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Games Entertainment

Gameboy Advance Frontlight Success 113

Posted by Hemos from the moving-ahead dept.
skirch writes: "Remember Portablemonopoly.com? Well, Adam finally has a great working prototype (with some great pics) that he was able to hack together for about $30. Not that $30 is bad, but he mentions a possible group order, and I'm sure that would bring the price down quite a bit. He estimates that it will only diminish the GBA's battery life by 25-30%. Original Slashdot post."
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Gameboy Advance Frontlight Success More

Gameboy Advance Frontlight Success

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  • Portable Monopoly? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @02:39AM (#2351480)
    I thought that was Windows CE? Have I been misinformed?

  • GBA is a handheld, and he made it better. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @02:40AM (#2351481) Journal
    The only big thing lacking on it was a lighted screen, from my POV, and this guy solved the problem. I'm very interested in this hardware hack for my own GBA.

  • This guy has style (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kingdon ( 220100 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @02:44AM (#2351488) Homepage

    Not only did he go off and build something instead of just whining, but I also was amused by the part from the mini-FAQ [portablemonopoly.com] in which he responds to people who whine and complain and tell him he has it all wrong: "Enough already! I don't care whether or not you think what I am going is a waste of time. If you think this site is pointless or retarded, dear God save me the bandwidth and take your ass elsewhere."

    • Re:This guy has style (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pangloss ( 25315 )
      I thought the same thing. Here's a (Score: 5) post [slashdot.org]from the original Slashdot article:

      A backlight won't help in the GBA's case. The LCD screen has reflective faceting to improve the visual quality (not to be confused with the reflective plastic cover that actually makes frontlighting the unit unbearable due to glare).

      Any light shone through the back will only succeed in "washing out" the colour due to the properties of the LCD. Personally I would have preferred an organic electroluminescent display (OLED) to this darkened LCD nightmare. OLEDs produce their own light and are more energy efficient than LCDs, let alone LCDs with backlighting.

      I'm glad Adam didn't give up on the basis of our informed community input ;) Cheers to the happy hacking spirit.
      • Didnt he use the LED's for front lighting but below the plastic cover? (if so that post is spot on ...)
        • Yes he did, but the previous post is not talking about using LEDs for lighting, but saying that the solution should not involve LCD at all ('let alone backlighting'). The solution on portablemonopoly uses LEDs to frontlight and LCD display, which the 'expert' whiners said wouldn't work due to the high reflectivity of the screen cover. Shows what they know!
      • ...this is what Adam said on this page [portablemonopoly.com] about how backlighting.

        Backlighting the GBA will not work. Because the Sharp LCD is employs is reflective only, any light that passes through the LCD will not illuminate any pixels but simply wash them out. It is unfortunately as simple as that. A transmissive or transflective LCD will facilitate backlighting.

        Adam's improvement doesn't use backlighting.

  • It's too bad Nintendo didn't do this... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jayde Stargunner ( 207280 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @02:45AM (#2351491)
    It's really unfortunate this wasn't implemented with the actual GBA. Engineered correctly (and maybe centered :-) this would solve many of the current GBA playability woes...and I'm certain Nitnendo could have made it more battery conservitive.

    Honestly, one is forces to use a plug-in light in almost all occasions--especialy with dark games like Circle of the Moon--so I can't think that a smaller interal light would havedrained more battery life that a Worm Lamp or Light Shield.

    And, if you think about it... Worm Lamp's and the life are only 10 bucks as standalone units, with plugins, plastic casing, and shipping materials. I can't imagine this would have raised the production cost of the GBA itself by more than 5 bucks.

    I would have gladly paid 5 bucks to make my GBA playable more than 10% of the time I feel like playing it. The screen has been the biggest deterrant for me finishing CotM and buying more than 2 games...

    But, of course... Nintendo really doesn't have to worry about another handheld coming along and being competitive. :-)

    -Jayde

    • Re:It's too bad Nintendo didn't do this... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's really unfortunate this wasn't implemented with the actual GBA. Engineered correctly (and maybe centered :-) this would solve many of the current GBA playability woes...and I'm certain Nitnendo could have made it more battery conservitive.

