Slashdot Mirror
New Gameboy Announced
Xenex writes "From Planet GameCube: Nintendo today announced a US March 23rd release date for their Game Boy Advanced SP system. The GBA SP features a clamshell design that when folded is 3-inch square and an inch thick. The unit will also be also front lit, and totally backwards compatible with all previous Game Boy software." As any GBA owner can tell you, the screen in earlier models sucked pretty terrible. I'm looking forward to trying this one out.
Here's a link to a photo from the Japanese announcement.
... as provided by Gamespot
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
There is another press conference coming in NY between 9am-11am EST. It isn't know at this time what they are announcing. It is believed that the GBA SP will be announced for the US (since this conference is being held by NOA). Hopefully we hear more than just about GBASP (though I can't wait to buy one of um!)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
It was announced at Nintendo's anniversary bash (70th anniversary?) recently. Or at least, that's what I remember from reading the UK Gamecube newsgroup.
My fiancee bought an Advance in the first couple of weeks after launch - she took it back the same day as the screen was entirely unusable. Looking forward to this one - GBA seems to be the last refuge of 2D games (besides MAME, of course). And I like 2D games.
Cheers,
Ian
Did you ever use one?
It has four, not two. (The two by the pad, two on the back)
There was actually an article about this in Edge magazine in November, and they were saying that they had conformation of online stories... so supposedly it's been reported on the net somewhere
They did say it'd have 2 new face buttons though, and also that they hoped the actual thing would have a bit more wow factor then their artists sketch, when in fact it has decidedly less.
--
Hollywood representatives have publicly stated that skipping commercials is "stealing."
Nintendo updates GBA ...
...
... conditions. Partly to offset the demands of the internal light, Nintendo ...
Much as sources including reputed UK gaming mag Edge have been speculating over
the last few months, the GBA SP boasts an updated clamshell design, improved
Nintendo announces Backlit GBA
Dubbed GBA SP, the new model comes in a redesigned clamshell case with
a screen that flips up (think cellphone) to reveal the control pad.
New Game Boy Advance revealed
has added rechargeable batteries to the GBA SP. And to
The Next Game Boy Is Here
Nintendo to sell premium model of Game Boy Advance
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The Good:
"Backlit" screen - it's really more like the Afterburner, but probably of a higher/clearer quality (without the "blue tint" the Afterburner sometimes gives - not trying to knock the Afterburner, it's a great hack).
Long battery life - 10 hour with light on, 18 with light off.
Clamshell - as someone who games "on the go" and with a 9 month old son who likes to eat Daddy's GBA, this is a good thing.
The Bad:
Rechargeable batteries - would be nice if we could put AA as a "backup" or something. But Nintendo was against a rock and a hard place - if they allow any third party rechargeable batteries to be put in, there could be compatibility issues (really a non-issue except from a legal "we won't support it if it breaks" kind of thing - kind of like some MP3 players that have their own brand of AA rechargeables).
Form factor: Hm. I'm not sure on how comfortable this will be. Once nice thing about the GBA is while it's a little too small for my 1.5 octave spanning hands, the shape is more forgiving. Here, we have...a square shape. Looking at it, I'm not sold on "long hours with Metroid Fusion without finger cramping". We'll see.
Otherwise, for $90 ($100 after taxes, etc), it looks like a nice evolution for the GBA. Remember your history - Nintendo made several changes to the original GameBoy over it's 10 year life (colors, slimmer, one backlit system, color screen), and Nintendo still has around 50% of the software console market sales locked down (at least when you include that nice sized 35%-40% hold the Gameboy/Gameboy Advance has).
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Yahoo Picture
Here is a decent picture of the new unit next to the old unit
Blah Blah Blah.
Well maybe you should have a look at this It's not a GBA it's a GPi, a GP32 (korean handheld by Gamepark) merged with a cellphone. It uses Linux 2.4 kernel, can run GP32 games/utilities and homemade software (including stuff like ScummVM), play divx and mp3s, connect to the internet, etc etc The only drawback is that it hasn't been released yet, at least to my knowledge.
