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Gamecube Finally Plays GBA Games
ytzombe writes "Gamespot News is reporting that for about 5000 yen an attachment will be available to play GBA games on the Gamecube. The serial port underneath the system will be the gateway to the device and will include a port to enable multiplayer games. This will finally allow me to play the Castlevania games without fusing my naked retina to the screen."
i already bought the GBA "cybernetic upgrade" tv adapter on a trip to hong kong.. it's not licensed by nintendo though, it makes your GBA big and bulky, requires it's own power source, and costs about the same..i just installed it on a second GBA that i had laying around (they're very cheap in asia). look into it if you don't have a gamecube but you are as annoyed with the GBA screen (w/no afterburner) as many other people are.
A $44 attachment for a $70 unit to plug into your $150 console to play $35 games with the quality lesser than that of a 1990 era NES that sells for $20?
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This will finally allow me to play the Castlevania games without fusing my naked retina to the screen.
Or, if you're feeling particularly ambitious, you can install Triton Labs' Afterburner lighting kit.
Sure, you'll have to open up your GBA and do some (very easy) soldering, but if you're reading Slashdot, chances are that you either
A) Can solder in your sleep
B) Are smart enough to find someone who can solder if you're not up to the challenge, rather than fuck up your GBA by trying anyway.
The end result is worth it. Clear visibility in any lighting, even complete darkness! Sure, there's a modest drain on the batteries, but you'd get the same drain using an (inferior) external lighting solution. Plus, you can opt to install the potentiometer (included) to allow you to dim or turn off the light when not needed.
Sure, you can buy the attachment to play GBA games on the GC, but why? The main reason to buy a Gameboy is portability. If you want to play the games on a large screen, get an emulator.
No, the article is about a way to play GBA games on your NGC sans GBA. Metroid Prime uses the link cable with the GBA to do two things -- beat Metroid Prime and link to Metroid Fusion, and you can play the game using Samus' new Fusion suit. Beat Metroid Fusion and link the two, and you can play the original Metroid on the GameCube. (I may have those reversed on what you have to do to get each, but those are the two things you get.) Since you need to have the Prime disk in the NGC to access these features, and you have to use an emulator disk with this peripheral, I don't believe you're going to be able to connect the NGC back to itself via the GBA link cable. It'd be kinda sweet if you could, but that would mean the peripheral itself would just be a GBA that sits under the cube and hooks into the cube's A/V outputs, which it's not.
Erm no, it has more ram. It has less than the 64mb in the X-Box, but more than the PS2's 32mb. Its got 40mb total of ram, 16 being "A-memory", 81mhz D-Ram and 24mb of MoSys 1T-Sram. I'm sure it could be made to run Linux, but as of yet, nobody is known to have cracked the disc system. You can see the rest of the specs here.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
There is a boot disc that makes the Gamecube AWARE of the device, it's more of a device driver, but the actual GBA functionality is all hardware based. Games like Metroid Fusion that can talk to GameCube games will NOT need to have this disc loaded beforehand. The games are aware of the GBA carts in the add-on and can and will read directly from the memory of the GBA game in question. Again, NOTHING is being "emulated" with the Gameboy Player, you will just need to load the device driver disc to play the games beforehand. But you WILL NOT need to use it when using Gamecube games that use GBA linkups because thats already in the Gamecube software itself.
The GBA and the SNES are completely different hardware. They're roughly equivalent in power (each has some strongpoints over the other), which is reason they get compared so much.
I forget the exact model number, but the SNES processor is a 16 bit version of the 6502 (the chip in the NES). The GBA uses an ARM processor (and also has a Z80 in there to run the old GB/GBC games).
It's made by Retro Studios, not Rare.
But yeah, the controls are nice. Especially jumping.
The people who complain about the controls are people who expect it to be another Halo or GoldenEye. If you play it from the same frame of mind as you would play any other Metroid game, then the controls are perfect. If you play it expecting another Halo, then you'll hate the controls and won't like the game at all.
Time to update your figures, bucko. Xbox has outsold the GameCube by 570,000 units in the US, and by 70,000 just in the last month. The Xbox's Japanese sales might be very shitty, but it has at least outsold the PS One there this year (267,800 to 201,900).
From NPD's October US numbers at http://mail.chartermi.net/~spartan85/NPD_UBS.pdf:
You were saying?
you have to press at least 4 different buttons to force samus to 'look' at something
Or you can just move the analog joystick in the direction you'd like to look... that always works for me. If you're referring to the manual aiming mode, then yes, you must press the R button and then use the analog stick. I'm not sure where you got 4 from though.
button mashing contests to shoot monsters first
Not exactly. Sometimes if there's a horde of beetles or wasps or something, then it does get frantic. But most of the time this is not the case. In fact, most of your time isn't really spent dispatching enemies in a frag-fest like most FPS. It's more like Metroid on the SNES, where you have to take out some creature roaming around on a platform you'd like to jump onto. Exploration and platforming are key to Metroid Prime.
you cannot look up or down and walk at the same time
This is true, but it hasn't been a problem for me. The jumping/platforming in Metroid is quite good and not nearly as frustrating as it normally is in a FPS-- probably because it isn't like most FPS.
just to keep the hideous hud from blinding me
You can adjust the HUD's opacity in the options menu.
games with the quality lesser than that of a 1990 era NES
If you can say that with any degree of seriousness my guess is the answer is no. The graphics are most definitely comparable to a mid-1990s SNES, the 16 bit one, not the NES (the 8 bit).
Besides, I think you're missing the point entirely; far too many modern games suck because they over-emphasize the importance of graphics. I'll take the old Final Fantasy games for the SNES over the newer ones any day for the simple reason that they were more fun. The graphics were usually pretty simple, but the story and game play were always unbeatable, and GBA has done a bit to bring that sort of game play back
I also like to own my games.
Then only dump the cartridges that you have purchased. Format-shifting of non-encrypted media such as GBA games is your right under the RIAA v. Diamond precedent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Buy a Gravis gamepad an a video card that supports video out.
Let's see... Can you get a good gamepad (the Gravis GamePad Pro USB is too touchy on the SE diagonal), a video card with TV-out, and a $30 PC link cable for under $40? thought so.
Even if you don't have a Cube, it's difficult to squeeze a good gamepad, a video card with TV-out and 3D acceleration, and a PC link cable for $190 ($150 for Cube and $40 for wideboy).
Will I retire or break 10K?
http://pocket.ign.com/articles/377/377835p1.html
"It also means that, even though the GBA games can be played on any territory's hardware, the Game Boy Player will be specific to the country it's sold in. So, importers beware: Japanese Game Boy Players can only be used on the Japanese systems."
Controllers are interchangable, and so are the modem & ethernet adapters.
Controllers and network adapters have nothing to do with the video. The GBA video runs at 59.7275 Hz, which can probably be mapped nearly frame-to-frame with the 59.94 Hz NTSC system of the USA and Japan and the 60 Hz PAL system of Brazil. On the other hand, Europe uses a 50 Hz PAL system.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"SEGA also had a handheld system called Game Gear, which had an adapter to allow its games to be played on the Genesis/MegaDrive."
No, they had an adapter to let you play Master System games on the Game Gear. AFAIK, there is no Super Game Boy equivalent for the Genesis.
On the other hand, Nintendo released a "Super Game Boy 2" in Japan for the Super Famicom. Just like the original only with a game link port. It was released a little after Pokemon (go figure).