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Games Entertainment

Cygnus Announces Game Boy Devel Environment 144

Posted by Hemos from the making-all-sorts-of-games dept.
GB Fan writes "Cygnus announced today their new development environment for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance that is expected this fall. You can read more about it at GB Station. "
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Cygnus Announces Game Boy Devel Environment More

Cygnus Announces Game Boy Devel Environment

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  • If Windows is so crappy... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why has it captured 99% of the desktop market?

  • Re:This can't be true -- But it is (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cygnus released the press release this morning. The GBA does not use a Z80. It uses a 32-bit ARM CPU.

    Here's the ARM press release from Sept 99:
    Nintendo uses ARM® processor in next generation Game Boy [arm.com]

  • Legal questions (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is it legal to sell GBA games made by Cygnus tools? I mean, will Nintendo even allow developers to sell any games developed by third party tools without facing serious lawsuits? After all, a major part of the (insert any console company here)'s revenues comes from selling proprietary, overpriced console SDKs, and there is no sign that any console hardware company (especially Nintendo) will give up such a profitable position soon without a fight.
  • More info?

    I've never heard of the Neo Geo Pocket.

    All I know about Neo Geo is that the main system bombed because it was way too expensive at the time.

  • torpor wrote:
    If you ask me, the Gameboy platform is a hackers delight... I know I love mine, and the tools I've gotten from the Asian GB Hacker contingency definitely make life more interesting.

    Is there a demoscene for the Gameboy?

  • Unfortunately, Tetris is no longer bundled w/ Gameboy Color. So over time, it will lose the lead.

  • Re:RAM (Score:1)

    by crisco ( 4669 )
    While I don't code for GB, I found the following:
    • Here [s-one.net.sg]
    • Here [ign.com]
    • Here [nintendo.com]

    • No mention of RAM, but I'd take a look at what is available from ARM and assume it is about the same (I'd do it but I'm already late for something.).

  • Ok, so who's gonna be the first to port Linux to the GameBoy? Could this be used as competition for the PalmPilot, maybe a simpler version, or entertainment only, or is it too limited a platform?

    ELKS might be an option, but even if only gtk and/or Mozilla were ported, then we'd have something.

  • Announcing the new Nintendo IDE...

    TETRIS

    Replace your venerable QUAKE programming aid with TETRIS today!

  • Not to mention that you can play in direct sunlight. Backlit LCD's become invisible in sunlight.
  • Basically, the GB won out for two reasons, despite being the only one with a monochrome screen. Battery life (The big plus of having a mono screen), and size.

    Note that low battery consumption is also a feature of Gameboy Color, since the color LCD screen isn't backlit. This is IMHO a wise design choice, since people usually have other light sources around them, plus reflected light is easier on the eyes than directly emitted light (or so I've heard). If you need to play when there is no light (out in the woods at night, to take your mind off the wolves), there are accessories that provide light.

  • The only competitor to Gameboy Color is SNK's NeoGeo. And which of the two has Pokémon? :-)

    (NeoGeo had Pacman, but you get that for GBC too, now.)

  • plus, any real gameboy game isn't just a simple ROM chip, it is multiple chips with more memory and all kinds of stuff on it...

    That's the irony: The GBC has only 32 kibytes of RAM, but the memory on the cartridges is up to 32 Mibytes (megabytes for you old-fashioned geeks) IIRC.

    The Atari VCS/2600 cartridges also had more memory, to compensate for the 6 kibytes present... :-)

  • There are THREE Legend of Zelda games coming out for Game Boy Color this year. Dragon Warriors Monsters, Azure Dreams, and Lufia: Ruin Chasers are three more RPGs due this year for the GBC.

    Isn't Dragon Warriors Monsters a Pokémon "clone"? Anyway, the GBC has all the markings of a proper retro-gaming architecture: Sufficiently low specs to match the old home computers like the Beeb or Speccy. Already, you can get Bubble Bobble, Spy vs. Spy and Ghosts 'n Goblins for it, for instance.

  • OK. This sounds nice but where do you get the specs for GB programming and what are you using. Z80 assembler or some sort of compiler ?
  • all it is a bit of tweaking to GCC which does ARM anyway

    thats whats in the gameboys ARM's threy last a long time on very little batterys alowing the screen to eat alll the batterys

    regards

    john
    a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
  • So who volunteers to port MAME to Gameboy!
    Mmmm, 1,800 arcade games in one...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The Dev studio will not be upgraded to GBA most likely, due to lack of infomation on the propriety console. The current version is based on information that has been published ( such as the fact that it uses a Z80 CPU),leaked(like the 2-Player .pdf), or reverse engineered. And it is very unlikely that the Cygnus kit will be released to anyone other than liscenced developers. Getting liscenced isnt easy, according to some open letter from the big N. Basically, they usually want people with experience in game development, have the proper office space, are willing to buy their expensive hardware emulaters. Fortunately for gameboy enthusiasts, there are alternatives to the $10k nintendo hardware. One such is at http://www.bung.com.hk (not bunk.com.hk as someone else mentioned)
  • I'm not sure if that was stupid or magnificent. A little of both, I think. Paragraph breaks could only improve it, though.

