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Portables (Games) Classic Games (Games) Emulation (Games) Entertainment Games

GBA Movie Player Plays NES Games From CF Card 55

Posted by timothy from the simpsons-fix dept.
roadies writes "One-upping the AM3/Nintendo official GBA flash player (as previously discussed), Portagame reports that the 3rd party imported GBA Movie Player has released its second version. In a slimmer profile casing, it still plays movies and music from CF cards. (Not pre-recorded tv shows like the AM3 player either, you record and save your own content.) The best feature of the firmware update: An included NES emulater. You can download your favorite NES games to a CF card and emulate them through the player. Only catch is there is a 192K per game limit. May not be enough for the biggest NES game, but still enough for the true NES classics."
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GBA Movie Player Plays NES Games From CF Card More

GBA Movie Player Plays NES Games From CF Card

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  • The South Shall Play Again (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The best feature of the firmware update: An included NES emulater.

    One o' them NES emulaters? Yee-ha! I'm-a gonna be playin' all them old classics ag'in, consarnit!

  • Lik-Sang And Lawyers From The Big N (Score:5, Informative)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @06:34PM (#10241434) Homepage Journal
    Hmmm, isn't Lik-Sang just asking to be sued by Nintendo with this update? If you want one of these new players, you'd better hurry because I just don't see how this is going to stay on the market very long. I have to admit though, I like the cool gadgets that Lik-Sang sells, but this player is definitely in a gray zone now!

    "How you decipher homebrew is up to you."

    Hmmm, we'll see!

    • yes.. especially when it's not even a 3rd party application but included.

      but if you got a flash cart you could just use http://www.pocketnes.org/ anyways. the thing that's intresting is though if big N is going to slash homebrew(copying) scene once and for all with the ds.

      • big N is going to slash homebrew(copying) scene once and for all with the ds
        I haven't heard this before. How are they going to do it?
        • how? by adding some kind of protection to the system of course. they don't have any now. make it only run signed stuff or whatever. it's a surprise they didn't do it with gba already and would really be a surprise if they didn't do it with DS.

          because it's not even going to be 'backwards'(as they claim it's not successor to gba) compatible they can just whip anything they want on it.
          • because it's not even going to be 'backwards'(as they claim it's not successor to gba) compatible they can just whip anything they want on it.

            Everything I have read has stated that the DS will have a seperate slot to load GBA games. It's got the same CPU as the GBA as its second processor (ARM7), and it looks like it's going to just have a seperate set of GBA ROM that will load when you put a GBA game into the slot.

            However, I agree with you that they will likely have sort of copy protection on the DS games

            • However, I agree with you that they will likely have sort of copy protection on the DS games.

              And we all how well that works!!!!

              • well, with something so closed as the ds they could do a pretty good job of making it impossible to run unsigned code.

                sure it could be cracked at some point by someone but if it would happen couple of years after the launch it would have made sense for them already.
            • ok then I was out of the loop, haven't been following the spec news that lately now just the initial announcements that didn't include a gba slot(and which talked nintendo slating it as an extra product rather than something following directly in the gba upgrade path sort of).

              • More than just out of the loop I'd say. Should you even be reading Slashdot Games? Do you know who Nintendo is? They released those specs about the DS along time ago. They also said it will have compatibility for future Xbox Next and Sony PSP games along with full smartphone capabilities. You better brush on the news dude.
    • You'd think... but I see NES emulators being sold in the local mall (those shady 7600-in-1 controller things). They contain many Nintendo games with the copyrights sloppily removed (including Super Mario Bros.). So far, I haven't seen them C&D'd by the Big N.

  • Hm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mrgreen4242 ( 759594 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @06:45PM (#10241533)
    So am I reading this right when it says you can 'load homebrew' roms you could play backups of real GBA games as well? It would be usefull just to be able to carry around all my games on one 'cart'.

    Furethermore, it'd be worth it just for the MP3 playing, if it's decent quality, can read a good range of bitrates, and has a decent player interface. The GBASP w/o backloght goes for easily 12 hours on a charge and fits in my pocket. What more could I ask of an mp3 player?

    • Re:Hm... (Score:3, Informative)

      by roadies ( 748234 )
      no, not GBA games. sorry. Just NES games. I think the manufacturer is being very careful. They put a 192k limit on the games (no limit on movies and music that I know of) and only allow games from the very expired NES system. I wish they'd allow for classic GB games, but since the GBA can play most existing GB cartridges anyway, I doubt we'll see that happen.

    • Re:Hm... (Score:3, Informative)

      by mrgreen4242 ( 759594 )
      Did a little reading about this, and it sounds like the audio quality isn't very good. Plus, you have to convert your MP3s into another format to play them. Seems pretty useless.

    • Re:Hm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by AndyBusch ( 160585 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @08:09PM (#10242257)
      Ok, what this does is load an emulator and rom into the GBA's RAM. It's not a 192k arbitary limit, but a facet of the 64kb emulator and the fact that the GBA has 256kb of RAM.

