Nintendo Announces Wireless GBA Adapter

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the Yahoo press release announcing Nintendo is using Motorola technology to produce a wireless adapter for the GameBoy Advance. According to the release, "The 2.4GHz radio frequency (RF) chipset enables up to five players to play each other wirelessly, allowing for flexible, mobile game playing", and it "...will be launched in Japan first half of 2004." Motorola is also hosting a picture of the device, showing how it connects to the GBA.

Comments

Re:Cool.

[PurpleFloyd]

A long time. While 802.11b and the GBA wireless adaptor work on a similar frequency, that doesn't mean that they're using the same underlying protocols. In fact, this is almost certainly closer to Bluetooth than anything, although I haven't seen any tech details other than those provided in the article.

While GBA emulators can certainly communicate with each other (via any sort of TCP/IP network, including one over 802.11x), it's going to take some time and some brilliant hacking and RF geekery to get GBAs and PCs talking wirelessly (without special hardware from Nintendo intended for developers).

In the mean time, it would almost certainly be cheaper and easier to interface to the GBA's wired link port - hacking up a USB interface, while not exactly easy, would be child's play compared to getting a 2.4 GHz wireless link with a proprietary protocol working between a GBA and a PC.

Re:Data port speed

[Rolman]

IIRC, the GBA's port is 115kbps maximum. Of course that's slow by today's standards, but it still is quite useful for multiplayer.

Also, for those hoping this technology would be compatible with Wi-Fi because it's on the 2.4GHz range, forget it, the GBA has a minuscule 256KB System RAM, which is just fine when the cartridge's ROM is within the CPU's addressable space, but not enough for anything useful beyond gaming. Keep also in mind this wireless technology needs to have low power consumption.

Re:But will it work with the GCN

[Rolman]

It is possible, however Nintendo needs to develop a 2.4GHz transceiver adapter specifically for the GCN.

It would have been a killer idea if the Wavebird RF Receiver could be used because that way there's no need to buy an adapter. But that's impossible because the Wavebird is only one way (GCN receives, never transmits), and it's on the 900MHz band.

Maybe some third-party will see a market for it and release such an adapter, but I'm willing to say the chances that Nintendo would release it officially are next to null.

Re:More to it than that...

[Jace of Fuse!]

GBA->PC USB Cable, You mean like this one?

http://www.flash2advance.com

While there hasn't been any Emulator written that will connect up to a GBA for multiplayer linking using a Flash2Advance, there is no reason why theoretically it could not be done.

The GBA powers on and checks that port, and what it finds there is totally up to the PC on the other side. With some clever software trickery, it should be no major task to fool the GBA into thinking it's connected to another GBA via a link cable.

this ain't 802.11b, kids.

[fuzzeli]

This is just a wireless replacement for gba-gba link cables. It won't do anything that a link cable couldn't be used to do. I would like to see a model for the gamecube to eliminate the gba-gcn link cable, or even just an adapter to let you use one of these with your gamecube.

Triton Labs (makers of the afterburner) announced a product very similar to this called the stealth link several months ago. Maybe they showed their hand a little early.

It's interesting that the press release says 5 players. I assume that's a typo. The link cables (and the current software) only support 4 players... unless nintendo has something up its sleeve.

I also don't see this as a reaction to the n-gage at all. Nintendo just sees a market for this add-on. The gameboy's dominance is not remotely threatened, and Nintendo has never been a reactive company.