      Yes, it's very unfortunate. Seeing as i personally would be willing to pay even 2x the current cost of a GBA to get one i can actually play in below "optimal" light conditions. "Optimal" being in a situation where you constantly have a light directly above your GBA to light up the screen. This doesnt happen as much as you would like it to, which defeats the entire purpose of having a PORTABLE gaming system. I would wager, carrying a GBA around with you on a day-to-day basis, (which i do) the actual chances you get to play the thing is very slim, due to the so called "optimal" light conditions being very very rare. The fact that i can't play it in my bedroom with the light on shows a definate flaw in the gba design that nintendo really needs to fix to regain mine, and many others faith in the companys ability to produce systems worth purchasing.

      Portablemonopoly.com deserves a medal for doing what nintendo can't. This guy has done by himself, what a multi-billion dollar company was too lazy to research themselves. Kudos to portablemonopoly.com!

  • Am I the only one... (Score:3, Informative)

    by BIGJIMSLATE ( 314762 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @02:45AM (#2351492)
    ...who would rather just pay the $10 and get something like this:

    http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/categories/products/p ro duct.asp?pf_id=201208

    Cool mod, but I'm cheap. The $20 I'd save might let me buy some cool GBA game like "Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen's Big Adventure". :p
    • Yes, you may be the only one. All the in-production lights suck. The Glow Guard is the "best light yet", meaning it sucks slightly less than the worm light. This guy's hack definitely looks better from the pictures on his site.
      • This mod [geocities.com] to a Pelican Light Shield Advance was pretty easy to do and the parts are readily available. I'm pretty happy with it - it's better than anything I've seen for sale.

        The portablemonopoly solution is better, though - if for no other reason than eliminating the glare from the light source.

  • How hard could it be? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    GBA emulator on a Palm m505...they are front lit and run for weeks on one charge. Expansion cards to save your game, etc.

    GBA emulator on an iBook...wow, music and internet....output to your TV and go big screen.

    Run the GB image to a HMD...5 ft. virtual floating image...now that's cool.
    • Current GBA emulators on the PC only get around 70% speed on a P3-667.

      They can probably all still be optimised... but I don't think there's much hope for a Palm, or even WinCE machine...
  • If nintendo would get off their asses and figure out that their GBA's biggest problem is light and not battery usage, they would put this into new GBAs right now.

    I'm actually holding off on buying a GBA because I remember all those times with my ORIGINAL GB when I had to tilt the screen to see right and get contortions in my neck. When I heard there were light problems, that blew it for me. I was planning on buying one straight away before.

    If nintendo put this into production, they would get my $120 I been holding for a couple months.

  • Amazing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @03:38AM (#2351548) Homepage
    The amazing thing is that no matter where I use my GBA it's too dark...

    ...except at work.

    The lighting conditions are just perfect in my work-cell and it seems that's the only place I'm able to get any quality GBA time in.

    "...but boss! I just can't see the screen at home or in the break room!"
    • Same here.

      Not that I've tried... I just assume they would be. Due to the conditions of the environment. And stuff.

      Gotta go.
    • heh, i've found the same thing, the only location with perfect lighting is at work.

      my brother claims the bathroom has great lighting as well.. but if i haven't taken my wirless + laptop into the bathroom yet, i can't justify trying the gba..

  • Adam good. Nintendo bad. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by motherhead ( 344331 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @04:17AM (#2351594)
    I love that new commercial where the kid is playing with his GBA while at church (never mind all the class inferred by that... marketing weasels...). That is just absolute bullshit. I can barely play Tony Hawk 2 in my kitchen much less a room with low amounts of ambient lighting. They had to be filming that commercial looking at each other like... "Hey, it's not my lawsuit".

    Adam is a deity. Nintendo owes every damn one of us an apology.

    He (Adam) says it best when he comments that the glass covering the Worlds Most Useless Display is more like a mirror then anything else. So all the lame "Shark Lights, Wiggie Lights, PokoLights, Very Happy Joy Fun Lights" or whatever does nothing more then throw glare over the entire screen.

    I'd pay thirty bucks to take something useless and render it otherwise.
    • I''d pay thirty bucks to take something useless and render it otherwise.

      Does that mean you'd pay thirty bucks to change a windows-infected hard drive into a bunch of paperclips?
    • I don't see how Nintendo owes you an apology. If you dislike your GBA that much, most stores have return policies even on opened merchandise. No one forced you to purchase one. You decided that it was worth the expense to own a high-quality portable device. Granted, the lack of reasonable built-in lighting a big problem and I think Nintendo dropped the ball on that and I'm confused how Nintendo of all companies could have missed it in play testing. But that doesn't make Nintendo "bad", and it doesn't mean they owe anybody anything. They made a kicking portable game platform, and if you aren't happy with it, bring it back or sell it on ebay.