    As it happens, I have moderator access right now, but until they have a +i for Meshugga, I don't think I'd presume to moderate that post.
  • Any ideas why the Gameboy did so much better than the technically better Atari Lynx (which had color like 8 years ago) and all the other handheld machines? It doesn't seem like any handheld has done that well besides the Gameboy.

    For many reasons.

    First of all, the game boy had the best games. The original Super Mario Land, the classic Tetris, and many other games was far better than any of the games for the other systems.
    Especially Zelda: Links Awakening rocked when it was released in 1995 and is still one of my favourite games (not only on the GB).

    Another reason could be the price. I remember the Atari Lynx as a very expensive system. And compared to todays Game Boy Color it only had 16 (ugly) colors. And then it lagged good games.

    Sega also released a handheld color system as far as I remember, but it ate the batteries quite fast and was also expensive. Beside of that, I think it was/did better than the Lynx. Some of the original Master System games was converted to it, as the two systems was nearly identical.

    In other words, the game boy has always been the cheapest handheld system with the best games. Only the last four years has been a bit dull in my opinion. I miss the old Final Fantasy RPGs. And Nintendo should really do a sequel to Zelda =)

  • Ok, so the Gameboy was somewhat inferior when it came out, but now I've got a GBC and it rocks the house ^_^

    But the real reason the other handhelds (like your TurboExpress, and I'm also thinking of my lil'ol Sega GameGear) failed wasn't due to the hardware, because like you said, they all had advanced hardware, advanced for their time.

    It was their design!

    Your TurboExpress is wide and fat, correct? Like my GameGear? The Gameboy is small. It can fit in most pockets, takes up little space, and it's controls are in the right places, unlike some portables ^_^

    Gameboy's lasted for so long because of it's simple design, and because it's always had a hundred million games available for it. I can remember when Nintendo used to release a game, and then release the same game for Gameboy.

    So Nintendo's done a few things right. Gameboy and NES were two of them, Super Nintendo...well.

    Sure your TurboExpress can eat my bro's old Gameboy, but you'll get cramps ^_^

    miyax
  • See, that was unfair to Gameboy. Just because it's technically inferior to other handhelds doesn't mean it isn't a good platform. It has some pretty good games and it's size/shape is just about perfect. It doesn't use too much battery power, and the cartridges are easy to carry around.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Why not have both? I too am eargly awaiting the Dolphin, but I relieze that a new handheld would be quite nice too, and should the Dolphin not come out on time (which is probable, but I really hope it's not late) then they have the GBA to fall back on. Not to mention the really cool stuff that is rumored between the Dolphin and GBA, like hooking them together, and doing stuff like a Dreamcast VMU.

    BTW, the console is gettign developed, and a lot of companies already have dev kits. ANd some of the really big companies (Rare) have had them for quite a while now. So don't fret too much : )
  • Yes, the Turbo Express is a beaut of a portable system. It even had a TV hookup. Too bad you can't get one used for UNDER a hundred bucks.


    Yes, the vectrex was a beautiful machine. I paid $100 for one, but I still need to get the multicart(all the released games on one cart)
  • Use a game boy pocket unit to control your lego mindstorms systems. Make a fully decked-out R2D2
  • Until about 1995-97 most games were written for MS-DOS, because Windows' support for games was lousy.

    True. I stated they captured the game developers, I didn't say when. Anyway, DOS was MS by and large, correct? I mean, DR-DOS and PC-DOS existed, and if the stars were right and you had the right drivers you could play them under OS/2, but by and large when you say DOS you're saying MS-DOS. Kristian

  • I can't speak for the Win users of the world, but I can speak for myself.
    • They captured developers long ago who make the programs I want to use today.
    • They captured game developers. Linux has come a long way, but a bulk of games are still available only for Windows.
    • Sheep mentality. Baaaaaaaaaa.
    Kristian Cee
  • i'd say initial popularity was cause it came with tetris (face it, tetris is adictive)

    and then they made other good games for it, and the marketing for it has always been pretty good


  • I've checked both cygnus.com and cygnussolutions.com (not knowing which to check), and found absolutely nothing about this. Anyone know the correct link, if any? :)
  • Much thanks. Should have known it'd be locked up tight in the high ivory towers at Nintendo.

    <sarcasm> No mere mortal could DARE master or even understand the underlying technology. </sarcasm>
  • "It's a tool for piracy!"

    Even if it doesn't send OUT data, they would probably still say that. Nintendo is too old and out of touch with good things like this. Perhaps some day they'll think with their minds, instead of their lawyers.
  • Uh.. well, as with almost every other product on the face of the earth, it's not how great your product is, but how you can sell it.

