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| Jul - Gaming - Game Boy Advance appreciation thread |
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Kawaii-e Red Cheep-cheep Collecting Dust and Games Level: 34      Posts: 126/217 EXP: 234453 For next: 19198 Since: 08-12-07 Pronouns: she / her From: Schaffhausen Since last post: 38 days Last activity: 2 days
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Jamie Requested (also Termingamer2-JD rereg) Level: 29 Posts: 81/193 EXP: 144190 For next: 3695 Since: 06-03-14 Since last post: 2.8 years Last activity: 2.8 years
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| It's just a shame so many fake GBA carts exist on ebay and the likes and have no save batteries. Though gba was a brilliant console; the DS was a disappointement compared to it IMO because worse hardware relatively speaking and more shovelcrapo - oh and MKSC > MKDS anyday ____________________ Jamie | Jeyneko |
Xenesis Roy Koopa Actually a Doctor Level: 101  Posts: 2541/2732 EXP: 10488100 For next: 229575 Since: 07-28-07 Pronouns: She/Her From: Orange Star's Retirement Villa Since last post: 10 days Last activity: 1 day
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| The GBA gave rise to my favourite Nintendo series of all time in its modern form, Advance Wars.
Considering it was what thrust me into actually being interested in ROMhacking, I'm pretty keen. 
I may have spent a good thousand+ hours on each entry in the series. |
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ひりゅう 730    Level: 47  Posts: 25/738 EXP: 721132 For next: 45071 Since: 10-18-18 Since last post: 69 days Last activity: 65 days
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Rambly Level: 106  Posts: 2072/3083 EXP: 12579056 For next: 92887 Since: 07-22-07 Pronouns: she/her Since last post: 280 days Last activity: 264 days
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Maybe this is a silly thing to appreciate, given that it's not a game, but I love the aesthetic of the original GBA:
The foggy translucent icy look, the white/grey buttons, the trim on the side, the form factor of the thing in general, it's delicious auuuuuugh I want to lick it. And maybe this is controversial, but I think it feels a lot better than the SP. The only thing it's missing is a backlight, but there's ways to rectify that. It might be my favorite Nintendo handheld ever. And there's a ton of contenders (DS Phat and Lite, the original Game Boy, the Game Boy Pocket, the Game Boy Color, the 2DS XL and the New 3DS ugh god they're all so good so so so good Nintendo's handhelds rule they're amazingly good). The Micro is pretty lovely, too. My girlfriend owns this awesome thing that I've started to use as my main GBA. Also Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Wario Land 4 and the first Wario Ware... ugh I love those games so much. I got a lot of mileage out of the Advance Wars games, too, when I was young. ____________________ |
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Flygon Member Level: 20  Posts: 11/78 EXP: 40912 For next: 1527 Since: 09-06-12 Pronouns: Not Fussed From: Victoria, Australia Since last post: 53 days Last activity: 16 days
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| The audio subsystem might have been garbage, but there was still some absolutely fantastic composers for the machine...
A shame most of their works only had good fidelity with the advent of PC-based players. Ian Stocker, in particular, has been digging up their original tracker files for GBA software they worked on, and uploading them to YouTube. It's funny that such an iffy audio subsystem could drag out some killer tracker musicians. The graphics hardware was at least kickass!... Except for the bit where the original backlight-less GBA screen was complete garbage. I heard that the story behind it was that they originally designed it around a backlight, then the backlight got removed because it used up too much better, and then they didn't replace the LCD with the type the GBC used where ambient light reflected better onto the pixels? I don't remember the exact details, but it's a complete mess. As for the games I actually played through as a kid. I barely had many. I didn't have a flashcart (nor had I yet to know they existed), and I was essentially limited to getting one game a year, on Christmas. If even that. Money was a bit tight. So all I really had for the machine were Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. Never did have Fire Red or Leaf Green. As much as I wanted them. Actually, that's not the complete truth. I also had Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The GBA version. It's... not really all that good. Pretty art. That's about it. By the time I had gotten to know more of the GBA's library, I was very much a DS gamer by that point. Not a lot of GBA games did interest me. I did, eventually, get a flashcart for the express purpose of playing the MOTHER 3 fan translation, however. And played it on a Game Boy Micro I had managed to obtain by that point. I believe I also played through the first Golden Sun, after being introduced to the series by an ex. I attempted to play through the second game in the series, but the fetch quest I had to go through eventually got me completely lost and confused. I never finished that game, regretfully. If it weren't for the (rather poorly designed) fetch quest, I would have no doubt been able to complete the game. The battle system was excellent. So, that's essentially my GBA history. Not really all that exciting, but certainly with many feelings towards the machine. |
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Kawaii-e Red Cheep-cheep Collecting Dust and Games Level: 34 Posts: 131/217 EXP: 234453 For next: 19198 Since: 08-12-07 Pronouns: she / her From: Schaffhausen Since last post: 38 days Last activity: 2 days
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xdaniel 980 Level: 64  Posts: 779/982 EXP: 2153924 For next: 60173 Since: 12-04-08 Pronouns: he/they From: Germany Since last post: 27 days Last activity: 7 hours
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Julbench3.1 94% full, 55K free, 824K in use The GBA was, and really still is, a great little machine. It has its flaws (ex. no light until SP, no backlight until AGS-101 SP) but those aside, it's a solid system with a very nice library.
