Overclocking your Gameboy Advance 295
An anonymous reader writes "The guys over at Ahead Games are working on an overclock mod for the GBA. They've been able to run it at up to 2x the regular operating speed without any major heat or battery life problems. Now, you're probably asking yourself "Why the hell would anyone want to overclock their Gameboy?" Answer: Super Nintendo emulation. There's already a working beta of a SNES emulator out for the GBA called SNES Advance. The big problem is there's just not enough horsepower under the GBA's hood to emulate the SNES sound chip. This mod will hopefully remedy that."
Hmmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Size matters (Score:5, Funny)
I would think an even bigger problem would be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would think an even bigger problem would be.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I would think an even bigger problem would be.. (Score:2, Informative)
A,B,X,Y,Left shoulder,Right shoulder,Select and Start. What to do about X and Y is the problem.
Re:I would think an even bigger problem would be.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Still...what about games where you need quick access to all of the buttons? Fighters, Street Fighter II being the big one, would be nigh impossible to play, as would any games that require the use of multiple buttons in quick succession.
I still think that SNES emulation on the GBA is a lost cause...Wait until the next system, possibly the DS, and get it right then. Don't bother when you don't have enough buttons OR horse
Re:I would think an even bigger problem would be.. (Score:2)
Layout is the issue though. Try playing Street Fighter 2 on SNES Advance with (for example) heavy punch and heavy kick mapped to Start and Select. You'd never reach them in the middle of a game. They're fine for things like Zelda and Secret of Mana, but most games.. no way.
Street Fighter would actually be pretty easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it going to play the same? No. Is it still playable? Yes.
Re:I would think an even bigger problem would be.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I would think an even bigger problem would be.. (Score:5, Informative)
Battery life (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
Re:Battery life (Score:3, Informative)
Timeline (Score:5, Funny)
2004: The SNES emulator is out, Bush is president, the US is at war with Iraq and the economy sucks
Re:Timeline (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Timeline (Score:2)
It is following the Afganistan scenario so far:
T +00 days: The liberators are met with flowers
T +90 days: "Liberation fighters" blow up hospital and shoot medical personnel
T +1 year: Polish (yes they were in Afganistan as well as the Bulgarians) pull out and everyone starts fighting everyone
T +14 years: Biggest drug generating minefiled in the world...
Re:Timeline (Score:3, Funny)
Chris
Re:Timeline (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Timeline (Score:4, Funny)
2004: The SNES emulator is out, Bush is trying to emulate the old Bush, the US is at war with a modded Iraq and the economy sucks.
Re:Timeline (Score:3, Informative)
The last time I went on a date... Bush was president and we were about to go to war with Iraq!
Its only a little scarry (Score:5, Interesting)
I really wonder why Nintendo couldn't have done this so that they cold just re-release all the old SNES games in GBA format?
Makes me think theres a reason they didn't.
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:3, Interesting)
"The W65816 (also: 65C816), a 16-bit microprocessor developed by the Western Design Center (WDC), is an expanded and compatible successor to the venerable 6502. The 65816 ha
Heights of human evolution. (Score:5, Funny)
There we were at 35,000 feet cruising over the vast country of America. There I was in the toilet taking a rather righteous dump all the while playing Phantasy Star II, a game from my childhood, with the GBA.
There's nothing like soaring through the sky, shitting and reliving moments of your childhood all at once.
Re:Heights of human evolution. (Score:2)
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:2)
I'm guessing they wanted to keep the great battery life. I know it isn't linear, but I bet this will reduce battery life by a significant amount.
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:2)
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:2)
Final Fantasy I = NES game [gamespot.com]
Final Fantasy II = SNES game (in America at least) [gamespot.com]
Re:Its only a little scarry (Score:2)
As I said... "in america," final fantasy II was released on the SNES. a game called "Final Fantasy IV" was never released in America. what I know of as "Final Fantasy II" is and always was the SNES game, but that is precisely why I said "in america," because I know of the 4/2 6/3 problem...
Disk Space? (Score:3, Interesting)
On a slightly more humical(is that even a word?) note, where is my genesis emulator I want to play zero wing
Re:Disk Space? (Score:5, Informative)
Lik-Sang sells carts and cart writers, but I've always used Jandaman's reliable service [jandaman.com].
Re:Disk Space? (Score:2)
someoen post an example.
Re:Disk Space? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Disk Space? (Score:5, Informative)
Combine that with a ROM dumped from the S/NES and multiboot / emulator autorun and you're set. Basically at boot the ROM prompts you what game you want to play. You choose by cycling through a menu, hit A, whammo.
Playing S/NES games on the go.
Pretty fun too. That's what scares me. These games from the S/NES, PCE, Genesis era are a whole lot more fun to me than most PS2 games.
(S/NES represents Super Nintendo and Nintendo Entertainment System. Most everything above applies to both.)
Re:Disk Space? (Score:2)
And they're reflashable so there's no need to cart every game. Pick and choose based on your mood.
And the cartridges can be found fairly cheaply, relatively speaking. I usually look to pay what I pay for a retail game for one.