    The Game Boy was outdated before the first day it went on sale. Had it not gotten such great 3rd party support, the little guy would've died long ago, but it continues to sell because it simply has the games that people want to play.

  • I don't know which Atari Lynx system you are talking about, because a friend of mine has one of these and it's graphics are probably the best of any handheld i'd seen even up to last year... The screen was bright and the colors were vivid and it was fast... things even the GB Color doesn't have... as for the sega hand held, I never even like the Master System. There were like two games that were fun to play, but nothing spectacular... I think I'll stick w/ my Intellivision...
  • Erm - doesn't this imply that there's no point in Sony releasing PS2, or that Nintendo shouldn't have launched SNES? Famicom and SFC shifted somewhere well over 100m units worldwide- I haven't got the figures to hand at the moment - PSX has done about 70m.

    Any serious video game player has several consoles - just because a new platform's released, you don't can all your old games. For the majority of people, the software's the issue, not the perceived "purity" of the platform... The "toy" end of the market ain't a problem because (as P.T. Barnum said, in an entirely unrelated context) there's one born every minute. Since the original GB was released in (IIRC) 1988, a generation has grown up. New generation, new Gameboy - it's got a nice ring to it, don't you think <g>

    Most importantly Nintendo, like Sony and Sega are in this for the long haul. If it takes them 10 years to sell 100m GBAs then that's fine with them - the revenue stream is in the software so the longer you can keep the platform active in the marketplace, the better.
    --
    Cheers

  • Yes. Yes, for $70 exactly, there is a device that touches it. Beats it, in fact. That is the NeoGeo Pocket Color. Game boy has a paltry 56 colors on screen at once; NGPC has 146 at most. GBC is 8-bit; NGPC is 16. NGPC has almost 100% quality games... GB/C has a lot of bad ones, though there are some really excellent. I suppose the thing is you have to like fighting games or puzzle games to really like the NGPC. But SNK vs Capcom is the best portable fighting game I've ever played. And Magical Drop is the best buzzle game, at least IMO.
    There are a couple of other cool features... 2AA batteries and the same battery life as the GBC, plus it also has an internal clock, calendar, alarm, and horoscope :) Plus it can play games in Japanese or English. Oh, and it's Y2k compliant ;)

    Anyway... I like my NGPC better than a GBC.

  • I agree totally. This Cristmas me and my wife bought pokemon for our 5 year old son's gameboy. He really couldn't get into it too much, becouse it's a little advanced for his age I think. But the wife loves it! she's played it for at least two weeks straight already.

    I looked at the game briefly before she snagged it, and it really reminds me of the old dungeon and dragons type of games, with a touch of zork thrown in.

    Needless to say as soon as she gets done, i've got dibs on it.

  • Unrelated to GB, but C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN \RUN\DOS\RUN was on the Comic Book Guy's shirt in the episode of The Simpsons when Lisa jojns MENSA... not saying thats where it's from, but you might want to know :)
  • * Is slated for release in Christmas (big surprise) 2000.

    Actully the article says August 2000...

    Anyway... the Gameboy has, and will be for a long time to come, the best ever hand-held. Hell, Nintendo still make the best consoles and games.

    The PSX is for the pop culture, the N64 is for the console gamer with taste...

    Nintendo will be back in 2001 with the Dolphin.... you all just wait [Insert Evil Laugh]

    Miyamoto is the REAL god, Linux just writes kernels, not kick ass masterpieces....

    That'll do, enough Nintendo related ramblings....
  • The game industry's been there, done that. Letting anyone code games without editorial review results in a lot of crap games: see what brought about Atari's demise. Nintendo would rather review all prospective GB games to make sure they meet at least a minimum standard of content. (For instance, why do you think there are no pr0n games for the GB?) End result: while there are still a fair amount of not-so-excellent games out there, the average quality of GB games goes up, the GB gets a reputation for having good games, more GBs are sold, resulting in a larger audience that draws more developers...

    Disclaimer: the above is my understanding of Nintendo's position. Just because I understand something does not mean I support it, neither does it mean I am against it.

  • Personally, I wouldn't touch a Palm V. The Handspring Visor is way less than 1/2 the price, and it's a comparable PalmOS device.

    Anyway, the point I was making was that "developer types" are less likely to use the Gameboy, since, as you stated, it's only got "a couple mediocre games." I agree that it's great for just smacking in a cartridge and playing (unless it's that annoying Pokemon game. Sheesh!), but it's not quite advanced enough for older, Linux-using, Perl-programming Geeks. My 8 year old brother loves his, though. Why wouldn't he? He gets to play his games, but by the time he's old enough to program Perl scripts with his eyes tied behind his back, he'll want more. I guarantee it.

