was only available in europe, and you could make these REALLY funky tiny little techno tunes on it. Very aphexy. Does anyone remember the name of this, or have a link?
:) I still have no idea if that's POSSIBLE, but by all accounts the iPod has an ARM chip, a 4-color lcd screen and some buttons. I'm not certain that reverse-engineering the iPod's firmware would be more difficult than designing a system that stores 512 MB of mp3s in the backslot of a Game Boy :) Is this relevant? Is this? Anyway, if you could get it to work, that would be way more expensive than gameboy+songpro, but a MUCH nicer form factor than this lumpy songpro thing :)
I would probably have more fun with a sequel to that, than this... but that's just me. That being said, this soundpro thing is an absolutely amazing work of engineering. I mean, LOOK at that thing.. it's tiny, it has a 512 MB upper ceiling, it's mac-compatible, and it's CHEAP. And this part really impresses me:
Besides playing songs in the standard MP3 and Windows Media Audio formats, the SongPro device will also play a proprietary SongPro Audio, or SPA, format that will use the Game Boy's screen to display lyrics and pictures.
That makes me happy.. it's always cool when people try to push a device like the Game Boy to the limit of its abilities, rather than just saying "well, we have an mp3 player in it, that's impressive enough on its own, lets stop here". -_-
I wonder how hard it would be to create a gameboy version of Vib Ribbon and then stuff it inside the SongPro II along with the mp3 player? ^_^ Eh, that's probably pushing it.
That being said, I dunno. If you just want a handheld thingy that plays mp3s and games, i still say-- i've said this on slashdot before-- it might be worth a shot to try to hack the iPod to have a first-gen gameboy emulator on it
Busterman will rise again
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The press release and site may lead you to think otherwise, but this project has been going on for more than three years now. Various Canadian and American developers have come and gone working on the code and engineering.
I've heard it suggested by a relative, one of the developers, that it's a venture capital sinkhole. This product has missed many deadlines and has gone through so many revisions that it's really rather doubtful wheteher we'll see it at all.
As other posters have noted, inexpensive players with better ergonomics already exist. The Songboy was originally meant to be an inexpensive device back in the days when a decent entry level Rio was $200+. Those days are long gone and Songboy may have missed the boat. Caveat emptor...
Richmond said the screen will also be used for advertising, meaning that some content could actually be offered with a free, ad-supported model.
Of course, we'll need a metal retainer to keep the screen situated eight inches away from your eyes while the advertisement is playing, but that's being worked on, and as soon as it's finished, the record companies are ready to sign on!
Remember, you're not just bound by a contract to watch all advertising... now you'll also be bound by a handy metal strap!
Yes, enjoy your stay at the mental asylum...and dont forget to take your viagra and prozac!
My flat mate Matt has allready got the game boy to play Amiga MOD files using only 3% CPU time in this demo.
He is now working on a MP3 player along with other demos.
When he makes it ill slap him about and release te code.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
The first thing that caught my eye about this thing was that it uses compact flash cards to store the MP3s. I wonder if the software/hardware can be hacked so that other GB code can be loaded off this.
In other words, could you load homebrewed code off of this. This would be consideriably cheaper then the propriatary stuff availible at www.lik-sang.com, etc.
Back when the Bung flash rom kit for GBC came out and was subsiquently banned from sale in the US, a friend and I were discussing what it would take to build a CFM drive adapter for the GBC. This might just be it in disguse.
Ha, what's funny is, your obviously being sarcastic. But in fact this post is no more outlandish than the majority of the ver serious conspiricy theory posts that everyone else makes. :)
Since it's a company developing this, it's "Wow what a waste of time" and "Why bother?" etc.. but if it were some independent hacker the responses would be "Nice hack!" and "Cool!" etc. etc.
And we all know how well the "free, ad supported" model worked for the internet, right?
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
dont forget to take your viagra and prozac!
I understand the Prozac since he's a nut case. But the Viagra has me puzzled. Are you trying to make him into a fucking nut case?
Yes, considering the fact that he might be one of those schizophrenic geezers from one of America's high hick population areas.
Nintendo is the only portable system around because they have a monopoly on it. Period. They have crushed every other attempt at creating a portable gaming platform. ... dead. ... dead. ... oh yeah, like Atari had a chance.
Neo Geo Pocket
Sega Game gear
Tiger Game.com?... what?
