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GameBoy Advance 'Time Machine' NES Adapter Trailed

Posted by simoniker on from the flashroms-not-authentic dept.

Thanks to Lik-Sang for their report on a third-party 'Time Machine' NES adapter for the GameBoy Advance SP, being developed by a Taiwanese manufacturer and trailed at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair. According to Lik-Sang, who are also showing a promo picture of the device: "The product is supposed to be market-ready within the next couple of weeks, and the primary use is to play your Famicom/NES cartridges on your GBA through the unit. Famicom cartridges are plugged in at the back of the unit, while the system sits underneath the GBA SP."

4 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. awesome! by revmoo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Includes authentic "Blowing in cartridge action", and realistic "oh please good work this time" features.

    Sounds great!

    --
    I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
  2. A solution looking for a problem? by Sancho · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok, there's the cool factor of this, but not only would these be unwieldy (even with the smaller Famicom carts, you aren't going to carry these around in your pocket) but also resolution problems. The NES had a resolution of 256x240 while the GBA has 240x160 (http://www.pocketnes.org/faq.html. That means that right from the starta conversion has to be done and/or cropping. In fact, elsewhere on the PocketNES site, the emulator's author explains that scaling down to that resolution actually makes nearly all game text unreadable.

    Straight ports are the way to go, although many of my favorite games probably will never see play on a GBA simply because they're too old and weren't released by Nintendo, who seems to be one of the few (if not the only) developers to release their classic games on the handheld.

    1. Re:A solution looking for a problem? by AndyBusch · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'd hardly say the text becomes unreadable. NES games used a blocky 8x8 font usually, which looks fine on PocketNES. Maybe playing Dragon Warrior'd get a bit annoying, but most games have so little text that it doesn't matter (Dodongo dislikes smoke. You can suffer through that much squashed text). You do lose a bit at the outside, but Castlevania is the only game I've played where you lose text to the side cropping. All told, a small price to pay.

      I'm amazed at how many add-ons there are for the GBA. Is it simply standard enough hardware, or is there something else causing all of this?

  3. Hopefully. . . by M3wThr33 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This will drive down the cost of the Game Axe so I can get one cheaply. Portable NES competition could be a very interesting market.