    [disclaimer]
    I wasn't flaming. I agree with your point, and was just trying to clarify the one I was trying to make.
    [/disclaimer]

    Mike
  • It would be nice to see someone release a distro of linux on these new portable devices now that there's a GPL'd version of the dev kit for it.
  • and should be given the appropriate respect!
  • Was not awawre of that. I found it on a website of computer quotes, an it said "author unkown".
  • I find all of this Game Boy Advance "schtuff" very interesting, the only issue I have with the big N is their continuing lack to produce a new console. Granted, the GB is the biggest sell ever, but with the currenty tech. at hand they need to toss out a new console, one that can compete with the PlayStation 2 which will dominate if it's emergence goes unchallenged. Nintendo is notoriously a late comer, but I'm not to sure that even a nice development package like this can save Nintendo.

    WE NEED THE DOLPHIN!
  • gameboy was cheaper, had the nintendo name, and didn't use nearly as much power as the atari lynx, sega gamegear, or portable tb16 which were all color and far better.
  • We could have cartridges. Oh damn! I neded to load the emacs utils cart now and then I need to swap in the fs storage cart to save my data and the nI need to load the bin-utils cart... its imposiblde guys...
  • how about a stylus too... and maybe some graffiti....

  • IIRC, when the GB OS "boots", it checks the ROM for license verification, and will not load the ROM unless it finds the info...I'm sure that a hack for this exists out there somewhere...

    ti_dave
  • What is the RAM available for GB Advance? RAM shortage is already an issue with 8-bit GB/Color. With 32-bit processor, instruction and data size can somewhat quadruple (given the same code base).

    What is the footprint C standard lib on Cygnus's dev suite? I understand GB/Color has to be mostly programmed assembly because RAM is such a scarse resource.

    Thank you for information on this from coders who work with GB.


    Corrinne Yu
    3D Game Engine Programmer
  • Is Dev Studio upgrading to GB Advance (32-bit)?


    Corrinne Yu
    3D Game Engine Programmer
  • It was nearing (maybe even reached) the end of it's cycle....but what caused the resurrection? One word: P O K E M O N Which ignited the Gameboy again, and companies can sell games years old like they were new (literally), or translate old NES titles and still make money off them...
  • Ok, so who's gonna be the first to port Linux to the GameBoy? Could this be used as competition for the PalmPilot, maybe a simpler version, or entertainment only, or is it too limited a platform?

    GameBoyOS?
  • As for I can see from the specifications, this GB is looking alot alike the old Lynx portable (still remember). And I still think that Lynx did rock.
    The question remains: why did the gameboy got onto the public market and not Lynx:
    1. Size. The Lynx was large, the gameboy was much more portable.
    2. Battery life. Since the color display in the Lynx uses alot of amperes, the battery life is quite short.
    3. Better games.
    4. There is no spoon

    Maybe the price also made a role (I can imagine a GB mono being less expensive than a Lynx), but I can't remember any price compares.
  • Hmm.. Sounds like a cute thing indeed. Anyone know where I can get some more info on the hardware of the platform? Like, memory/speed and such. Would be fun to know exactly what one can do with it.
  • This is getting off topic, but...
    Marketing.

    That being said, just to stay on topic, the Gameboy remained popular for a different reason. It's competition came along too late to do anything. The GB had far too great a library of games to compete with it. The end result is: like Windows, the technically inferior product has all the good software. And without decent support, technical superiority don't mean jack.

  • In that respect, the GB really strongly resembles windows. It was crappy when it first came out, and all they've really done to it is make it prettier.

    Someone, quick, sue Nintendo for antitrust! :)

  • Who else thinks it would be cool to have a Game Boy cartridge with a flash ROM, a couple A/D inputs, a serial port, etc.? Kinda like a bargain Handyboard [mit.edu], since you already have the display and CPU. Dunno if it's really practical, but I'd buy one...

    -F
  • You're right.. but I never claimed it could. I just found the wording in the Gameboy stats funny:
    Maximum colors to be displayed simultaneously: 65,000
  • That's pretty funny. The thing can show 65536 colours simultaneously (I assume 65000 is 16-bit rounded) but it only has 240x160=38400 pixels!

    From the Yeah-But-Can-It-Cook? dept. :)

  • TO LARGE CORPORATIONS THE 2 MOST DISTASTEFUL OBJECTS ARE (1) PAYING TAXES AND (2) PAYING A LIVING WAGE.
  • Yeah, Game Boy Color is pretty sweet. I'm gonna get it just for Super Mario Brothers.

  • Re:Game Boy Advance (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It lacks a backlight because backlights suck down the juice so quickly. Also, the GBA will be out in Japan a few months earlier. There have been rumors that the GBA will be released as early as June of 2000 in Japan. I'm sure more details will be released at E3 2000.
  • Its bung.com.hk, not bunk. Sorry about that!

  • http://www.bunk.com.hk has a ROM Burner kit, and ROM's that can be purchased... if you want to transfer the code written with the aforementioned IDE's to your Gameboy, it can be done.