Lynx?
Nintendo has ruthlessly demolished every other portable gaming platform. Not that this is a bad thing, the system is great and the games are fun. The reason that they have had such a monopoly is the backwards compatability.
Did you know that the last Zelda game(s) (Oracle and Seasons) had special features that you could only unlock if you play them on GBA? They are both GBColor games, but have special shops that you can only get to on GBA. They are all about encouraging you to upgrade.
GameBoy speakers may not be the best audio output device, but this could be a really cool feature for developers to use for in-game audio.
After all, its going to be playing it through those little gameboy speakers. Not exactly stellar sound quality. They were designed to play the "beep beep" noises from video games, not high fedelity music. Its a cool idea, great for those who own a gameboy and don't want to shell out the $$$ for an mp3 player. But I think anyone who is really serious about listening to music on the go will pass this by.
We're going to make information free Mr. Anderson, whether you like it, or not.
Though SongPro will start with only music, Richmond said it could branch out to other kinds of digital media, such as slide shows.
I don't know how many times I've been listening to some tunes and suddenly had an urgent desire to make a presentation. Who's going to want to do a slide show on a GameBoy anyway? Unless.... the next remake of 'The Little Rascals' has Darla looking up from her game to say, "I know! Let's put on a slide show!"
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
The Gameboy Advance has two 8-bit PCM channels.
The MP3 audio goes through a separate 6mm jack.
But even if the system did provide through cart-DMA, the GBA's audio runs at up to 64 KHz, which means that the decoder chip could be doing some noise-shaping to keep the quantization noise between 16 kHz and 32 kHz. (MP3 at 128 kbps doesn't preserve anything above 16 kHz.)
It's actually possible to make a GBA game that doesn't run on the GBA at all. There's enough bandwidth between the cartridge and the video chip to copy 16 MB of pixels per second from the cart, or 280,896 bytes per frame. A 16-bit display at 240x160 pixels is only 76800 bytes, and given the characteristics of the GBA's LCD, you can probably get away with interlacing. Do the same for audio, and the CPU no longer needs to really do much of anything except for feeding joypad state to the cartridge and (possibly) performing a bit of game logic.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I snagged this off Google Groups.
Search Result 1
From: sounni@taggin.com (sounni@taggin.com)
Subject: SONGPRO.COM INC. OFFERS AN ANTIDOTE TO THE VIOLENT GAMES TARGETED AT CHILDREN
Newsgroups: alt.music.mp3
View: (This is the only article in this thread) | Original Format
Date: 2000/09/21
SONGPRO.COM INC. OFFERS AN ANTIDOTE TO THE VIOLENT GAMES TARGETED AT
CHILDREN
Company Responds to FTC Study By Turning The GAMEBOY Into Portable
Digital Music Player To Soothe The Savage Gamer
Palo Alto, CA -- September 14, 2000 -- Songpro.com Inc. has an immediate
solution for the troubling findings of the Federal Trade Commission
regarding the marketing of violent video games to children under 17.
Plugging in the Songpro Jr. digital music player into a Gameboy portable
gaming unit instantly creates a tool to expose the gaming community of
all ages to the joys of music. In addition to the use of stereo sound,
the Songpro Jr. will also utilize the screen to add lyrics, cartoons, or
any picture to the experience. Suddenly the user has an engaging
alternative to the aggression and violence present in so many of the
video games today.
"We believe that this is a promising solution for parents wishing to
avoid today's exposure to violence through an entertainment tool that's
loved by kids," explained Mark Bush, SongBoy.com's CMO. "One of the most
important ways to address the FTC finding is to provide the entertainment
industry and parents alike with an alternative to the overwhelming
violent material being marketed to children." The FTC study found 70
percent of all "Mature" rated games were being marketed to children under
17.
There is no other portable digital music player on the market that
utilizes the visual portion of the multimedia experience. One quickly
realizes the full potential of graphics when thinking about the
possibilities of educational software for the mobile community. Over 100
million Gameboys are currently sitting in school lockers, desk drawers
and of course in the hands of people around the globe. The simple
addition of a SongPro Jr. cartridge into these devices will open a world
of discovery for the user.
"Creating content which is more entertaining than violent games will pave
the way for future generations of digital entertainment which fosters the
expansion of the mind rather than digressing into the black hole of
violence," noted SongBoy.com CEO, Ron Jones.
