GBA console questions

[CasioTech]

I got a few questions as to why Nintendo made a new handheld if their GBC was out for so many years and had such success. Maybe they are looking to attract an older market. I got the winter catalog and it had a whole bunch of Abercrombie models with their gba's in their pockets having a gba orgy. Also, how could this thing only use 2 batteries, while something like the game gear used 8, even with the light, the gba on two batteries lasts about 10 hrs (twice as long as a game gear). What's the deal with the old gameboys. They were black and green, and they didn't look anything at all liek something that I would play for fun. When a character moved, and the background scrolled, everything sort of blurred together. Why in the world would anyone buy something like that?




Also, with the best portable gaming system by far, why would are they only sold for ~$70, when they could easily sell for $100, why did they drop the price so fast, I don't believe that they had bad sales.




Sorry, overwhelmed at the coolness of gameboy advance

 

[MrBond]

They're probably making money from each console, so it makes sense to have a lower price. Kids want their parents to buy them this, so if its cheaper it's not so hard to convince their mom and dad.

I've not seen a GBA with the afterburner installed, is it really as bright as a game gear? That damn backlight was INTENSE. I'd guess there's been some advances in tech in the 6 years its been since the Game Gear was top notch too, so components use less power then before.

 

[CasioTech]

The afterburner uses a little reflective piece of paper that absorbs light, and the reflective TFT makes it get distributed well, it's pretty intense, I guess.




I don't think people who want a gba won't get one because it's $90 over $70. I mean, they spend $30 on a game and go out and buy 5 games. There had to be other reasons for the price drop.




Yeah I guess there have been advances over the years, but that's extreme to have 2 batteries vs. 8 :Q

 

[Nocturnal]

well, there are other cool things about the gba that i like. there is that thing where you can make your own games, and even port older gb/gbc games onto gba. that owns.

 

[CasioTech]

what were the gbc selling for before the gba? What happened to them after? Did they get discontinued? I mean sony still makes ps even with ps2, but they changed it to be portable.

 

[CasioTech]

one interesting thing is that while gba is better than snes, I remember first person shooters to run and look lots better on snes than the gba's games like duke nukem and back track.

 

[Noriaki]

GBA is fully compatible with GBC and original GB games, and it's not very expensive. There is not much point in continuing production of the GBC.

 

[CasioTech]

Here is something interesting I got this from IGN they said that nintendo makes 50 gbc units a minute a year before the gba was coming!!!!! 2 million a month (really no need for a new console). People asked Why did Nintendo release the Game Boy Color if the Game Boy Advance was so close behind?

It's difficult to say that the Game Boy Color was a stop-gap solution between the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Obviously one issue was giving gamers what they wanted, when the company could. During the development of the Game Boy Advance (code name: Atlantis two years ago) the cost to bring something like that out at that point in time would be too expensive for the market to accept. The Game Boy Color, on the other hand, was a more advanced system, offered color and specific features, as well as backward compatibility for nearly the same price as the existing Game Boy Pocket. Obviously the company wanted to release a product that would be widely accepted, supported, and purchased.

 

[CasioTech]

What's a white panel LCD?




And why did they cut the resolution of the gba (240x160) to half of the snes? Is it to save system resources, or because they couldn't afford to put in a higher resolution LCD?

 

[fr]

Originally posted by: CasioTech
What's a white panel LCD?




And why did they cut the resolution of the gba (240x160) to half of the snes? Is it to save system resources, or because they couldn't afford to put in a higher resolution LCD?

I think that's plenty of resolution for such a small screen.

 

[CasioTech]

yeah it is, but lots of games where the guy you are playing as is small like the spiderman games it could have used a higher res. If nothing else, it gives lots more system resources, right? I mean when I used to play doom 2 on my 66mhz pc, when I made the screen really small it played really fast as opposed to 640x480, so lower resolution still matters even in 2d games.

 

[Jzero]

but lots of games where the guy you are playing as is small like the spiderman games it could have used a higher res.

The problem is that higher resolution => more pixels. And the only way to accomodate more pixels is to either make them smaller (which could make it hard to see what's going on), or to increase the size of the screen. Either way would result in an increase in complexity, cost, and inefficency. Keeping the screen the same size and increasing the resolution may result in things being too small.
Increasing the screen size might have gone over the dimensions or consumption requirements that Nintendo was trying to adhere to when creating a full-color handheld console with reasonable battery life.

 

[CasioTech]

while you make a good point, what I mean is that if you increase the amount of pixels, the programmers would make the games take up more of those pixels. Of course if you run a game that's designed at 240x160 on a hd lcd (800x600?), the game itself would shrink, but if you program the dimensions of the game to be as big as the hd lcd then it would still be the same, but better looking. So while spiderman is all squary and pixelated because of his size, making smaller pixels and make him take up more of them would make him be more detailed and smooth. If the screen res. is 800x600 on a 3" LCD, you could expect magnificent detail and fluid animation because the whole game would run like water.




And whats a white panel lcd?

 

[CasioTech]

Oh yeah, didn't the gbc come with an infared player link? That was cool, but probably could transfer enough data for high end games like on the gba, sure it worked on pokemon, but I guess it couldn't handle f-zero

 

[Jzero]

making smaller pixels and make him take up more of them would make him be more detailed and smooth.

I think I see what you're saying. Makes sense. OTOH, it would require more resources and maybe they thought it would cost too much for the better LCD, or have too much of an effect on processing power...

Oh yeah, didn't the gbc come with an infared player link? That was cool, but probably could transfer enough data for high end games like on the gba, sure it worked on pokemon, but I guess it couldn't handle f-zero

I WANT MY FRIGGING BLUETOOTH!

 

[CasioTech]

LOL.




Yeah but when I found out that the snes had twice the resolution, I think the gba could handle the same (480x320) seeing as it's much better than the snes. I guess it's just hard to make such high res. lcd's affordable. So, they save money on that, and hand back some resources to developers because of that. Like my old ti-83, it has a res. of like 80x60. I mean I don't need super smooth numbers when I add 2+2, but it couldn't hurt!




Also, couldn't the gba handle 32,000 simultaneous colors?!?!?!?! That must mean 5 different colors per pixel, is that possible? I think the gbc did 56 out of 32,000 at a time.