    Note however that these ROM Burners aren't supposed to be sold in the US because of some lawsuit - apparently they were being used to pirate Gameboy ROM's. Lame, but oh well.
  • DOH!

    Sorry, that URL should be:

    http://www.bung.com.hk/

  • I've never even heard of this thing. I still can't believe that the Gameboy/Color Gameboy is the best selling piece of gaming hardware ever. I never thought that thing would last even when I used to play Tetris on my old one for hours at a time.

    Any ideas why the Gameboy did so much better than the technically better Atari Lynx (which had color like 8 years ago) and all the other handheld machines? It doesn't seem like any handheld has done that well besides the Gameboy.
  • Yeah... Back a long time ago, there were a bunch of reviews discussing the Game Boy vs. Lynx and Game Gear.

    Basically, the GB won out for two reasons, despite being the only one with a monochrome screen. Battery life (The big plus of having a mono screen), and size. The Sega Game Gear and the Atari Lynx were just a bit to big... The Game Boy fit in your pocket, even the original one. (Although you had to have a reasonably large pocket.)

    The other systems would only have been able to fit in the pockets of pants like those that a friend of mine wears. He can put an entire N64 in his pocket. :) Said ultra-baggy pants didn't exist at the time of the GameBoy vs. All wars.

    Note that these are two of the main reasons that the Palm Pilot destroyed the Newton. The Newton was too big and chewed up batteries too quickly. Apple just tried to make it TOO powerful. (Palm vs. CE is a different story - WinCE just plain sucks. :)
  • 1) Long battery power, especially when compared to any of the other color ones.
    2) Good pack-in game, Tetris.
    3) Came out when Nintendo was still top of the gaming world. Playstation wasn't around yet, and Sega was just catching on. So the most popular games of the time, Super Mario and Zelda, were only available on the Gameboy.
  • Just read the Linux for Gameboy post. What if the GB games file could be loaded on to your Palm Pilot and your Palm could be connected to your GB.

    That way, if you were working a long shift on New Years Eve :), and you got bored with the games you have you could connect a modem to your palm pilot, download new freeware GB games, and then power up your GB and away you go ...

    Okay, I'm getting carried away this idea ... back to work.

  • A friend of mine who does GBC development told me that Nintendo (like most console/handheld makers) makes money by selling their stations/handhelds at a loss, and making up for it by the licensing fees they charge developers. Consequently, they have a pattern of working hard to crush the "hobbyist" development community, since hobbyists don't generally pay licensing fees. As if Nintendo really needed the additional money...
  • You've obviously taken LSD today and are having a bad trip. I can assure you the visions you're having of dead animals are NOT REAL. I hope you manage to find medical assistance before you hurt yourself. Try dialling 911.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • This isn't for the current Game Boy, or GBC.. it's for the next portable that Nintendo has in the works, scheduled to be released later this year.
  • Sure there are better geek toys out there. But for about $70, nothing touches a Gameboy Color. If you're just speculating that it sucks without actually spending some time with one, I'd suggest you go check one out.

    The Palms and other PDA's are great for what they do, but for games they just don't compare. Do you really think a kid's gonna save up ~$400 for a Palm V just to get a couple mediocre games?
  • Actualy the gameboy screen size has never changed, The case just hot smaller.

    "Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
  • Well, a game-gear lasted about about 30 minutes on a set of 6 new generic brand batteries, whereas the the gameboy lasted about a week.

    The GB also weighed a fraction of the GG, and it was a lot smaller.

    The GG/lynx might have had pretter graphics, but they were pretty much usless for what they were intended for. There's more to technical superiority then CPU speed

    "Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
  • Well, truth be told, it's not because they captured game developers. Until about 1995-97 most games were written for MS-DOS, because Windows' support for games was lousy. They had only recently come out with their "Games SDK" and it wasn't until about 97 that they renamed it DirectX and made it an API to be reckoned with.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • This is a development environment. It does NOT mean that:

    1. You will have access to Nintendo's technical documentation or examples.
    2. Anything you develop will be approved by Nintendo.

    If you do manage to get hardware docs and hack a game together, you really can't do anything with it except try to find a publisher or distribute it to other people who have hacked hardware. Note that Cygnus is in the development tool business, and they've done custom gcc ports for other platforms as well, including the PlayStation. This has nothing at all to do with enabling home programmers to write games for closed hardware.
  • More info?

    I've never heard of the Neo Geo Pocket.

    OK then. A while ago, I forget when, SNK decided to get into the pocket console business by releasing the Neo Geo Pocket. I don't know much about that; It was 16-bit, but grayscale, though I'm not sure how many shades of it there were. (I think, at least. The existence of monochrome games for the NGPC somewhat supports the existence of this, though I'm not sure and can be wrong)

    A few months ago (probably a little longer), they released a better system that had color, the Neo Geo Pocket Color (heh, inventive name, eh?). Anyway, you can buy it at SNK America [snkusa.com] or most stores that sell video games; I know I've seen it at Software Etc, Electronics Botique, K*B Toys, and Wal-Mart.