Re:Disk Space? (Score:2)
Re:Disk Space? (Score:2)
are you saying that there are places to get flash carts for ~$30? Where where where?!?!?!?!?!
Yay (Score:4, Funny)
An overclocked gaming machine that will be so fast and so hot that in the winter I can use it as a portable heater...
great... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:great... (Score:2, Insightful)
"They've been able to run it at up to 2x the regular operating speed without any major heat or battery life problems."
As for a followup in the forum
"I haven't directly measured battery life yet, but I've left a GBA running Accelerated overnight and I don't see it having a huge impac
Re:great... (Score:5, Funny)
And my next question... (Score:4, Funny)
...would have to be "Why the hell would anyone want to eumlate the SNES on a GBA?"
Re:And my next question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And my next question... (Score:2)
Gee genius. Perhaps its so that they can play SNES games on the road, in class, or what have you. Perhaps you don't enjoy such fine games as Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III (US), Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Final Fight, Secret of Evermore, Earthbound, or the whole host of great games that were out on SNES. Still, a lot of people do, myself included.
Half of the titles you mentioned (Score:2, Interesting)
Except half of the titles you mentioned are already playable on the GBA. Super Mario World and Final Fight are ported to GBA. The PSOne has a car kit; Final Fantasy VI is ported to PSOne. Earthbound has a prequel for NES (called Mother) that was translated to English but never published on cart (the existing dump comes from a leaked proto); the GBA already emulates [pocketnes.org] the NES.
Re:Half of the titles you mentioned (Score:2)
Is there really a big market for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:2, Interesting)
the legend of Art? (Score:2, Insightful)
But video games? These are stricly entertainment.
That seems to imply that you do not consider video games artistic. Could you please back up that view?
Re:the legend of Art? (Score:2)
Re:the legend of Art? (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, games don't just *have* to be simple diversions. Gaming *is* an art form and it's slowly maturing. Recall that video games are perhaps only 30 years old; they're speeding to maturity much faster than other artforms. Already, there are a few games that not only entertain and divert but also are undoubte
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Chess, Super Mario Kart and other classic games... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another perfect example is Chess. It is hundreds of years old, and people still play it today as they find it entertaining to do so. Board games can be seen as the precessor to video games. They are visual games that require manual human intervention to enforce the rules and update the board layout.
In fact, it could be argued that some games get better with time. When Chess was first invented, everyone was equivalent to how you and your friends were when you first tried to play it: they all sucked. Games were won basically by luck in the begining. As time went on, what people knew about Chess and how to play it improved. So the games of Chess that were played when it was first made are not nearly as good as some of the games played hundreds of years later.
I notice the same thing with many of the video games that I play for more than a year: Tetris, Quake, Super Mario Kart, etc... my enjoyment of them has increased over the years because my knowledge of the games has improved.
For multiplayer videos games, my skills as well as the skills of my opponents have improved. Hence our matches are more entertaining than the early years, when matches were won mostly by luck of a player stumbling onto on aspect of the game that had yet to be discovered.
Re:Is there really a big market for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
</sarcasm>
You know you're a nerd when.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know you're a nerd when.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You know you're a nerd when.. (Score:2)
Re:You know I'm a nerd when.. (Score:5, Funny)
gba mod (Score:5, Informative)
Re:gba mod (Score:3, Insightful)
What about times when you need to run (b button), look up(L button), and fire your weapon (X button), for example?
There are many times when multiple buttons are pressed at the same time.
Re:gba mod (Score:3, Informative)
So just the same way as you can't "emulate" the light gun for the NES, you can't emulate every game for SNES...
Get a GP32 (Score:5, Informative)
more mods (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, reminds me of the overkill feeling when I heard about overclocked, dual sound chipped, hard drive equipped C64 machines that were being modded back in the day...
Overclock your house (Score:5, Funny)
Normal AC power is at around 120 volts and 70hz here in the USA, so I put in a frequency multiplier and upped it to 105hz and 160 volts AC. Now, all my lights are brighter, TV is faster to react in the menu, and I've pre-emptively overclocked all my appliances!
You've never seen microwave popcorn get done in a minute? Come on by! Sure, there are occasional fires, but nothing a little fire extinguisher and some aggressive product warranties won't fix.
There are downsides... all my clocks run fast... and my VCR keeps spitting out tape... and sure, my refrigerator has turned into a freezer, but I have to say that despite some of those challenges, it's still worth it.
Oops! Gotta run, my wireless access point seems to have killed the plant it's sitting next to. Maybe I should measure the rf...
Re:Overclock your house (Score:3, Funny)
Move to Europe, we have overclocked to 240 Volts. USA is sooo old fashioned!
Re:Overclock your house (Score:3, Informative)
60 hz comes out of every wall socket I've ever seen here in Nashville..
Re:Overclock your house (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Overclock your house (Score:2)
So that's how all those 1337 overclockers are getting 5 Ghz P4's!
There is another SNES emmulator out there as well (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.pocketsnes.net/ [pocketsnes.net] They have a few games going so far on it that have no speed issues, and they are working on fixing problems with other games. Tried it with a few games myself on my GBA, some work some don't (as expected) either case it is exciting to see these emmulators are in development!
