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Nintendo Game Boy Player Review July 04, 2003 Marcus Yam |
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Summary: "Hey, you know this Game Boy Advance thing we made?"
"Yeah, brilliant idea to add that light system in afterwards!"
"Well, I've got another great idea."
"What's that?"
"Playing Game Boy games on the TV."
"We did that already. It's called the Super Game Boy."
"Oh. Well let's do it again."
"Ingenious! What shall we call it?"
"The Game Boy Player."
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 13 ) |
Pinky raising game count
Late last month, Nintendo announced that it had increased the GameCube library by 750 percent. There are only a few ways to make this possible. If the GameCube only had one game on it, Nintendo could achieve this enormous expansion by releasing another six and a half games – but that is not the case. Nintendo could also have dug up all those nasty E.T. cartridges (or Superman 64, if you will) and made them GameCube compatible – but that is not the case, thank heavens.
Nintendo pulled the old ‘bring the portable games home’ trick. Just as the Super Game Boy enabled a Super NES to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, the Game Boy Player allows a GameCube to play nearly the entire range of Game Boy games all the way back to 1989. And it is because of these 1300+ Game Boy games that Nintendo is able to boast a 750% growth in the GameCube library.
What’s the big idea?
The idea behind the Game Boy Player is to be able to play the very same games that you could on your Game Boy Advance on your television at home. Nintendo figures that the GBA SP is just perfect on the go, but gamers would rather go for big screen action at home. Of course, there are instances where you would like to take your GBA to places in your home where you wouldn’t have a TV… but we won’t go into that.
What we will go into is how the Game Boy Player performs in relation to a portable GBA and if it is ultimately worth the $50 US ($70 CDN) asking price.
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The Game Boy Player package includes the add-on hardware and a start-up disc. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have your Game Boy Player in any color, so long as it is black. Those of you with Indigo purple and Platinum silver GameCubes will have to live with the two-tone color that the Game Boy Player will add to your machine. On the other hand, it melds in so well with the Jet black GameCube that you may not even notice it on at first glance. If you really want your friends to notice that you shelled out the extra 50 (or 70) bones for a GBP, then there’s nothing wrong with having a non-matching color to accentuate the addition.
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SIDEBAR: The bathroom is no place for games.
Besides, what would your mother think?
| Pictures of the GBP | Page:: ( 2 / 13 ) |
…so long as it is black
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Post-op
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SIDEBAR: We’re reviewing the Canadian version of the Game Boy Player. Aside from the extra French instructions, it is identical to USA version.
| Making the Cube Boy | Page:: ( 3 / 13 ) |
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Operation of the Game Boy Player requires the use of the included start-up disc, which comes in a nice translucent case with a memory card holder. To start things up, make sure that the start-up disc is in the console and that a Game Boy cartridge is in the Player. Then just hit the power button, and you should hear the familiar Game Boy Advance opening chimes.
Controller transposition
The GameCube controller is the primary and intended means of input, but those who must have familiarity can plug in a Game Boy Advance and use that as a controller. Both the analog stick and the directional pad on the GC controller serve the same purpose, though many would probably find the pad better suited to the GBA style. This makes perfect sense as the directional crosses on the GameCube controller and the original GBA (but not the SP) are the exact same size.
The ‘B’ and ‘A’ buttons translate directly to the GameCube controller, though they now become differently sized red and green buttons. The left and right shoulder buttons remain the same, though there is no analog functionality. The start button remains unchanged, and select has been moved to the X and Y buttons. There’s an alternate control scheme that allow the X and Y, dastardly as they are, to usurp the intuitive L and R role, leaving select for the shoulders.
SIDEBAR: Penny Arcade knows what it is like to be living a Game Boy life.
| Looks a little like MacOS X | Page:: ( 4 / 13 ) |
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Frame: similar to the original Super Game Boy, the Game Boy Player features a selection of 20 frames to border the gameplay display area. Doesn’t affect the game in any way, but can have adverse effects on your eyes if you stare at the hot-pink for extended periods. We prefer the darker shades.
Screen size: the normal view places your selected borders around the image, reducing the visible display area by about 25%. If that reduction annoys you, then full view mode expands the image to fill up your display while preserving the GBA’s native aspect ratio (so 4:3 TVs will see slight letterboxing).
The smaller, normal view is the default choice for a reason. Unless your TV is 20 inches or smaller, full mode will look pixilated and blurred.
Controller: lets you choose between two preset button schemes, one of them intuitive and the other confusing. But hey, when you feel that your games are getting too easy…
Screen filter: three settings: soft, normal, and sharp. Most of the time, you’ll want to leave this setting on normal. On the soft setting, all games exhibited a very noticeable afterglow effect on the onscreen images. Think of playing a fast paced game on an LCD flat-panel with a slow response time. From our testing, there wasn’t much of a difference between the sharp setting and the normal setting.
Then why bother having three settings when we clearly preferred using just normal? Some games use special tricks designed specifically for the LCD display on the GBA. Some of those tricks don’t translate over well to the TV and end up making certain parts of the picture scrambled, flicker, and jitter. In these instances, use of the different filter mode may fix all problems.
Timer: this is a neat little feature. You can just set the number of minutes you wish to play before a message and sound will pop up alerting you of the elapsed time. Perfect for all those times you wish to play only 42 minutes, as we all know that the answer is always 42.
Change game pak: exactly what it sounds like. You hit this whenever you want to pop in another cartridge. This feature can also be activated by pressing and holding the Z and Start buttons. The Game Boy Player even has a handy eject slider on the right side to shoot-out the game pak when you’re ready for a change.