About SongBoy.com Inc.
SongBoy.Com(TM) is a Silicon Valley digital media Start-up Company,
providing hardware, software and content to consumers and businesses.
SongBoy.Com(TM) has already created successful partnerships and alliances
with Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Emusic.com and rap artist Chuck D's
Rapstation.com.
The company has garnered the attention of "new media" press
internationally, and was recently profiled on CNNfn. SongJones.Com(TM) is
the SongPro's(TM) sister component that is compatible with the New Geo
Pocket Player(TM). For more information, access the Web site at
www.SongPro.com.
For Immediate Release
Press contact:
Russell Kibbee
Tag It
Tel: (310) 273-1157
Fax: (209) 315-6514
Email: russell@taggin.com
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
What was your username again? -BOFH
The SongPro for GameBoy has been around since late 2000. It was originally called the SongBoy, but Nintendo sued for trademark infringement and they changed the name.
This is the same company, and pretty much the same product, only in a version for the GameBoy Advance. I would expect to see similiar market penetration for the GBA model as there was for the original. Which was negligible, in case everyone's lack of knowledge of the earlier product hasn't made that point.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
then run the Gameboy Advance Emulator under Windows [and run that under several extra layers of emulation]
A video game emulator has to emulate cartridge hardware such as mappers on NES, superfx/sa1/dsp on Super NES, etc. The SongPro cartridge contains an MP3 decoder. If a GBA emulator were to emulate SongPro, it would probably just embed Windows Media Player or something.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I doubt it could go fast enough considering the 10mhz processor in a TI-89 is faster then the proc in the GBA
Cycle for cycle, between ARM7TDMI and Motorola 68000, what's faster? The GBA has a 16 MHz ARM7TDMI processor (32-bit internal, 16-bit external, fast multiply, 32 KB of fast 32-bit memory). The TI-89 has a 10 MHz 68000 processor (32-bit internal, 16-bit external).
Will I retire or break 10K?
The only one left is the GameBoy line.
And the Palm line. And the Pocket PC line.
I remember when the first gameboy I got was $100.
Actually, the original green-screen Game Boy was $90 in 1990, and it included headphones, batteries, and a genuine TETRIS® game.
How many other handheld devices have progressed as much, with a price drop no-less.
Minor nit: GBA came out in 2001, at $90. Batteries, headphones, and Tetris Worlds are $40 extra, for a total of $130 (2001 currency). Consider inflation, and the price of a Game Boy has remained approximately constant. (Your point remains valid.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
I guess that I should fill in my theroy of why the GB is so damn popular.
The main reason I think is that it has had the best games, year in and year out. Since the original GB, it has always had good games.
But the second reason that it's so popular is that it doesn't require any batteries compared to any other portable. The new GBA only needs 2 AA. The original GB needed 4 AA. With the newer models of GB only neededing 2 AAA.
Third reason is that they have kept the price of the platform down, the price of the GB is much lower then many other systems. This help because if you break it (dropping it , spilling something on it,etc...), it's cheap to get another. Which is a big thing, all the other platforms were much more expensive then the GB ever was.
Lastly, the backwards compatability helps people upgrade. If it weren't for that, I think that the adoption rate for the GBA (and GBC) would be much lower since many people still have an old copy of tetris or mario for the GB they want to play. And don't forget the MASSIVE popularity of the Pokemon games. They still haven't ported over all the Pokemon stuff yet to the GBA. (gotta catch them all, right?)
first off, seeing how the songpro cart is physically designed on their website, it sticks out so that it would be awkward to slip into my pocket. furthermore, why bother? someone else already pointed out that the gba uses something like 8-bit pcm sound, and i have doubts that this spa format will pick up too much.
just sounds like another poorly implemented idea of sticking one opposite function to another.
i'd much rather buy a normal mp3 player in addition to a gba, rather than deal with this mess.
The cart must have its own MP3 decoder chip in it. Not everything need be done by software, you know...
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
While you are probably correct in your assumption that this device is doing it's own decode and just using the gba for i/o (otherwise, why does it have it's own headphone jack?), I don't see why this has to be the case.
The GBA has a 200mhz ARM cpu. That should be fast enough, right? I'm not very familiar with the flavors of the ARM archetecture -- is the 200mhz ARM processor a vastly different model from the 200mhz ARM processor that's in an ipaq? And ipaqs can handle mp3's no problem.
