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Nintendo Releases 32-bit Handheld Device
Mad Browser writes "Nintendo announced a new handheld game device that runs on a 32-bit ARM processor. Supposedly available in Japan in August 2000 and the US next Christmas, this thing can also connect to a cell phone to do email and Web browsing.
Check out Nintendo's press release here and some other info here. "
A number of people here have posted that it would be cool to install the ARM port of Linux on the thing. People hoping to be able to do this should be prepared for a bitter, uphill fight.
Nintendo has been extremely hostile to open development on their platforms since day one. If you aren't a major software house, they won't even acknowledge you exist, much less allow you to sign their incredibly draconian non-disclosure and distribution agreements, which you must do before they will let you anywhere near their system specs.
And even if you manage to get that far, Nintendo can simply refuse to publish your product.
Nintendo makes their money from usurious margins on their cartridges and publishing fees. A company with this kind of track record is not about to open the machine to all comers, no matter how cool it may be. In fact, expect them to sue you if you attempt to write software on "their" platform without their "permission."
Not worth the headache, IMHO.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
First Off, the title and such was ALL WRONG, its more about the next evolution of the gameboy (Now going to be called The Gameboy Advaced) which I wrote in to slashdot.org but this was choisen over it... grip grip grip.
Heres the real specs:
Gameboy Advanced
Avalible: Japan: August 2000 ; USA & Europe: X-Mas 2000
Price: Has to be less than 150, rough estimate by me
Fetures: 32-Bit ARM Microprocesor
Planed avaliblity to connect to devices like Digital Cameras and Cell Phones
Planed to connect to the future Dolphin console, with the ability to trade stats, characters, and games. Konami is partining with Nintendo and forming a company to do only this.
Planed backwords compatiblity with all existing GB, GB Colour (For the British), and GB Color games.
The gameboy, game gear, coleco vision, sega master and many clasic arcades all used the z80. Sega even used the z80 as the graphics cpu in the genesis/mega drive/nomad. The nes used the 6502. This chip was almost identical to the chip in the atari 2600 btw. And the SNES used a 16 bit version of the same chip. If there are any more consoles that people know of that used a z80, please post them here :)
:)
:)
Actually... here's some corrections...
The gameboy didn't actually use a Z80; it used a modified Z80 die which was missing the IX, IY, and alternate register sets... it also had some new instructions added to talk to the hardware, and a weird zero-page addition to it.
The Game Gear was a Sega Master System with a slightly different sound chip, all of the TV display stuff ripped out, and more glue to get it to work with an LCD.
Sega didn't use the Z80 as a graphics cpu in the genesis/mega drive/nomad -- the Z80 was a secondary processor (main one being a 68000) used for initial systems booting and handling the controller interfaces -- with its main purpose being handling sound for the console; you'd pipe a music/sound effect player routine into the Z80, and set it going on its own in the background.
As for other things that use the Z80... look at:
The ZX80, ZX81, Sinclair Spectrum, SAM Coupe, MSX... and a variety of washing machines, process controllers and other bits and pieces around the globe.
Personally, I'm more interested in the Z380 these days... it's a wonderful chip - 32bit address bus, but can be switched into a pin-compatible "Z80" mode. (It can even be turned into a pipelined, cache aware, Z80 which is completely instruction compatible with the original if you flick a software switch). It's missing the R register (memory refreshes are handled dynamically using CAS before RAS SIMMs line trickery-pokery), which means that some games which rely on this for random number generation would have problems using it, but who cares
It's a neat little chip... if someone made a console around it, I'd be programming games in assembler again in a heart beat
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Calculator with better graphics costs more than gameboys.
Sega Game Gear has less games(are games still released for it? I didn't know it was still supported.)
A 486 laptop is of no use playing games. That is the only use a Gameboy has. It also weighs more and has less battery life. It could probably emulate a Gameboy okay, but not as long or as well.
Why buy a Gameboy? To play games, silly. Unless you don't play games, then no game machine will interest you.