Re:There is another SNES emmulator out there as we (Score:5, Informative)
SNES Advance was originally called PocketSNES (PocketNES [pocketnes.org] is by the same author, loopy).
But after that ripoff site appeared he changed the name to SNES Advance and got the www.snesadvance.org [snesadvance.org] domain.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Some issues (Score:3, Funny)
For a 0.1 version emulator? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For a 0.1 version emulator? (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, the overclocking has nothing to do with the software itself anyway. It's a hardware process. So, if its certain that it wont harm your machine, why
Re:For a 0.1 version emulator? (Score:2)
As mentioned the emulator can play quite a few games really well. The big problem is speed and
Using GBA for a microcontroller (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't used one but it seems like a real useful way to do robotics platform development, especially since you can output to the GBA screen, that sure would make debugging all my Sharp IR sensors a lot easier than reading a binary LED display.
Zodiac (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Zodiac (Score:2)
Specs:
high-res (480 x 320) 3.8-inch 16-bit color display
Motorola® i.MX1 ARM9 processor (206Mhz)
128MB RAM
ATI® Imageon(TM) graphics accelerator
Analog mini-joystick and 9 buttons
Yamaha sound chip and stereo speakers
Rumble effects vibrator
SD and SDIO slots
Bluetooth
Probably Won't Happen (Score:4, Interesting)
If an almost 500MHz ARM processor can't do it, I highly doubt that a 16MHz ARM or whatever powers the GBA can do it either; even overclocked. I know the GBA is a non-moving target in reguards to software development, and developers can highly optimize thier software for it as well, but so is the Dreamcast; and they (the Dreamcast emulation community) still don't have full SNES emulation with sound.
Hopefully these guys will prove me wrong and succeed, I really wouldn't mind playing some of my favorites that haven't been ported yet.
Re:Probably Won't Happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if an emulator can be made to successfully take advantage of those subsystems, it can accomplish a whole lot with the slow CPU. Now can that actually happen? I don't know, I'm not sure if there is an efficient way to use these processors, but it is possible.
Re:Probably Won't Happen (Score:3, Insightful)
And, at any rate, SNESAdvance can already run some games at full speed without speedhacking; with overclocking and possible speedhacking, I'm certain you could get them to run with sound at full speed.
Just need to use dynamic translation (Score:5, Informative)
That sounds like a really slow emulator. It's probably an interpreting one, which means you can expect it to be something like a 100-1000 times slower than the emulated system clock-for-clock. A good example is Bochs [sourceforge.net], which is pretty damn slow, but the interpreted approach allows it to run on many systems with little porting.
What you really need for a fast emulator is dynamic translation - rewrite snippets of emulated instructions into native ones, and run that instead. You can get close to a 1:1 ratio of native:emulated clocks, which means in your case you'd have a 472MHz XScale emulating as if it were a 472MHZ SNES.
There's plenty of examples of dynamic translators about. Transmeta's processors all run a dynamic translator from x86 to some freaky native instruction set (they call it "code morphing"). Java's JIT (just-in-time) is an example of a very similar thing - it translates byte code to native instructions on the fly, but doesn't have to worry about maintaining the virtual system's state, because Java doesn't have the concept of one.
So yes, it should be possible.
Re:Probably Won't Happen (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other overclocking reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason I did it was to play games in turbo speed. STUN Runner played great at 1.5 times speed. A 1.2 to 1.4 increase would be great for most GBA games. Underclocking could also be useful for poor gamers. I know a lot of gamers who would like a speed switch on their system.
Re:Won't Nintendo have a DMCA hissy fit? (Score:4, Interesting)
They're wrong of course. But tell that to their lawyers...
Re:Won't Nintendo have a DMCA hissy fit? (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems like it could encourage GBA purchases.
Re:Won't Nintendo have a DMCA hissy fit? (Score:2)
So, since they have already made their money on SNES games (none new, all used now), they would potentially LOSE money.
Re:Won't Nintendo have a DMCA hissy fit? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wasn't aware they were taking a loss on the system, but I still don't think that this would cause them to LOSE money. It would encourage GBA purchases, and once some one has a GBA they are a lot more likely to buy GBA games than when they didn't have a GBA.
I originally bought my GBA to play games that were ported from the SNES, but I really like some of the games that were developed for the GBA directly. They are pretty cool, and I wouldn't have even tried them if it
Re:Won't Nintendo have a DMCA hissy fit? (Score:2)
Re:Won't Nintendo have a DMCA hissy fit? (Score:2)
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:2, Funny)
Re:what's wrong with the world today? (Score:2)
but are you a big fan of no-sound games!? if better graphics is everything you need, you may consider moving to higher mountains and admire the 20gb-pixel/cm clear sky in perfect silence !
God, wouldn't I love to...
Re:I just can't get around the ethical issues. (Score:4, Informative)
2) The overclocking can be turned on and off at will, even while running games. ;b You would have known that if you had read the article.
Re:Gameboy picture a little old? (Score:2)