GBA Afterburner Creators Announce Stealth Link

Thanks to the double-team of PlanetGameCube and Shacknews for pointing out that the Gameboy Advance 'Afterburner' backlight creators, Triton Labs, have announced the Stealth Link GBA multiplayer adaptor. It'll allow you to play multiplayer Gameboy Advance games against your friends completely wireless, without those pesky link cables, and is due in retail stories in Q3 2003. More excellent innovation here from the people who made the GBA usable again, before Nintendo put in backlighting as standard with the Gameboy Advance SP.

Comments

Nintendo Needs Them On The Payroll

[Babbster]

Shooting for a price point of $30-40 is something I would expect from Nintendo, or at least one of the "big-time" third-party accessory makers. It's especially ambitious since wireless networking cards for PCs are still running in that price range.

My only question is how big can this possibly be? While it would be "cool" to play multiplayer on GBAs located in different rooms or across the room, you would be paying three or four times the cost of an old-fashioned link cable. I guess the best use for this would be with four-player connectivity since dealing with four cords and arranging appropriate seating for four people tethered by cords would be more troublesome. But there again you're talking about $120-160 spent between four people to get the ball rolling. You'd have to play connected games a LOT to get a decent return on your investment.

Before anyone says anything, I know that the Afterburner was a huge success. But that product gave value to EVERY GBA owner since one player or four, the screen was still lit instead of dark.

Again, though, in terms of the "cool factor" and the ambition factor, Triton certainly can't be faulted. They might just help drive Nintendo to more changes. If they succeed, I wouldn't be all that surprised to see a Gameboy Advance SPX in a year or so that integrates bluetooth right into the package.

Interesting.

[Sheetrock]

Is this something you could hook up to a computer? I could see all sorts of neat hacks (emulator/GBA connectivity, GBA/GBA connectivity over the Internet, backup/restore of GBA save files) for a device like that.

other applications?

[GlobE 59]

Makes you wonder what other applications this could be used for. You have the bluetooth-adapter coming out in q4(from what i've heard) and perhaps they will both help spawn a new array of wireless applications.
Question is of course, do we really want/need to turn an excellent little gaming-platform into a multipurpose-ninja-tool? The digital camera and printer for the old gameboy was perhaps not the most brilliant products.... or?

Re:Afterburner Dude

[TheBrownShow]

It would be even more lame if he had this great idea and DIDN'T make a profit.

What's wrong with making an honest buck on a good idea?