I have a cell phone. I'd like one of these GameBoys. For games. I'd use something else for email, though being able to just finger myself and see who's sent me email is nice(just another fancy pager/beeper like device). Why would anyone waste their money on a Palm Pilot when you have pads of paper(gads, imagine how much paper $260 would get you!)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
My calculator has better graphics and a faster processor than gameboys. My brother's Sega Game Gear has better graphics, and my old 486 laptop is more useful. Why would I want to buy one of these game boys?
I don't think I'm going to be the only one not interested.. the people with the money for a cellphone are going to be using their palm pilots or laptops to get their email, why would they want to waste their money on something with the screen the size of a postage stamp and the processing power of a Dorito?
They can add all of that stuff but still not have enough power/space for a backlight. Amazing.
Actually, I believe there was a "Game link" hub that came with the F1 Race game awhile back. Not sure if it'd be compatible with the new-style link cables though.
Nintendo has repeatedly shied away from including backlights for two main reasons. 1) They consume an enormous ammount of power. Remember the 6 AAs it took to run the Game Gear and they only lasted a few hours, and weighed a ton. The new Gameboy runs for 20 hrs with 2 AAs and the reflective LCD they use only needs a minimal ammount of light. 2) Backlights are yet another part that can break, and if it burns out, youre left with a $100 paperweight.
Call me insane, but they list this thing as having 2 AAA bateries, with a 20 hour life. Doesn't this seem a VERY long time? Or is that '20 hours, on pause, with no sound, in -40 degree temp..'
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
aside from the obvious fact that the headline is wrong (this device hasn't been released in any sense of the word).... this is basically just a logic step in the evolution of the gameboy....nintendo waited on this for quite a while....they didn't want to make an advanced device like this until it was possible to do something that would get good battery life and still be cheap... yes, the gameboy wasn't updated for a longtime, but that's because for nintendo to do a worthwhile upgrade before this, they couldn't have made an under $100 device. i think people are missing the point of the cellphone....this isn't supposed to be a replacement for a cellphone...what is cool about this is that it means you can have a handheld device you could play almost anywhere and still play multiplayer games...that's pretty big. regarding the comment about running the PalmOS so you could use a gameboy emulator, that won't be necessary... nintendo has said that this will be backwards compatible with gameboy and gameboy color games....presumably that means they will use the same cartridge format (or if not, provide some sort of adaptor to be able to plug-in gameboy games)... this is a smart move, and its the same reason sony is making the playstation 2 backwards compatible with the original psx games.... you can have the most technically incredible machine out there, but without a good software library, it won't matter... the sega saturn was a superior machine to the psx...you can see this by looking at various games made available for both the psx and saturn....but the saturn never had the really great and diverse software library the psx had... this is the same thing with the gameboy....the gameboy was a very basic system....the atari lynx, sega game gear, sega nomad, turbographix xpress, etc. were all more advanced....the lynx and turbographix handhelds were in particular. but the gameboy has a massive, unstoppable software library.....what is especially good is diversity...for the most part, there are at least two are three excellent games of almost any type you can imagine....in some cases there are a lot of good games in certain categories... and with the gameboy color, you're starting to see good games in categories that weren't traditionally good....some of the new baseball, basketball and football gameboy color games are really pretty impressive.. the other thing that is nice is that a lot of classic NES games can be ported to the gameboy color.....super mario bros. dx is already out, and it is an incredible game....and they are working on porting other classic nes games...
Now, first off. I like eye-candy as much as the next person. I really like computer generated graphics. Ok, with that said, how important are graphics to the gaming process. I feel that gameplay has a lot more to do with whether I like a game or not. If a game has great graphics and bad gameplay it will not hold my interest and I would be less likely to buy it after a demo. Case in point: Zelda for the gameboy. Zelda has always been a fun game, I think part of it has something to do with the fact that you can see areas/things that you can't go to/interact with until you get farther in the game. Zelda on the gameboy is 2D, but it is still a much better game experience than some new whizbang 3d games out now. So, for me gameplay is more key than graphics, that combined with a relative low price point and the ability to link gameboys together and you will see why the gameboy remains the best selling video game device. Vermifax
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Some more info can be found here:
GBA FAQ
Various stuff, including some concept drawings(not official though)
IGN Pocket