    • Re:Adam good. Nintendo bad. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      OK, am I the only GBA owner on the face of the planet that doesn't mind the display? Under the proper lighting, it's amazingly vibrant. Under slightly less perfect conditions, it's still usable!!!

      I can use it in my basement under a potlight and it's an amazingly crisp picture. I can use it on the train to and from work and only fret in tunnels. I can use it under the flourescents at work. I can use it outside during the day.

      Seriously, what is people's problems with this unit? Oh, no, I can't use my GBA in the dark! Waaah, waaah! Whatever will I do?
      Nintendo has delivered a worthy successor to the GB, backwards compatible, freaking powerful, affordable and with one amazing battery life. Not to mention the ability to multiplay single cartriges. Don't sell 'em short dammit!
      • The problem with short posts is that they can sometimes sound glib. I didn't mean to sound glib. I really enjoy the GBA, it does so much well that I can actually desire pissing away time with it more then say on my laptops or my palm IIIc.

        I am really glad you are enjoying your Gameboy Advance. I am not starting an anti-GBA political movement. No.

        So basically all the rant about Nintendo being bad is directed squarely on (what is IMHO) the worst possible display, ever. Now the GBA itself is capable of displaying wonderfully vibrant and delightful images. Unfortunately I don't want the migraines caused by trying to get it not to reflect every damn thing in the world while only having half the display adequately lit at any one time.

        I am guessing, and I am aware that this is a (dangerous) sweeping generalization, that you would have paid $30 bucks more at the Best Buy if you noticed that the GBA came with a lovely, bright display that was actually easy on your eyes. I personally would not have hesitated.

        Also: Nintendo is so still going to get my Gamecube money. I have that recessive gene that makes me by consoles that I will never have time to play with. And no I will sell any of them (nor my GBA) on Ebay. Ebay scares me; I don't want to do business with people shopping for human infant adenoids or whatever...

  • Yep, the only bad thing about the GBA.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @04:39AM (#2351619) Homepage
    is that you can't play it in bed without having the light on, making your girlfriend mad.

    This hack has the potential to restore my relationship to pre-GBA goodness!

  • what about another kind of hacking? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mj6798 ( 514047 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @06:04AM (#2351713)
    I keep wondering: the Game Boy Advance is based on a 32bit ARM, it's cheap, and it runs the Cygnus toolchain [redhat.com]. So--has anybody ported Linux to it? Are there free development tools out for it? Where's a good place to start reading up on GBA development using standard open source tools (a brief search on Google didn't reveal much)?
    • WHY would you want to run Linux in a GBA? How about porting Linux to my toaster? I waste lots of time waiting for toast when I could be writing shell scripts in binary with the toaster lever.
    • The GBA only had 256K of RAM, so you would need a special cartridge that had additional RAM. No reason why it couldn't be done but the cost would be prohibative.

      Also the ARM in the GBA does not have a MMU, so you would have to use ucLinux...
  • Nintendo are pretty cool, but they have a pretty dodgy history of anti-competitive attitudes, and over pricing on some of their games stuff. I have to say though that this is less obvious this past while - rampant during SNES era though!

    I'll bet if the games shops had 'dark' GBAs and 'lit' ones, even if the lit ones ate batteries twice as fast and cost 25% more the majority would go for the lit one. Nintendo should listen to this. I think they will. But first they will grind on with the dark GBA until it reckons everyone that REALLY wants one HAS one.

    Then it will release the GBA 'lit' in a bunch of funky new colours, with no increased battery drain and sell a new GBA to a good %age of those who already have a 'dark' GBA. They will also release another Mario Kart at the same time. Just like Star Wars DVDs and collectors comics. Whenever you have a smallish market - just try to sell the same dumb ass the same thing more than once.

    These guys are smart!

  • Petition? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 )
    Our ultimate goal with this Web site is to measure the amount of dissatisfaction with the Game Boy Advance in the form of a petition. The results will be published on this site and, of course, sent to Nintendo and many other media entities.

    If you're dissatisfied with the Game Boy Advance... Why did you buy one?

    Fight the power that... uhh... provides you with video games...damn it!