SIDEBAR: If you enjoyed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I encourage you to check out Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
| The eyes have it | Page:: ( 5 / 13 ) |
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The original Game Boy ran its games at a non-standard aspect ratio of 1.11:1; the Game Boy Advance continues this tradition of non-standard with an aspect ratio of 3:2 – neither of which fit the 4:3 of a normal television or the 16:9 of a widescreen. This just means that you’ll have to live with either some letterboxing or windowboxing. Just pick a nice looking border that even your interior decorator would be approve of.
The bright, the dark, and the ugly
The GBA SP breathed life into darker games; the Game Boy Player sheds even more light on the matter. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is literally unplayable on the original GBA unless you had help from the sun goddess herself. The situation was helped greatly when the GBA SP arrived on the scene, but only using the Game Boy Player with its bright TV output do things really come alive.
Then, on some other games, it gets a little too bright. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was made nice and bright in response to its glaucoma-causing predecessor. Perhaps a little too bright, causing the main character to look uncharacteristically pastel. Metroid Fusion looks fantastic on the GBA, but becomes quite bright and colorful when played on the TV.
For most games, this increase in brightness and contrast is great thing, even for games designed for the original GBA display. Golden Sun and Megaman Battle Network look better than ever. It’s just that games with a traditionally darker atmosphere such as the Castlevania and Metroid series feel a little out of place when played in full brights.
SIDEBAR: Castlevania is moving into the 3D space again for the next chapter. Click here to see the screenshots.
| Comparison shots | Page:: ( 6 / 13 ) |
Metroid Fusion GBA
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Metroid Fusion GBP
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SIDEBAR: After clearing Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion, connect your GBA to your GC and you will unlock a new suit for Samus as well as the original NES Metroid game!
| More comparision shots | Page:: ( 7 / 13 ) |
Tony Hawk 2 GBA
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Tony Hawk 2 GBP
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SIDEBAR: Activision has an exclusive contract to produce Tony Hawk games all the way until the year 2015 inclusive. Anyone smell a Tony Hawk X-2?
| Even more comparison shots | Page:: ( 8 / 13 ) |
F-Zero GBA
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F-Zero GBP
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Mario Kart GBA
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Mario Kart GBP
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SIDEBAR: F-Zero was the second game I played on my Super Famicom. The first, of course, was Super Mario World. Ahh, the fond memories.
| Yet even more comparison shots | Page:: ( 9 / 13 ) |
Megaman BN2 GBA
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Megaman BN2 GBP
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SIDEBAR: Megaman is known as Rockman in Japan.
| Revenge of the comparison shots | Page:: ( 10 / 13 ) |
Golden Sun GBA
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Golden Sun GBP
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SIDEBAR: Putting these gallery pages together has been a mind-numbing experience. It makes my mind drift to other things, such as what will happen to Cujo if Hasek returns… or if the magic is still there between Kariya and Selanne for next season with the Avs… or where Federov will end up.
| Game Boy is HUGE! | Page:: ( 11 / 13 ) |
The e-Reader is fully supported – just plug-n-play. Certain “special feature” games, however, are not supported. For example, the Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble cartridge sports a built-in tilt sensor which obviously wouldn’t work unless you have your personal intern tilt your GameCube for you on command (ahh, the benefits of working at FiringSquad).
Cartridges with rumble features will work fine in the Game Boy Player, but Nintendo recommends that the rumble be disabled. The infrared feature is not available, due to the lack of an infrared port. We also imagine that the upcoming Boktai from Konami will not be an ideal match for the Game Boy Player save for those times you decide to bring your GameCube and TV out under the sun.
Wishful thinking
Something we really wished that Nintendo would have done to the Game Boy Player was put in some additional GBA hardware in for split-screen multiplayer action. Understandably, this would have driven costs up, but just imagine how cool a split screen game of Mario Kart or F-Zero would be!
Another idea involves allowing players to hook up their GBAs (with cartridges) to the Game Boy Player so they can play four-player split screen action via the TV and GameCube’s four controller ports. Again, this would have added to costs; though, remember how we were all wishing for a fully-lit display on the GBA but Nintendo said that any lighting system would have been power and price prohibitive? And now we have the GBA SP.
SIDEBAR: The Game Boy Player supports progressive scan, but since Game Boy games are not optimized to display in that mode, most players will see little or no difference.
| Bringing back the 16 bits | Page:: ( 12 / 13 ) |
For some games, such as Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, it is the only way to play. For other games, such as Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, the experience is best left on the go (unless you’re unable to see color, in which case it would be alright).
Essentially, the Game Boy Player brings the 16-bit era back into your living room. There are just so many excellent 2D games that you wouldn’t be able to play anything like them in our current 3D-facination era. Forget the rehashes (we’re not a fan of those either), but new original titles such as Metroid Fusion, the recent Castlevania trio, both Golden Suns and Advance Wars are mandatory gaming.
Leave somethings to your elders
When it comes to the rehashes of old classics such as Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong Country, etc., we found it more comfortable to play those games on the original SNES platform. Many of those games run at a higher resolution on the SNES and have been knocked to 240x160 for the GBA. The SNES, on the other hand, has a maximum resolution of 512x448, though many games ran at half of that (which, according to my advanced calculations, is still greater than the GBA’s display). Granted, games on the GBA display at a wider aspect ratio, but that’s still not enough to make up for the lower resolution.
The attraction of the recycled classic SNES titles is that you can play some of the greatest games of all time while sitting on the bus. For those nostalgic days at home, we recommend digging out that old grey and violet console. The only reason that you’d play The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past via the Game Boy Player is either: a) you don’t have the original cartridge, or b) you’ve got three other friends wanting to play Four Swords.
SIDEBAR: Even though I don’t feel strongly about recycled SNES games, a port of Final Fantasy III (known as VI in Japan) would undeniably be portable RPG heaven. And maybe Super Mario RPG too, since I never got to play that one.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 13 / 13 ) |