    One of my favorite things about the system is the joystick; it's got a good amount of resistance, not too much and not too little. It's almost like a hatswitch, there's a sort of dimple on top of it that your thumb fits comfortably into. It also clicks when you press any direction, so you can accurately time moves in fighting games.

    The LCD is 160x152, and is capable of displaying 146 colors out of a possible pallate of 4096. In the hardware itself, the screen can be extended to deal with 256x256 at once. It has a Toshiba TLCS-900H cpu, 16-bit, and a separate Z80 for sound (which comes out sounding like the GB does). Memory isn't stored in the game cartridges, but on the system itself (which makes me wonder how much memory is on there), which is backed up by a (included) CR2032 battery. It runs for "up to" 40 hours on 2 AA batteries, and my experiences confirm this... as long as the sound is off. Which you might want anyway. The LCD is very clear in light, even dim light; it uses the same reflective LCD technology used in the GBC screen.

    One of the more interesting things for it is the link cable to hook up certain games to a Sega Dreamcast. These are King of Fighters R-1, and SNK vs Capcom CFC and MOTM. They unlock secrets in KOF:DM 1999 and the upcoming SNK Vs Capcom for the Dreamcast.

    There's not that many titles available for the NGPC; they're all very good though, coming from SNK, Capcom, and Sega. A partial listing:

    • SNK Vs Capcom. There are actually 3 different games of this( Well 2 I guess...): Match of the Millennium, the fighting game; Card Fighters Clash SNK, where you get more SNK cards and there's one exclusive card, and CFC Capcom, where it's like SNK but more Capcom stuff. These last two are like Pokémon in a way; it's a card game like Magic:TG, and you trade cards with CPU opponents and other people with the game.
    • Sonic's Pocket Adventure. It's a game like Sonic, but with all-new maps, and some of the focus is more on exploration than on speed sometimes.
    • Dark Arms: Beast Busters 1999: This sounds cool. A shooter/RPG where you can catch and evolve bio-weapons... kinda pokémonish.
    • Magical Drop: My favorite puzzle game in the Arcade (and NeoRageX...), now on the NGPC! I'm getting this next time I get my allowance :)
    • Pac-Man. Like the arcade :) Includes two viewing options: Scroll, or fit it all on the screen :)
    • Biomotor Unitron: RPG. Sounds cool. I need more money :)
    • Metal Slug: First Mission. Like the arcade, except it's all new missions are no longer linear... you choose where to go next :)
    • Various other arcade ports, like KoF, Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, and Crush Roller. A full list of available software can be found at this page, http://www.snkusa.com/hw.htm [snkusa.com].

    All of this makes the NGPC my favorite portable, and the best on the market. Sales have been decent, though as might be expected the GBC is selling more hardware and software.

  • The Gambeboy Advance could be deemed as yet another non-stateside hardware release. The chances that this portable will make it to the states is slim to nil.
    The reason of this is basically because there is something like 30 million gameboys [? correct me if I'm wrong] and converting this many people over would take years and years. Most console upgrades only concern a few million users, and that is done fairly easily.
    Upgrading to gameboy advance could be viewed as changing from cd to dvd-audio. It would take years, and people would fight it.
    I'm not opposed to a great piece of new hardware, this would be really great if it got released stateside, but the 64dd was also a good idea, and look what happened.
    The development tools for linux are pretty cool, but coding for smaller hardware is usually done in assembly due to the ram limitations. Anyone owning a ti-calc will testify that asm is quicker than ti-basic.
    Basically all that is going to happen here is either:
    a. delays [n64 anyone?]
    b. no stateside release [64dd]
    c. massive success [gameboy]

    I'm rooting for #3, but i'm not getting my hopes up.
  • With the writeable GB cart still under contest, and the lawsuit still pending (as far as I know) the functionalities of this program may be fairly limited for now, or at least a little more costly. But, with the dawn of gameboy programming accessories, does this mean that people have free reign to distribute these games, in a nonfree form? or does it require some sort of liscence from Nintendo? And what would be the consequences if some person or company produced and sold a game and didn't have the required liscencing? Also, do free things have to be liscenced by Nintendo? -"What're you eating?" "nut n' bitch" -Saturday Night Live
  • I know you are trolling but there is a factual technical answer to your question.

    There is a GB force feedback/audio speaker amplier/rechargeable battery add-on pack, that provides force feedback directly proportional to audio volume.

    Get a Bung Gameboy development system. Code a short simple app that plays audio at high volume. Hook up your gameboy to this peripheral. There you have it.