    Come on, this is along the lines of people who petitioned Prodigy to switch to the IP protocol suite (I hate when people call it TCP/IP)... Why not just change providers to one that gives you what you want?
    • Oh yeah, compare a commodity like service providers to video gaming devices. At best, that's asinine.

      You could switch providers with little or no obvious effect on functionality and performance, while on the other end of the spectrum, we have video gaming devices with completely different games and publishers. Not to mention there aren't even any comparable video gaming devices.

      And you're bumped to 3!
    • OK, so which handheld gaming device would *you* switch to?

      It's not a requirement to be 100% satisfied with products that you purchase. You are allowed to give feedback to manufacturers and providers to try and improve their products.

      Point in case: I own a Jeep. I love my Jeep. There are things about my Jeep that I would love for Jeep-Eagle-Chryseler to change, but that doesn't make me want to go out and buy a different type of car.
    • What? "If you're dissatisfied with the Game Boy Advance... Why did you buy one"? They already bought it, you can't be dissatisfied with a product you never tried and to try it, most people would have to buy it. If you mean why don't they return it, then it still doesn't mean they shouldn't petition for a change.

      What's wrong with petitioning a company to change? Not every consumer knows about things like Prodigy using IP protcol suite, so forcing a company to change can benefit those who are clueless. They don't want other people getting something they feel is a crappy product. Nothing wrong with that.
      • People preorder Windows XP too, what can I say :-/
        • What does XP have to do with this? With XP at least you can expect a product based on your past experiences with Microsoft. How were people supposed to know the lighting for a GBA was horrible? The original GameBoy and GBC were pretty good handhelds in my opinion.
          • So is the gameboy advance ironically. It's a fine system everything considered. What can I say, most lighting systems would kill battery life. Even this one cuts it by a quarter and it's LEDs... which were more expensive a few months ago...

    • Re:Petition? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Honestly, most of these people were misled by the Gameboy commercials. They knew that it was not going to be backlit, but they thought that the screen would be more visable (remember that commercial that shows someone playing in a dark church?). Also some people are dissatisfied because they know that Nintendo could have made the GBA better, but chose not to. And others are dissatisfied because they could not get their money back.

      I was there on the IGN boards at day 1 when Adam bought his gameboy. He made quite an ass of himself there for a few weeks venting his dissatisfaction before he got tired of a number of us telling him to "fuck off for the love of God and leave us in peace", in not so many words. The petitition on his site is a leftover from when portablemonopoly.com was more of a "happy fun Nintendo slander and defamation corner" than a serious project. After many nasty replies on his message boards, he subsequently removed most of the slander, along with the boards. The petition is just a leftover from times past.

      I must say that I am happy to see that his site actually turned into something useful. I know many GBA fanboys breathed a sigh of relief when his project forced him to leave the IGN boards. But we never imagined he would be succesful :)

    • Why not just change providers to one that gives you what you want?

      Because in this case, there isn't one, and there probably won't be for a very long time. Nintendo pretty much has the portable market cornered (more so in the US than Japan), so we might as well ask them to make it suck less.
    • Rail against this guy all you want, he's right. The GBA was available to test in toystores across the nation weeks before it's release. Even in the overexposed light at the local Toy's R US, I could tell that the GBA wasn't going to live up to my expectations. Did that stop me from buying it? Hell No. That shit still works.


      Did anyone honestly believe they were going to be able to play in a poorly lit church while Octopi and a WWF choir stood in attendence? I think not, if so though, you are all more easily manipulated than I thought. Finding a new backlight system is a great idea... his "portable monopoly" has always been a sour pill for me. NOONE us forcing any of you to buy the bloody system. If Nintendo wants to put out a questionable product that's their prerogative.


      BTW... video game companies have been pulling this shit for years. Even the earliest arcade/atari products came shipped in boxes featuring artwork that only the newest systems in THIS decade could emulate. False advertising or attractive packaging? Well, I for one can speak to the frustration I feel whenever I see a gorgeous packaging job, but know the game's gfx don't come close... chew on that..

    • If you're dissatisfied with the Game Boy Advance... Why did you buy one?

      Because nintendo has a 95-year monopoly [everything2.com] on games produced by Miyamoto's team, Rare, etc., and exclusive contracts with some publishers. By the time the games fall into the public domain, not only will the lifetime of the system have expired, but so will 99+ percent of the players.