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
There have been rumors for a little while (see Gamers.com for examples), but nothing concrete until this moment, and Nintendo was in "denial" mode. (This is where they deny all rumors for 4 months, then come out with a press release validating all the rumors - standard for most of the game industry.)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Actually, some hands on impressions have said that the L/R buttons are actually more comfortable than those on the original GBA. From the EDGE forums, posted by ste_EDGE:
"I'm not sure about the shoulder buttons yet. First impression - on seeing it - was that they're going to be useless. Second impression, on playing it, was significantly better. I find the ones on the GBA at the moment very uncomfortable, and the fact that these are on the corner means you can press them with the bottom of your finger, rather than the tip, and it seemed OK. But I was playing Advance Wars, really, so it wasn't like it got a work out."
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Afterburner is a frontlight, not a backlight.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The cross pad has a pin in the middle such that you can have at most two contacts closed at one time
Actually, it's not as powerful as the old SNES, it's lacking in several departments, but the most obvious is sound (it cannot play the same number of instruments as the SNES could), as well as colors/resolution.
If you want a true SNES in portable form, check out VCS Portable Site.
--LordKaT
Pretty good hands on review of the GBA SP at GameSpot, includes reports on the backlight (looks good from almost any angle), the comfort-level of it (more comfortable than they were expecting, including the shoulder buttons).
Just figure this is interesting since I think some people are jumping too quickly to conclusions just based on photos, and it helps to consider the difference between how something looks and how it actually feels.
-Tom
Download GBA Frotz and install it on a flash cart and you can play text adventures on the GBA. The interface isn't great, but it's usable. You can download many free games in the z-machine format at The Interactive Fiction Archive, and almost all the Infocom text adventures will work.
The + pad was patented by Yokoi Gunpei/Nintendo. That's why the PC Engine and all subsequent game systems couldn't use that design; everybody used 8-way pads that were either circular or squared-off. It's the reason the Sony d-pad on all official Playstation controllers is so bad (hiding the center of the pad underneath plastic makes the pad feel unresponsive and shallow).
The Dreamcast is the first non-Nintendo console to have a standard controller with a "+"-shaped pad, but the pad is elevated so high from the base of the controller that it's not very nice to use. Sega was able to use this design because Nintendo's patent on it expired 15 years after the launch of the Famicom, just in time for the Dreamcast's launch.
I myself miss the big + pad on Nintendo's consoles and the original GameBoy. Nintendo's current + pad size on the GameCube and GameBoy Advance is too small to use, and my hands aren't that huge, either.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
but the most obvious is sound (it cannot play the same number of instruments as the SNES could)
The Super NES could mix eight channels in stereo. Most TVs of the era were mono, and few people connected their consoles to a stereo system. Therefore, we might as well consider Super NES sound mono.
I am a GBA developer. I have written a mixer that, for eight mono channels, takes about 16% of the CPU. In addition, for another 1% of the CPU, I can use the four tone generators from the Game Boy side to add even more voices to the music. A good composer can make nice sounding music with four PCM channels and four GBC channels.
But the nice thing about the GBA sound hardware vs. Super NES sound is that because the samples fed to the GBA hardware are uncompressed 8-bit signed PCM, it's possible to generate samples in real time. Applications include tightly compressed voice and drumloop samples and realtime synthesis such as TB303 emulation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wrong.
Straight from IGNpocket: "The unit will not have a headphone jack; Nintendo has created a special adapter for the GBA SP that plugs into a brand-new multi-access port (also used for the AC adapter) which enables users to plug in standard headphones."
So you can use your headphones and link at the same time, because they are in two distinct ports.
Or check the image here - you see the old link port on the right, and the new multi-access port on the left.
I've moved on.