Uh, have you heard the sound quality on a GBA? I own one and they're fun but I wouldn't count on it playing good quality music.
The CPU in the Gameboy Advance does not run at 200 Mhz, but a mere 16 Mhz.
I game, therefore I am...
Oh boy. Another MP3 player in hardware. Like that hasn't been done before. Here's what this is: it's an MP3 player draining power from the GBC, and just displaying images and using it for control. Sorry folks - it's not decoding on the 4mhz z80 or anything like that. I'm guessing it's gonna put a mighty strain on power control, cause flakeyness, bad sound output (even through it's plug), and shorten life. But then again, let's hope they prove me wrong!
--j
This product was first announced at least two years ago. It was to be called Song-Boy or MP3-Boy or something-Boy and Nintendo smacked it down. It never recovered. It's vapour.
The Songboy is only use the GBA as a display unit...nothing more...that is sad! Now, here is a company using the GBA for something cool. A digital camera!
That is cool
20 some photos at 640x480 and only for $25 bux. So 25 + 70 = 95 bux and you get a Game system and a 1.3MP camera...can't beat that!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
console giant Nintendo takes on the RIAA in a multi-million dollar lawsuite claiming that the Nintendo Gameboy and Gameboy Advance is in violation of muisc copy rights...
No offence but since when has 640 * 420 = 1.3M
I always thought 640*480 = 307200 pixels
a 1.3mega pixel camera is normaly
1280 * 1024 = 1310720pixels
realy this camera only has the resolution of one of those cheep toy digital cameras that you can pickup for less than $100 australian so probably $50 US
...that will play digital music in various formats on any of the tens of millions of Game Boy game consoles worldwide.
Thats news to me.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
This seems more a way to hook up a Gameboy to an MP3 player than the other way around, then.
What do you need the Gameboy for if you're just going to hook it up to your own speakers?
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
http://www.gamepark.com/
:
/
it plays games, mp3's, it has a wireless interface, the dev scene is rapidly growing, the sdk is provided free of charge by gamepark and the screen is way better than the gba one.
it already runs many emus (SMS, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, GBC, Wonderswan) and there are many other emus and ports in progress.They have even made an DivX;-) player !
Sega will also port some of it's genesis games !
other links
http://www.gp32emu.com/
http://www.emu.pl/gp32
http://www.lik-sang.com/
And it uses standard SMC cards !!!
As a GBA developer I can tell you that the GBA can at best do 8bit 16khz music, perhaps slightly more with a custom hardware assist, far from the 16/44.1khz cd standard. If you regularly listen to music through a fuzzy telephone, you may like the GBA's sound. And don't even think about the original GB. The GP32 is the only handheld game platform at the moment that comes close to cd quality.
They made an MP3 Player like any Rio or what-have-you except it fits in the back of the gameboy, takes up the gameboy's battery, and listens to the gameboy telling it what buttons were pressed.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Dirk
Now I can listen to my Super Mario Bros MP3 file anytime I want!
-Ed
docbrown.net
Graphic Design, Web Design, Role-Playing Games...all the good stuff
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
This thing would be cool if it somehow let you override the cheesy game music with your own MP3's while you're playing games. However, it doesn't do that so....
What is the point of this unit? It is overpriced at $99 (I bought a Nex II for less than that), and the Gameboy/MP3 Player combination will be big and bulky, and the sound probably won't be as good as a standalone MP3 player (and that's through headphones... sound would be abominable through the puny internal speaker). Finally, the Gameboy Advance's horrible, horrible display would make it difficult to select songs, make playlists, etc. Unless of course you add a bulky light attachment, which just just makes the whole contraption even more unmanageable. Imagine trying to strap one of these to your belt to take a jog!
This device sounds like the answer to nobody's question.
Everyone is trying to target the youth demographic with pagers, cell phones and what not. I think this demographic is best served by using the gameboy as a staring platform
I am glad to see that there is some talk about the SongPro unit for the Nintendo GameBoy Color and Nintendo GameBoy Advance. Here are some additional items to consider: We have our own 32bit stereo output jack for headphones. All audio processing is done "onboard". Features include EQ and other audio controls. We use a 32 bit ARM-7 Cirrus Logic processor. We can play MP3, WMA, AAC, and WAV. As well as SongPro Audio with visuals. We are considering other audio formats; some of which have been under the discussions here.