Game Boy Advance: Difference between revisions

 

''Life Advanced''

Just a few years after the [[Game Boy Color]] made the NES portable, the parts to make a portable [[SNES]] became viable, and allowing the same paradigm (size, durability, cost, and battery life). So rather than waiting, Nintendo went ahead with the Game Boy Advance.

 

 

Although the system was a hit, 16 bit-level graphics [[Back That Light Up|proved too much to effectively show on screen without some kind of light]]. Thus Nintendo quickly went ahead with the SP revision, which added a front light to the system. It didn't look as good as a backlight, but it worked. The system sold even faster after that. It also dropped the AA batteries in favor of a rechargeable one.

Early in the Game Boy Advance's life, one of the common criticisms was the handheld's audio. While the Game Boy Advance was similar to the [[Super Nintendo]] in its specs, the Advance's sound chip was made differently since the Super Nintendo's sound chip was produced by Sony and Nintendo could not use the same chip or a similar one without paying royalties to Sony, so Nintendo had to produce one of their own. When Nintendo ported several of their SNES titles to the Game Boy Advance and Square-Enix ported a few of their Final Fantasy titles from the SNES, there was criticisms over how the sound effects and music were inferior to the original versions of the games. However, these criticisms faded over time when more titles were made with the Game Boy Advance's sound chip in mind.

 

 

Along with this ability to load data into RAM, Nintendo also touted the Game Boy Advance to [[Game Cube]] cable, which allowed players to hook up their GBA to the Gamecube and use it as if it were a controller with a screen; a similar idea had been used before by Sega, with the VMU controllers for the [[Sega Dreamcast]]. Several games used this feature to allow multi-player while keeping important data on the GBA screen and thus private from the other players (selecting a football play, for example). While an innovative idea, games that required this mechanic (''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles]]'' being the prime example) while fun, had the added drawback of the price of 4 of these cables making the whole setup really expensive. ([http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/8/25/ Although one would hope everyone would at least bring their own GBA]). It seems to be this backlash that has prevented Nintendo from jumping right into doing a similar setup with the DS and Wii, despite the fact that cables are no longer an issue in that situation. Another factor for this could be to avoid a repeat of ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles]]'' where everyone needed a handheld in order to play, which would add the cost to the consumers and a DS wasn't exactly cheap at the time it was released.

Despite early statements by Nintendo higher-ups that the Advance was one of company's three main pillars, along with the DS and the Wii, the release of the DSi and its lack of a GBA slot, and that there are apparently no plans on continuing the Advance line, contribute to the inevitable fact that this kind of gaming system is slowly dying out...

 

 

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* [[CPU]] is a 32 bit, 16.8 MHz, ARM processor.

* The original GBA and SP have the Game Boy Color CPU included to ensure full backwards compatibility. This can be used as tone generators in regular Game Boy Advance games.

* 256 KB of RAM

* 96 KB of [[Video RAM]]

* Carts can be up to 32 MB in size.

** Carts can also display FMVs, although few games had those. It was mainly used by special carts to play video with. The compression format is barely passable quality, but it still showed movie playback had advanced to fitting in affordable carts. This would be important for the DS.

* Like the SNES, sprites are up to 64x64, with up to 128 on screen, but no flicker if too many on the same line. Sprite combination for bigger objects is also improved.

* The GBA can also transform sprites and backgrounds in real-time without additional hardware, unlike the SNES, which can only transform 1 background layer with Mode 7, and needed an extra chip in the cartridge to be able to scale, rotate, and otherwise transform sprites properly..

* Still 32,768 colors total, but the total on screen is 512: 256 for the sprites and 256 for the backgrounds. Each object and tile can use either a 16- or 256-color palette. Of course, there are transparency effects that override this on-screen color limitation.

* Resolution is 240×160.

* The GBA added in two 8-bit PCM channels, in addition to the original GB/GBC sound hardware, giving a total of 4 GB-era synth channels and 2 PCM channels.

* Most, if not all games didn't directly play samples on the PCM channels - games instead utilized the then-fast CPU to mix audio, along with sound effects.

* Due to the fact that audio is mixed in software, audio quality varies with software. For the PCM channels, games can either only support mono output, or can support mono and stereo output. The sampling rate and amount of instruments and sound effects at one time also varies greatly - it can range from about telephone-quality to 44kHz, sometimes higher.

* However, the PCM audio is always in 8-bit quality, resulting in background noise.

* The original model uses 2 AA batteries, for 15 to 20 hours.

* The other models use a rechargeable battery, which runs around the same without a light, and around 10 hours with it on.

 

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* ''[[Ace Combat Advance]]''

* ''[[Nintendo Wars|Advance Wars]]''

* ''[[Astro Boy Omega Factor]]''

* ''[[Backyard Sports]]''

* ''[[Chu Chu Rocket]]''

* Classic NES Series:

** ''Castlevania''

** ''[[Donkey Kong]]''

* ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]'' series:

** ''The Huge Adventure'' (''XS'' in Europe)

** ''Crash Nitro Kart'' ([[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Crash Team Racing]]''; the GBA version played like ''[[Mario Kart|Super Circuit]]'' [[X Meets Y|meets]] ''Crash'')

* ''[[Digimon Battle Spirit]]''

* ''DK: King of Swing''

** ''[[Fire Emblem Elibe|The Sword of Seal]]'' ([[No Export for You|only in Japan]])

** ''[[Fire Emblem Elibe|The Sword of Flame]]'' ([[Sequel First|first game in the series to get an international release]], it dropped the subtitle for its overseas release)

* ''[[Fire Pro Wrestling|Fire Pro Wrestling A (Fire Pro Wrestling in the US)]]''

** ''Final Fire Pro Wrestling (Fire Pro Wrestling 2 in the US)''

* ''[[Kuru Kuru Kururin]]''

* ''[[Lunar: The Silver Star|Lunar Legend]]''

* ''[[Mario Kart]] Super Circuit''

* ''[[Mario Party]] Advance''

** ''Mega Man Zero 4''

* ''[[Metroid]]: Fusion''

* ''[[Mother 3]]''

* ''[[One Piece (video game)|One Piece]]''

* [[Pokémon]]

** ''[[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire]]''

** ''[[Pokémon Red and Blue|Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen]]''

** ''[[Pokémon Pinball]]: Ruby and Sapphire''

** ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team|Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team]]''

* ''[[Rayman]] Advance''

* ''[[River City Ransom]] EX''

** ''Sonic Pinball Party''

* ''[[Spyro the Dragon]]'' series:

* ''[[Super Robot Wars Advance]]''

* ''[[Super Robot Wars Destiny]]''

* ''[[Super Robot Wars Reversal]]''

* ''[[Sword of Mana]]''

* ''[[Tales of Phantasia]]''

* ''[[Tekken]] Advance''

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Videogame Systems]]

[[Category:index]]

[[Category:Game Boy Advance]]