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Gameboy Advance SP Reviewed & Disassembled
lotech writes "lik-sang has a review with full photos of the new Nintendo Ganeboy Advance SP.
Not just supplying heaps of photos they have even beaten the pack on voiding the warranty and include heaps of internal photos.
The handheld market is heating up with new releases from Nokia too and also the feature packed GP32. Oh and maybe then there maybe some Sony competition soon?"
Here (PGC)
and some nice pics Here. Boy, this is late!
After fumbling around trying to find the best source for light, whether it be my lamp in the living room or the ever annoying 'Worm Light' attachment, the Gameboy will come with a backlit screen. Not only that, but a rechargeable battery that comes standard, and a price tag (albeit you don't import it before the US release date) that will be less than $100. It will make it worth my time to give games like Castlevania a second look considering the first time I played the game I couldn't even see the game b/c the screen was so dark.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The GBA did not have regional lockout.
SP has no lockouts, its the exact same damn hardware as GBA.
And the e-reader DOES work it.
I just thought I'd point out that, here in Japan, the GBA-SP comes in 3 colors: silver, cobalt, and black. The U.S. version will only come in the first two. (IMO, this sucks, as black is the coolest.)
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
N-gage has been launched, has been reviewed and will be in the shops soon. They've signed a big deal with Sega for content. I'm not saying it's any good or anything, but it is real.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Of course, One question I had when I heard about the GSP was that the e-reader wouldn't work with it.
This was already answered once, but the e-Reader *does* work with the GBA-SP. The expansion plug on the bottom of the mechanism fits just over the bottom edge of the unit, not really getting in the way (unless you hold your GBA weird). Then again, the e-Reader wasn't designed for long-term ergonomics, so it's doubtful you'd really be playing anything on it for longer than an hour.
I would imagine that with the homebrew/demo scene that the original GBA would be better because one could decode the protocol used on the e-reader, print your own cards, and publish your own game that way.
The dot resolution on the e-Cards is probably a couple of degrees finer than your standard household inkjet printer. Think about it. The strip is about 3/8" wide, and about 3" long (don't have one on me to measure, so these are estimates). That means you have about 1.125 square inches of data to store about 2KB, or 16000 bits. sqrt(1.125) gives an average side length of 1.0606", and sqrt(16000) gives 126.49...so you'd have to have approximately 120 distinct dot positions per inch, assuming that there's no uber-compression scheme going on there.
I don't think your home printer can handle that. Perhaps a laser printer, but who knows. Not me, that's for sure.
That, plus the GSP probably has new "license protection"/DRM/Region Coding/Developer lockout/authentication etc. that the original GBA doesn'have.
As has already been mentioned and modded up, the Game Boy line (including the Virtual Boy) has never had any physical or logical region protection system. The most you could say for "developer lockout" is the pursuit and C&D of resellers of flash-linker kits, which have a secondary (and some would argue "primary") use of being able to load and play GB roms downloaded from the Internet.
I understand the interest in developing for these, as I tinker around with them a bit, but it does say something when I'm playing Oracle of Seasons prior to class yesterday, and a kid three seats down from me doesn't recognize the larger GBC cartridge and thinks I'm using a flash cart. When I tell him it's just an older game, he's like "Wow...did you know you can buy a blank cartridge and download games from the Internet on it?"
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
The light in the GBA SP IS in front of the LCD screen (or more accurately, around the edges in front) . It has to be since the LCD is transreflective. The screen reflects and light hitting it back through the pixels. This prevents the screen from getting washed-out in bright daylight.