Even with the aforementioned lack of integrated light, and only ever having had an original GBA and then an original DS during its time, I have fond memories of being hunched over the machine, under my desk lamp, playing ex. Mega Man Battle Network. In retrospect, that was a terrible way of playing games - however, it was fun regardless. I didn't have many games for it back then, and I still "only" have 34 in total, but stuff like MMBN3, Sonic Advance, F-Zero GP Legend and Gunstar Future(/Super) Heroes, in my opinion, was good then and still is today. I've since acquired and played a lot more, like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Kurukuru Kururin, the Mega Man Zero series, Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen, Puyo Pop, Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure, and so on, and so forth. All stuff that someone looking into the GBA for the first time should at least try out, I'd say. There's also been a couple of games I tried out via emulation first and since bought, mainly some imports like Crayon Shin-chan: Cinemaland no Daibouken (good platformer by Inti Creates of ex. Mega Man Zero fame) or Rockman EXE 4.5: Real Operation (neat if you're a fan of the series, as you can ex. choose your own NetNavi - do note the real-time clock will have stopped working by now, sadly rendering parts of [a lot of?] the game useless). I never thought of the GBA sounding like crap, tho maybe there just were good composers on all the games I played? Speaking of which, again I shall mention Mega Man Zero, because those games have damn great soundtracks - including various OST albums. After all the gushing about the GBA tho, I gotta admit that I haven't played too many of its games recently. I did get Pokemon LeafGreen a couple of months ago and have been playing through that, but on my DS Lite. That game aside I feel like, out of all of Nintendo's pre-3DS handhelds, I've been playing less GBA than GB/GBC and especially DS over the last couple of years. (And as a side note, I personally like Mario Kart DS a lot more than Super Circuit, but then again, I like the original SNES one less than ex. MK64 as well, so maybe it's that style in general I don't like as much. Still good games despite that!) ____________________ cu xdaniel -- Follower of the Church of Madoka -- @xdanieldzd (Twitter) -- xdanieldzd (Twitch) -- stapled tech (YouTube)
 
It doesn't even matter if there is no hope, as the madness of the system grows |
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Xkeeper Level: 263  Posts: 23358/25353 EXP: 297181565 For next: 1778888 Since: 07-03-07 Pronouns: they/them/???????? Since last post: 4 days Last activity: 6 hours
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Originally posted by Rambly The SP has the same problem the old NES controllers had; they're square-edged and not terribly comfortable to use. Didn't help that the buttons were distinctly clicky and didn't smoosh in very far, but that's personal preference. I think the GBC had a better form factor (plus who could argue with atomic purple), but the original GBA was definitely up there. Really, just the era of having that sort of transparent shit in general was really nice  ____________________ (Lv 244 with 229518785 EXP) |
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hydra-calm Member Level: 30  Posts: 165/249 EXP: 164301 For next: 1568 Since: 07-21-17 Since last post: 1.4 years Last activity: 1.1 years
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| Old GBAs are indeed very pretty. I still have mine; I need to clean it up and bring it back into use.
