After his Chick’s cute post about liking his GBA more after installing an Afterburner I went to the place he suggested “YourHappyPlace.com” and ordered a new GBA with the lighting solution preinstalled. 2 months later the guy finally fullfilled it (he’s super backed up). I’m scary with a soldering iron and I decided to gift my brother with my old GBA anyway.
Wow.
What a difference!
And I haven’t noticed a significant dip in battery life.
I quickly rebought some titles I gave away due to darkness issues:
Castlevania & Rayman Advance and picked up Advance Wars for good measure. Add me to the legion of Advance Wars lovers. Anyone who likes their GBA really should consider performing this surgery or at least having it done. Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves.
I’d say “not very”.
There’s an option at Yourhappyplace to install a dimmer switch for an extra $17.95 (it works by pressing a couple buttons at once) if this is a big concern for you.
And Cathcart… don’t tell Long… I don’t like Metroid Fusion. It’s more a dislike of Bosses and having to think about puzzles and backtracking while playing a GBA game than an knock on the quality of that cart. I will knock it for that 5 minute + introduction though. Jeez!
Save your pesos for a Game Boy Player instead. Why play the games on a tiny screen when you can play them on the TV! :)
Portability is great, but I wouldn’t invest in an Afterburner personally.
And Cathcart… don’t tell Long… I don’t like Metroid Fusion. It’s more a dislike of Bosses and having to think about puzzles and backtracking while playing a GBA game than an knock on the quality of that cart. I will knock it for that 5 minute + introduction though. Jeez!
Jeez Bub, why not just say you hate all videogaming next time? ;)
Why play GBA games on a big screen when you could be playing GC games David Long? Portability is not only great, it’s the purpose of the GBA and its main attraction imo. Frankly I don’t quite get this whole GBPlayer excitement. Do people really think this is going to sell to mainstream gamers? I mean, you still need two carts of most GBA games to play multiplayer, for one thing, and for another, GameCube games are better!
They said the same thing about Super Game Boy and Nintendo sold 7 million of those when selling that many consoles was a big deal.
It’s about the games. People love the games on the Game Boy/Game Boy Color/Game Boy Advance. Many people would like to play them on the TV when they’re at home and the GBA when they’re out and about. Makes sense to me. Why should I look at a tiny screen for Golden Sun or Advance Wars at home when I could be playing on the TV?
I’ll get one for sure. Keep in mind it opens up a library that goes all the way back to the original NES essentially with all the Game Boy titles that exist. Since many of us still enjoy the SNES and all the great games on there, this simply adds another TV option for those types of games. There’s a lot of days I’d rather play a 2D platform/action game over a 3D one. You don’t get those on the new consoles. But on GBA I’ve got Metroid Fusion, Super Ghouls and Ghosts Advance, Castlevania, etc.
I still don’t see the appeal of Metroid Fusion, and even less so, the comparisons to Super Metroid. Looks similar, but the hand-holding gameplay and constant check-ins to the Computer are annoying and stupid. I really don’t like this move to add a detailed story-line to Metroid; a lot of the appeal of the older games in the series, to me, was the lack of information and story.
So, is the “portability” gimmick just a way to backdoor in some kind of primal gaming nostalgia… an excuse for people to play 1990-era games in 2002 and enjoy all those 2D sprites just like the old days?
Even setting aside the TV question, I’d imagine it would be tough to play the GBA for long as a truly portable system. Doesn’t it eat batteries like crazy?
Not at all, 15-10 hours on my rechargables, madcatz made a decent battery pack thing that doesnt stick out of the batt. compartment, it’s like 15$ and comes with 2 packs, so you get 30 hours of play before you need to recharge. Regular aa’s seem to last nearly 20 hours when I forget to recharge and end up using those.
Maybe not mainstream but as for myself, the GBA might as well not be portable. I’m too embarrassed to actually take it with me – I’d rather take along something to read and maybe a notebook (the paper variety). The GBA is really just an opportunity to play classic 2d games that don’t get made for any of the non-portable consoles. If they did I wouldn’t even consider a Gameboy.
Because they are designed to be played on a tiny screen. If I want to play something on my television, I’d rather pop a game into my Gamecube or my Xbox and enjoy visuals that were intended for viewing on a large screen, in which the pixels are not the size of my thumb.
At those prices, no thanks. Roughly $80 US for the mod and a dimmer switch? That would more than double the cost of the GBA for me here is Soviet Canuckistan. I’d love to have an Afterburner installed, but these prices seem ridiculous to me. I’ll suffer with my crappy Spider-Man dual light until Nintendo does something or the cost comes down to a reasonable level.
Brett: I’ll suffer with my crappy Spider-Man dual light until Nintendo does something or the cost comes down to a reasonable level.
Hmmm… “reasonable level.”
Now that you’ve broken down the cost for me Brett, I still have to say, it was 100% worth it. My GBA is now a valuable game machine when before it was only suited for play on Airplanes (and yes, I did have what’s been called “the best light source”). I’ve spent more time with the GBA turned on in the past week than I did the entire year and half prior (not counting review time). I suppose you can get an Afterburner ($30) and give some kid with a soldering iron a free game or something to achieve the same effect at a discount rate… but so far as waiting for Nintendo, I’m happy to not hold my breath on that score and I’m even happier with how professionally this guy did this installation. And even happier to now be able to see the ball in Virtua Tennis as it whizzes by my tiny player at level 4 of the tournament.
If you’re looking for a good “non-invasive” light source for the game boy, might I suggest a flood light. Incredibly clunky, but bright as anything, and it has a good even light.
