Why Nintendo is wasting it's time and ours...

[Cronic]

Old Concole games on GBA


Everybody knows that GameBoy Advance is a pretty powerful peace of hardware with its 32-Bit ARM CPU. It has enough horsepower to run emulators of other consoles on it! There are many programmers working on software that "transforms" console game roms (NES, ZX Spectrum, SEGA, MAME and other systems) into .GBA ROMS that can be write to Flash Advance Card and than used in GameBoy or played on an Emulator! So the old games are reborn and the owners of Flash Cards can now play thousands of classic games on GBA.



SNES is in the works as well...

All in all it's a much better concept than Nintendo has come up with thus far.

[MottZilla]

Um... you realize that means shit? There 1, aren't enough buttons on the machine. 2, there isn't a big enough screen resolution.

The GBA imo sucks simply because they chose not to use 256x224 and instead 224x160. Wtf.

[Cronic]

Beats buying remakes, and besides... I'd like to have a portable NES =) which I know would have to work well.

[MottZilla]

Um, did you not hear me?

224x160 RES when the NES is 256x224. You don't be capable of seeing the entire screen. The is one way however I think that's possible to do so but may result in image quality loss. Face is, GBA was obsolete the day it was released. ;p

[KingArthur]

Yeah... I've gotr one, pocketNES is cool, very cool, (mostly because i can play Zelda on my GB) However, there ISNT an SNES Emulator in the works, the GBA actually isnt powerfull enough to handle one at a decent speed.

PocketNES has multiple ways of viewing the screen...

Full Scaled: Everything is scaled to fit the GBA Screen
BG Only Scaled: Only the background is scaled, leaving the sprites at full size
No Scale Auto: The screen in unscaled and the scroll follows the main sprite around (Like in SMB DX)
No Scale: The screen isnt scaled and you have to use the L and R buttons to scoll the camera up and down.

[AlexMax]

I am quite impressed with my GBA. Maybe it's got a lower resolution, but its game seem to adapt to it quite well.

Obsolete my ass...run a GBA emulator and an SNES emulator side by side and see which one is faster...

But I am rather pissed at Nintendo trying to lock down on the Flash Advance. That is a nice piece of equipment there, and I've always wanted to play homebrewn ROMS on their own system.

[Warlock]

Originally posted by Mottzilla
The GBA imo sucks simply because they chose not to use 256x224 and instead 224x160. Wtf.

Although I love the GBA, I gotta agree with you there.. what the hell were they smoking? I mean, it makes the system, what, a centimeter larger? Extra buttons would have also been nice (actually, they probably could have gotten rid of the L&R buttons and just done X & Y, most SNES titles didn't even use L&R much... )

[MottZilla]

Alexmax, you don't know what you are talking about.

The GBA could have been much better, but they chose to just make a so-so portable opposed to a great one.

I'm glad atleast WarLock agrees with me.

And about pocketnes, I believe scaling is indeed the only way to do it quite right. However image quality then is further reduced. Then, the idea isn't great because, playing an emulator on a system like that requires you have rom creating/programming capabilities. So, most buy an expensive flash kit which is most likely by now on the seize list at US Customs.

And Alexmax, they don't care about home development. The simple fact is flash card sets are used 99.9% of the time to pirate GBA games. Nintendo goes after piracy of their main stream/current stuff.

[Cronic]

What I would like to see is Nintendo releasing something similar to the flash kit...

Basically they should have released the GBA as a portable NES/SNES opened season on the roms for the GAMES THEY NO LONGER EVEN FUCKING SELL and from there worked on original material for a bit rather than crappy ports... and I'm sorry but both the LttP remake and four player :rolleyes: look like absolute shit to me.

[MottZilla]

Nintendo doesn't have rights to any NES or SNES games unless it was specifically made by them. So um, you can have mario... donkey kong, zelda, metroid. Thats bout it.

Nintendo SHOULD have just went with the famicom res and then made its ports. Then we'd have perfect portable ports. Not scaled/cropped shit.

[EWild]

Well the new Zelda GBA game, not that I like it but, is to get a new generation of people to like Zelda. Most people wern't around when LttP was around, or they were and were 1 or 2. Even though I see no purpose of making a title like this someone may, but I doubt that either.

[teddyboy420]

I have a GBA emulator and it works great, I can "morph" any NES or SMS to play on it and play GB, GBC or SGB on it. THe morphing is done w/ pocketNES and pocketSMS. And with a flash card writer I can take them and play them anywhere on my GBA. That's pretty cool.

Really the only complaint I have about it is the battery time, but that's not an issue when I use the emu on my computer.

Yes GBA does have it's limitations, but can you name a better handheld?

[jman2050]

Yes, the GBA could have been MUCH better. The emulator idea sounds like something Nintendo could have taken advantage of from the start. And Mott, how can something become obsolete when there is nothing better. But instead of dwelling on the faults, let's look at all the good stuff

- Backwards compatibility with GB/GBC games as well as the link cable compatibility.
- Very long battery life for a handheld. 15 hours on two AAs as opposed to the GBC's 10 hours on two AAs
- Processor more powerful than the SNES or Genesis processor. This pro is diminished by screen res though :(
- Very small, only slightly larger than the GBC.
- Ergonomic, although L and R placement could have been better
- Wide library of games, with a larger one in the works
- A very ggod Sound chip for a handheld, and takes advantage of Headphones (Golden Sun music stresses this a lot).
- Support for sleep mode

In fact, the screen res is probably the only dwelling fault in this system, besides any other small quirks and nuances that the average person probably won't care about.

[DarkDragoonX]

Yeah, the GBA could have been better, but it's by no means a bad system. Have you seen Lunar: Legends on the GBA? Now THAT is the shit.

[MottZilla]

Name a better handheld eh? THE NOMAD PAD! HAHAHAHA.

Best handheld to date! :p

[DarkDragoonX]

Heh, the Nomad was cool... Sega CD, and Genesis, in a box.

[jman2050]

Hmm. Forgot about the Nomad. Very good point Mott, the Nomad was ahead of its time. Too bad it was plagued by Sega's notorious lack of marketing support. If Nintendo could pull of something like that, and support SNES or even N64 carts. Now THAT would be awesome. But for now, I'll be happy with what we got, and trust me, GBA is one heck of a system.

[vegeta1215]

Yeah, Nomad was neat. I personally think that Sega has had the best video game ideas ever. They did alot of things before everyone else, just didn't come full circle with them.

Though I like my GBA, a screen res that would perfectly accomidate a ported NES game would've been sweet. But, oh well. I still have my original NES.

[MottZilla]

SEGA owns. :p It is so unfortunate that their systems never got the support they deserved. I personally think they mainly got alot of bad luck.

Afterall, there was no reason Final Fantasy 4 5 and 6 couldn't have been done on Genesis. The only thing I believe genesis can't do that might be needed was Translucency which they can fake with raster effects and also raster effects could be used for other neat stuff. It's really a shame that Sega never got where it should have with its systems. Sega deserves to be ontop more than Sony or Nintendo or Microsoft.