I love the GBA's library to death honestly -- was a large part of what I played growing up. Drill Dozer is a particularly interesting less-known GBA game -- gamefreak-developed platformer that revolved around a drill mech with a shifting system. You got first, second and third gears as the level progressed and could do things like reversing to recoil out of blocks you were drilling into, using the drill to bounce over enemies, putting a propeller on your drill and using it to travel through water, etc. Lots of creative puzzles with things like threaded pipes, fragile timed blocks, ziplines, catapults... The music and art are stellar too, and there are tons of optional levels and treasure to connect where the puzzle difficulty rises pretty sharply. Other than that, the obvious suspects like Minish Cap, Golden Sun, Metroid Zero Mission the Final Fantasy ports, etc. were great fun. It was just an all-around great console IMO. |
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Flygon Member Level: 20 Posts: 12/78 EXP: 40912 For next: 1527 Since: 09-06-12 Pronouns: Not Fussed From: Victoria, Australia Since last post: 53 days Last activity: 16 days
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Originally posted by xdaniel Good composers, problematic sound hardware. Compare the quality of actual game recording to (mildly remastered) original tracker file. A 16 channel track being softmixed by the CPU, and then being PWMized by the actual sound hardware is a recipe for... well, a lot of issues, actually. I noticed that a lot of GBA games I played when I was younger, that skewed towards using the softmixing side of the hardware, tended to sound incredibly muffled and aliasingy. It's a real shame they didn't put in a proper decent 8-16 channel PCM sound hardware inside, much like they ended up doing with the DS. I feel with great honesty it would've helped the audio quality side of things sound so much nicer. Of course, a lot of games also just had rubbish quality soundfonts. Or even inexplicably having both high and low quality soundbanks both inside the ROM - looking at you, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red. |
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xdaniel 980 Level: 64 Posts: 780/982 EXP: 2153924 For next: 60173 Since: 12-04-08 Pronouns: he/they From: Germany Since last post: 27 days Last activity: 7 hours
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Julbench3.1 94% full, 55K free, 824K in use Originally posted by Flygon Well, huh! You're right. I might've noticed the sound being a bit muffled or something before, but just ascribed that to the speaker, and that got so ingrained that I never questioned it again...? Headphones on a real system (well, DS Lite) and even mGBA sound somewhat muffled, now that I take a closer listen - Super Mario Advance's title theme via mGBA, for example, actually sounds kinda terrible. Pokemon LeafGreen's intro and title theme, on the other hand - and both, emulated and via DS Lite -, aren't that bad. ...huh. That's a TIL for me, I guess. ____________________ cu xdaniel -- Follower of the Church of Madoka -- @xdanieldzd (Twitter) -- xdanieldzd (Twitch) -- stapled tech (YouTube)
It doesn't even matter if there is no hope, as the madness of the system grows |
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Q 風のノータム Level: 105  Posts: 2896/2986 EXP: 11977782 For next: 284478 Since: 08-03-07 Pronouns: she/her From: Nowhere Since last post: 51 days Last activity: 1 day
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I'm not sure if it's my favorite Nintendo handheld, but I liked the GBA a lot. I got the standard opaque purple one, which isn't much to look at, but it felt nice to hold. I actually got one before I got any games for it, so I spent a while just playing my GBC games on it while anticipating my first GBA game.