      Even ignoring the game design issue and assuming clones like Blizzard's Dia-blow and some freeware game are as good as Zelda(tm), the other portable systems available in stores located in the United States of America (Palm, WinCE, etc.) have input devices that don't work for games and must be tethered to a $1000 PC that 13-year-olds can't afford with paper route income and that their parents think is THE DEVIL [imdb.com]!

  • GBA lighting (Score:3, Funny)

    by Plessiez ( 50832 ) on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @08:15AM (#2351888)
    I'm lucky that I ride the tube in London (the metro, for you yanks) every day to work. This gives me about 45 minutes to play Castlevania in perfect lighting conditions and then switch off and lose all my progress because I can't find a save room.

    The only other place I've found the lighting conditions to be good was a carpark in Texas at midday. With the sun directly overhead the screen looks great! Unfortunately after a few days of this my pasty english skin burnt to an unhealthy red, my girlfriend was irritated and wouldn't take me out in public for a week.

    • You should try the Northern line - that way you'd get 45 minutes on some days, 2 hours on others.
    • I'm lucky that I ride the tube in London (the metro, for you yanks)

      You mean the subway perhaps?

      -- iCEBaLM

  • Back lit GBA! (Score:4, Informative)

    by ĖlaC|n ( 147028 ) <elacin@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday September 26, 2001 @08:54AM (#2351962)
    Hmm.. check this [jeuxstart.com] out!
    According to this page, Nintendo is planning a japanese release of a new GBA WITH backlit screen in december!
    • And not a shred of evidence to support their claim. I work for the "largest video game specialty retailer in the world" (that's GameStop, Inc. - formerly Babbage's, Etc. - for those that don't know) and occasionally bad info gets thrown around. When I started there, my manager was even telling people that the Xbox would play PC and Dreamcast games... and this was well after the point Microsoft had denied that rumor.

      My point is: you shouldn't always trust retailers for information on video game systems. Especially on something that has yet to be announced or even rumored at this point. And that's exactly what this article is doing. I don't doubt that Nintendo is working on a new GBA. I do, however, seriously doubt we'll see it before the GBA's 2 year anniversary. It just wouldn't make sense business-wise.

    • Whether or not Nintendo is actually planning a lit GBA, I don't know, but I do know that they won't be doing it backlit. The type of display used in the GBA is a REFLECTIVE lcd. That means that it needs light from the front in order to be visible. If it has light coming in from the back, all you see is white, and your world is woe.

      Notice, portablemonopoly.com keeps talking about "frontlight solutions".
  • http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-06 -13&res=l

    This comic sums up how we've all felt.
  • Who cares about a backlit GBA? Bring on the OLED version!
  • You know he is a true geek with this classic sentence:

    "the frontlight does not degrade the LCD's image quality when you compare it against a GBA in all but the most efficient lighting arrangements (i.e. a well-positioned lamp or a window with sunlight pouring in)"

    So in this quest for light, he doesn't even consider the possibility of actually going outside? ;-)

  • No Castlevania? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by shadowcabbit ( 466253 )
    I find it very amusing that the games he uses to demonstrate the hack's effectiveness are Mario Kart and Advance Wars, two of the most colorful, vibrant games available. I have NEVER had any difficulty seeing the screen even in dim light while playing AW. I would be a lot more impressed if he had demonstrated Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.
    Or better yet, he should have just stopped tilting at windmills altogether. The dark color scheme problem is something that has to be worked around in software-- i.e. developers shouldn't choose varying shades of jet black on midnight blue as their color scheme. The GBA's difficult angles are just an added factor the developers and artists have to work around.
    And another thing, as long as I'm up on this soapbox. I realize that the intent of the hack was to "prove displeasure in the GBA" and prove some conspiracy-theorist-wet-dream "monopoly" on the handheld market. But there is a very simple reason why Nintendo has the only portable video game system currently, and it is the same reason why Sony has the leading console (for now) and why (gasp!) Microsoft has the leading OS. It is the software support. The GB caught on because of Tetris; the GBC because of Pokemon, and the GBA because of all of its launch titles (except maybe Iridion). PS2 has the best games released for it and coming for it (MGS2, Klonoa 2, FF10, need I go on?). Windows systems are popular because quite literally that's what everything runs on nowadays (I know there are exceptions, but I'm thinking within the context of gaming; the really big-name games are all for Win98 etc). In all cases, the "monopoly" exists because nobody bought the competition.

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