      If you really want a good NES emulator you're better off just getting a flash cart for the GBA. Life's good with those.
    • An MP3 player on the GBA would be pretty limited, considering it only has mono sound output.
      • An MP3 player on the GBA would be pretty limited, considering it only has mono sound output


        The GBA has stereo sound output through the headphones, it is only mono when using the internal speaker (and many games have a mono/stereo setting in the game to take advantage of this)

  • 192 is not enough! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by galaxy300 ( 111408 ) <daltonrooney AT gmail DOT com> on Monday September 13, 2004 @08:12PM (#10242285) Homepage
    I was completely ready to buy this until I checked out my NES ROMS folder and realized that only 1/3 of my games were under the limit. SMB 2, SMB 3, Dr. Mario, Punch Out, Castlevania 2 and 2, Megaman 3,4,5,6 - all over the limit. : (

    I do own all of those cartridges, of course. I even bought SMB 2 and 3 for GBA...I just want to play my old games on the go and I still haven't seen one of http://www.famicom-plaza.com/new/pockefami [famicom-plaza.com]these on the market yet.
    • What is it that limits the size, storage included with the product, coding of their firmware, or part of the GBA?

      If it's just the storage they give you with the product, I think an aftermarket upgrade is in order :D

      If it's the coding, maybe there's a way to flash around it.

      If it's the GBA, I give up.
      • Well, it accepts any size flash card, so my guess is that it's a limitation with the emulator itself. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this to see if anyone cracks it.

      • Re:Larger size? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Ayaress ( 662020 )
        GBA ram size, probably. It only has 256k of RAM. Take off 196k (maximum ROM size), and you're left with 60k for the emulator, which is smaller than the high-accuracy emulators, but not much different than some of the old versions of Loopy.

  • Pocketnes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @08:51PM (#10242494) Homepage
    It includes a stock version 9.95 of PocketNES, then executes it as a multiboot game. So it gets the crippled multiboot version of pocketnes, with no save features. It is also limited to emulator+game must be 256k.
    • Damn slashcode took out my less than sign before the 256k...
      Emulator + Game must be less than 256k. That also includes additional memory used by the emulator but isn't part of its size.

  • Opening the software (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@NOSpaM.level4.org> on Monday September 13, 2004 @09:02PM (#10242569) Journal
    It seems to me so many companies could get market control just by opening their software a little bit.

    Some of the integrations of this stuff are so simple that online programmers can do them by themselves and they add tonnes and tonnes of value.

    Big software just isn't listening someone needs to smack these guys around again, I sense another internet bubble around underused tech like voip, wiMax, voice integration, and free telephony.
  • While this product does sounds pretty nice, there do seem to be quite a few things lacking. First is that many NES games are over the 192k limit. Second is that from what I hear, the MP3 sound quality isn't the greatest. Last is that I really don't think the GBA can do video that well, atleast not better than those GBA Video carts they sell here in the US. On the other hand, if you already have a compact flash reader and media, $25 isn't that bad a price to play a few of the older NES games and some pixely
  • This sucker [bananapc.com]. Probably all of them. Great price also. Just picked one up for an Ipaq running Opie.

  • Reviews are mixed (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zaphus ( 132836 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @12:57AM (#10243713) Homepage
    The customer reviews for the product at Lik Sang [lik-sang.com], as well as the review over at ShackNews [shacknews.com] both talk about scratchy sound quality and low frame-rates. Neither talk about the emulators (since they are reviewing the earlier model, I assume) - but for the price you can't really go wrong can you ? I think this [movieadvance.com] is the actual product homepage, but it isn't much more informative.

  • Going to bemoan the inability to play my favorite (Score:5, Informative)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @05:02AM (#10244317) Journal
    RPG of all time, Dragon Warrior IV(1MB), until I read this on the product homepage [movieadvance.com]
    Supported NES format file, which is 200k limited. Before you play FC game, do remember to put the Pocketnes.gba file to the root directory of the CF Card.
    Save function is not supported. Just copy the TXT format file to the CF Card then read it on the GBA/GBA SP.


    Not much good for most of the games I'd play anyway, though maybe some Galaga or Tetris...

  • Clarification (Score:4, Interesting)

    by David E. Smith ( 4570 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:47AM (#10247297)
    I've had one of these devices for a while. Not a bad little toy. I'd love to be able to just put MP3s on the flash card and go, instead of having to convert them to "GBS" (Game Boy Sound?) format, but the GBA doesn't have that much CPU.

    The article text is a bit misleading. You don't have to have one of the new, slimmer Movie Advance units to use the NES emulator feature - just update the firmware on the old one and it'll work just fine.
  • Lik-Sang should openly document their movie player, so that people can great new improved firmware for their device. It would help them sell more units. Maybe somebody could hack out a firmware that allowed larger games and saving to the CF card.
    • The problem is that you have to load the whole NES game and the emulator into 256k of RAM in the GBA. That's also why you can't save.

      The reason is that the compact flash file system and hardware is much different than a GBA cart, which is much faster, and so you can't load things to and from it like you would a cart. If that makes sense.

      I remember seeing a device that was a 'developers flash cart' with a connector to attach it to a SecureMedia card reader so you could change the contents of the cart without

  • Anyone have any good places where I can buy a flash cart for GBA? All the places that I see that sell them seem just a tad shady
  • Are there any specific rules about video game copyrights? If they aren't specifically addressed, what sort of media are they classified under in copyright law?

    I ask because I am curious about how long until video games start to become public domain?

    • They get the same sort of copyright as music and movies. The ones that are on cartridges get the extra DMCA anticircumvention protection, since dumping the ROM off the cart is considered circumventing it's copy protection. Long run, when NES games start becomming pulic domain, I doubt I'll still have enough eyesight/hearing/reflexes/bladder control to enjoy them anymore.

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