I feel like I missed out on a lot of the usually cited best GBA games. I never played the Metroids, Minish Cap, FFTA, Aria of Sorrow, Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, etc. Actually, most of my GBA games are ports or remakes, but I enjoyed those a lot and didn't have many of the originals anyway. My favorite originals, though, were Pokémon Emerald, Mario & Luigi, and Mother 3. Actually, there was a good while where Mother 3 was my favorite game overall, and it's the only game I own two physical copies of; I have a completed save on each of them, and those playthroughs were before the game was properly translated. I mostly relied on guides and a very basic translation of some of the main dialogue. I never got a Game Boy SP, but I did get a Game Boy Micro. Back in around 2007, I saved up my money for a long time and bought the Mother 3 Deluxe Box, which came with a Mother 3 branded Game Boy Micro (and what would be my second copy of the game itself). The Game Boy Micro itself is really nice to look at and has a very nice screen with adjustable brightness. However, it's just a little too small, which can make it somewhat awkward to play, but it's otherwise my favorite way to play GBA games. By then, the DS had been out for a few years, though, so it didn't see a whole lot of use from me. ____________________ layout by Sofi. |
Scooblee Buster Beetle lesbs pone & cyberdoe :3 Level: 39  Posts: 29/465 EXP: 389354 For next: 15417 Since: 03-19-18 Pronouns: she/her From: Texas Since last post: 274 days Last activity: 8 days
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| as always, there's demoscene showing off with really nice software-mixed PWM audio
so maybe you just need to be a wizard (gosh I love this soundtrack) ..uhm, music gushing aside, I kinda didn't first experience anything GBA until I first got a DS Lite. the backwards compatibility of which allowed me to check out all those games that I always saw on shelves, but could never play nowdays, that DS Lite is worn down (it still works, but the d-pad is real unresponsive so good luck moving right at all) but I bought a wide GBA a few years back and now that's kinda my go-to for anything GB, heh ____________________ Things!: Twitter | YouTube |
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ひりゅう 730 Level: 47 Posts: 26/738 EXP: 721132 For next: 45071 Since: 10-18-18 Since last post: 69 days Last activity: 65 days
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I still have my SP.
Even so far as to get an EverDrive X5 with it not long ago. Been a nice thing to have. ____________________ |
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Xkeeper Level: 263 Posts: 23358/25353 EXP: 297181565 For next: 1778888 Since: 07-03-07 Pronouns: they/them/???????? Since last post: 4 days Last activity: 6 hours
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I forgot the absolute worst part of the SP which was the bizarre, fucked up adapter you had to use for headphones, that basically nobody had. So nobody ever did. ____________________ (Lv 244 with 229554391 EXP) |
NinCollin Cheep-cheep Level: 28 Posts: 167/195 EXP: 130813 For next: 525 Since: 01-08-16 From: Dimension X Pipe Since last post: 3 days Last activity: 3 days
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Originally posted by Xkeeper I have a third party headphone adapter by MadCatz that even allows you to *charge* while listening to headphones! 
The fact that the official adapter doesn't let you charge just completely baffles me. |
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ひりゅう 730 Level: 47 Posts: 30/738 EXP: 721132 For next: 45071 Since: 10-18-18 Since last post: 69 days Last activity: 65 days
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Originally posted by Xkeeper I've got this sitting next to me, actually. ____________________ |
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Narumi Cheep-cheep Level: 26  Posts: 151/183 EXP: 97573 For next: 4702 Since: 02-01-18 Pronouns: they/them From: In a garbage can Since last post: 57 days Last activity: 2 days
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| I liked the original GBA the best because of how easy it was to hold and how well it fits in pockets. Another thing the GBA had was a soundfont that, when used right, it made some awesome tunes.
The GBA Castlevania trilogy remains one of my favorite because of how well Konami made these games. Metroid Fusion/Zero Mission were also great and I spent quite some time with those games. Always wanted to give the Mega Man Battle Network games another go but I just don't seem to have time for them. |
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xdaniel 980 Level: 64 Posts: 781/982 EXP: 2153924 For next: 60173 Since: 12-04-08 Pronouns: he/they From: Germany Since last post: 27 days Last activity: 7 hours
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Julbench3.1 94% full, 55K free, 824K in use GBA SP, headphones, adapters...
"...well, that's stupid." Some bad choices regarding the connectors and the like on this model, I think. Speaking of models, while I haven't actually played it in recent years, I do have a very soft spot for the GB Micro; ex. love the screen on that one, looks very bright and sharp. Got it at the tail end of a vacation in France in 2007, where it was on clearance for I think ~20 Euro. Ended up playing a ton of the aforementioned Rockman EXE 4.5 on it on the way back home - I called the whole thing "the world's smallest PET" 
____________________ cu xdaniel -- Follower of the Church of Madoka -- @xdanieldzd (Twitter) -- xdanieldzd (Twitch) -- stapled tech (YouTube)
It doesn't even matter if there is no hope, as the madness of the system grows |
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| Jul - Gaming - Game Boy Advance appreciation thread |
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Acmlmboard - commit 47be4dc [2021-08-23]
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