    Corrinne Yu
    3D Game Engine Programmer

  • SOC/RO -- Gameboys (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:33PM (#1396199)
    SOC/RO Update: Well in my opinion the GameBoy is good for only one thing: Poke/Mon. Let's face it, Poke/Mon is the #1 recreational activity among foreign computer science graduate students in the US. So what should we assume will be written with this new GameBoy development environment: Open/Source Poke/Mon. There will be more Open/Source Poke/Mon projects than you can shake a dead cat named Belfry at! Is this a good thing for the Open/Source movement? Like everything else, no. Let me give you an example: suppose I give you a box, and a dead cat named Belfry, and some salt and a molecule. Now if you translated the vertices on the box and subdivided the surfaces, you could have a ball that you could keep the dead cat named Belfry in. Then whenever anyone tried to give you shit, you'd be all like, "Dead cat named Belfry, I choose you!" and throw the rotten, diseased and broken body of Belfry the dead cat at them. But watch out! They may also have a dead diseased animal they can throw back at you. Then they have to fight. Whichever one wins gains experience and becomes a much better dead diseased animal. When you and your adversary decide that the fight is over, make sure you pick up the correct dead animal, because they can be kind of hard to tell apart after about 2 months of proving Bohr's sillyness. It is quite embarrasing to get home and discover that you have taken the wrong diseased cat carcass, let me tell you! "What is your point?" Well I think I am pretty clear here, but in case you didn't catch it, my point is that there can only be one true champion of Poke/Mon dead cat fighting. Now I will give you a little treat, since you have been such patient readers so far. Here is a tip from one championship Poke/Mon dead cat figher to the next: only with proper care and maintenance will your Poke/Mon dead animal carcass last the grueling two years until IPO and the Poke/Mon championship (held in Tampa, Florida in the Tampa Bay convention center, July 3-7 2001, get your tickets early). "How do I properly care for my diseased animal carcass?" Well I am a man of first impressions, myself. I think the first impression is what someone always remembers of you, so it is important that you impress upon them a sense of style and class about your diseased animal carcass. Now, everyone knows that the smile is the first thing that someone sees of you, so I think proper dental hygiene is absolutely imperative in a diseased carcass if one is going to make the proper impression on the proper people. It is important that you always get the proper kind of toothpaste. No, not that cheap shit that you use for your model airplanes, the $4.67 high-roller brand. "But my diseased carcass's teeth have all fallen out," you are saying. Well then put them back in, silly! "But I lost them!" Did you check the trunk of your car? "Yes, they weren't there." Hmm well, what about your chinese torture chamber? "No not there." Well anyways, if you can't find the teeth, you can just squirt out all $4.67 worth of toothpaste and rub it in real good all over the carcass, just make sure that no critical parts come off. If they do, you may be able to find Open/Source parts on the internet. Check your local dealer too, or your local WB. Then you can print out the pages on your local University's color laser printer, free of charge (assuming you are a foreign graduate student).


  • See this page for more details:

    http://www.bung.com.hk/html/2nd_results.htm


  • Already exists... (Score:3)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:44PM (#1396201) Homepage Journal
    http://www.bunk.com.hk/

    Note that they also have a pretty nifty voice recorder accessory for the Gameboy too, which has just recently been hacked to be able to play back movies on the GB Color.

    If you ask me, the Gameboy platform is a hackers delight... I know I love mine, and the tools I've gotten from the Asian GB Hacker contingency definitely make life more interesting.

    Nothing like having a high-availabilty, cheap portable computing platform that can be fully hacked on. $50 at most Toy stores here in the US, full development kits available online, and life is sweet once you've gotten a ROM burner for it.

    My GameBoy hacking facilities have become a veritable sonic screwdriver... :)

  • What about an Open Source plug-in for the GB? (Score:3)

    by dustpuppy ( 5260 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:44PM (#1396202)
    Without trying to sound like I'm jumping on the Open Source bandwagon, I was just thinking that Nintendo should release a game cartridge that would let you load a game from your PC and then release the game development toolkit as freeware.

    Imagine the type of games that would be released if people who could write their own GB games ... I'm sure people could come up with better games that what is currently on the market for GB.

  • Re:SOC/RO -- Gameboys (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @04:52PM (#1396203)
    Could you please use the P tag in html because otherwise you make this really long paragraph that is difficult to read and also enforces the super-long-sentence syndrome that is very irritating to watch and I think that anyone who writes in that style should be taken out behind slashdot and beat soundly about the head and shoulders with a copy of the closest webster dictionary (or optionally a Heritage if you do not have a websters) for the simple reason that doing so will likely jar the brainwax loose and allow them to think clearly; So please, if you're gonna write super-long run-on sentences could you please shoot yourself first and save us the trouble of doing so and having to clean our shoes afterwords?

  • Tools that are avalible now (Score:3)

    by HomerJ ( 11142 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:11PM (#1396204)
    There is already a C compiler for gameboy, and gbc. There is also a IDE called Game Boy Dev Studio, that inculdes an IDE for the above compiler, intergrates with any emulator you have, so you can test code without writing to a cart.

    The above SDK also comes with an gameboy Z80(gameboy's Z80 is a little different) assembler, and the debugger that's included in no$gmb is very good.

    Not putting Cygnus down at all, I'm sure their tools will be great. But if anyone wants to do gb dev now, there are plenty of free tools avalible now. Including things like map and tile editors.

    links:
    http://freespace.virgin.net/stephen.blanksby/gbstu dio.htm for the gameboy dev studio

    http://gbdev.com hosts the GBDK site (down as of this post)

  • Re:Gameboy Advance? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Shepherd ( 17338 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @04:29PM (#1396205) Homepage
    Now I have to disagree; I think Windows is crap because it's unstable and resource intensive, not because it hasn't improved over the years.

    I think Gameboy is great because it's small, easy to use, has a long battery life, and some great games-and there has been no need to change these features other than minor evolutionary refinements. The screensize grew, the clarity and brightness of the screen improved, it's become even smaller now, and it has even better games available, with faster processor and more memory addressable and the availability of color.

    Very similar arguments can be made about the Palm Pilot as well, in terms of why it is a good device where others have failed

    -AS

  • Gameboy Revival (Score:3)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:03PM (#1396206) Journal
    I can attribute the recent revival of Gameboy to the Pokemon empire. Though Gameboy itself has gone through some improvements (ie Color, though not 100% full color like the Lynx, or Game Gear), the newest batch of GB sales has been due to those annoying Pokemon. Hmph.

    But I am impressed. Gameboy came out before the Super NES, and it has lived through four generations of platforms. Perhaps all the other handhelds were too fancy, too expensive, or too unsupported. Who knows. The death of the GB is nowhere in sight, even as systems like Playstation and N64 are getting replaced by successors. Who would have thought that this little Tetris-plaiying machine would last so long?

    "You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

  • There are better "toys" out there than the GameBoy (Score:3)

    by MVoelker ( 101851 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:44PM (#1396207)
    If you ask me, there's a bit too much hubub going on about this...

    Personally, I would much rather have a Palm V, or even better, the decidedly cheaper Handspring Visor, oh hell, I'd even take a CE device, before I had a Gameboy.

    I'm not knocking the Gameboy in any sense, but shouldn't development and programming be geared towards a device that's a little more advanced?

    Just my 2 cents. Moderate as you please.

    Mike

  • Re:Gameboy Advance? (Score:4)

    by m3000 ( 46427 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:30PM (#1396208)
    I've never even heard of this [Gameboy Advance]

    Well, let me enlighten you to this wonderful piece of hardware:

    Nintendorks.com [nintendorks.com] (includes "exclusive" GBA picture ;)


    DMGICE [dmgice.com]


    IGN Pockets' GBA FAQ [ign.com]


    Nintendo's Press Release [nintendo.com]

    As for your question as to why it did better, the answer is games. The games on that sytem rock. It has my two favorite games (Tetrix and Super Mario Brothers Deluxe), a ton of cool RPG's and 2D games, and Pokemon is one of the fastest selling and biggest videogames of all time. It's consistantly number 1 and 2 on the weekly sales charts. The GB is far from dead, and since the GBA is going to have backwards compatiblity and bring the possiblility of internet connection to a handheld, it's going to keep on going.

  • Game Boy Advance (Score:4)

    by spaceorb ( 125782 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @03:41PM (#1396209)
    Is slated for release in Christmas (big surprise) 2000. For those that are interested/care, it will have a 32bit RISC cpu and full internet connectivity through a cellular phone (cool muliplayer internet games on a Game Boy). But it still lacks a backlit screen. Here are some specs:

    * CPU: Memory embedded 32-bit RISC CPU
    * LCD: Reflective TFT Color LCD
    * Display Size: 40.8mm x 61.2mm
    * Resolution: 240 x 160 pixels
    * Size: Approximately Height 80mm / Width 135mm
    * Weight: Approximately 140g
    * Power Supply: 2 AA Alkaline batteries
    * Battery life: 20 hours continuous play
    * Maximum colors to be displayed simultaneously: 65,000

  • Well, because I notice a lot of posters doing this (Score:5)

    by W Parasyte ( 87678 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:42PM (#1396210)
    I see many posters posting about how the Game Boy is aging hardware, and about how it's nice that they're finally releasing a development kit...
    Please stop making this mistake.
    At the risk of being marked redundant, I'm going to tell you all that THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE GAME BOY. This is about the Game Boy Advance, the new 32-bit advanced portable that Nintendo is bringing out late this year. This is an entirely different system; Nintendo is just using their name recognition with the GB to sell it. Please don't get confused. Especially since develpoment kits for the GB have been out for a very long time now.
    Thanks for your time (and not moderating me down).

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