Gameboy Player Impressions

[cartman]

SS004,

It does come in Spice, that is the colour I have

[wod]

What colours do they do them in?

Is there a Spice one?

theres black ,indigo, platinum, spice (jap version)

and just black i've heard for us version

[Tokuda]

I am going to get a silver JPN GBA player now and use it with my US cube.

I know that I have to use freeloader for it to work, but could somene tell me whether you have to use the freeloader disc to make the GBA player work everytime, as I might just nab a mates freeloader for a bit if its only needed the once, rather than forking out for a freeloader disc simply to get my GBA player to work? (I would never use the freeloader disc for anything else anyway).

[Square]

From NCS:

Two minor niggles: A Japanese region-encoded boot disk must be loaded up each and every time you play Gameboy Advance games. Nintendo should have encoded the GBA boot code in the GB Player unit itself and then added a toggle switch to go between GBA and GC modes. NOTE: USA Gamecubes require the use of a Freeloader or mod in order to load the GBP boot disk. Second niggle: It's common sense that you have to insert the cartridge before powering up the GBA. Same thing here. You must insert the GBA cartridge before powering up the GC + GBP combo and booting the disk. Insert a cartridge when the GB Player is already on and the screen blares out a warning which fills the screen... Once powered up however, carts are hot-swappable through the menu option without having to go through the boot process again. An Eject slider on the right side of the unit makes it easy to push out a cartridge once you're ready to play something else. Two screws which tunnel up from the GB Player help to lock the unit to your Cube for a secure connection.

[Tokuda]

Cheers for that Pete.

Damn.....

[ThoseOfTheUnlight]

Tokuda bro, I have a spare Freeloader that I dont need, gimme a shout if you want it!

[Burai]

I thought that the GBA player had a cartridge swap fucntion in the menu that powered down the player temporarily, letting you change the cartridge.

It was in one of the pre-release models that IGN tested. Has this function been removed?

[Firsty]

no

from above

It's common sense that you have to insert the cartridge before powering up the GBA. Same thing here. You must insert the GBA cartridge before powering up the GC + GBP combo and booting the disk. Insert a cartridge when the GB Player is already on and the screen blares out a warning which fills the screen... Once powered up however, carts are hot-swappable through the menu option without having to go through the boot process again.

[Burai]

Aha!!! Serves me right for not reading it properly like some kind of c**t!

That's me well and truly shown!

[The Boatman]

Do you have to unplug the modem/BB adapter to plug in the player, or does it use a different port?

[Burai]

It uses a different port.

The modem goes into serial 1 port, the player goes into the high speed port.

[Rabasaurus]

This should cover most things about the Gameboy Player.....

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/gamecube/file/gameboy_player.txt

[mr_sockochris]

Here are some GB Player & Hori Pad impressions i wrote up at IGN





GB Player Box

GB player

GC-GB connection

2 Small Screw secure the connection tightly

GC with GB Player installed

Eject Switch


Installation

REALLY easy, took about 2minutes from opening the box to getting the machine up and running. It all connects perfectly and never feels like you might break the connections *remembers the Mega CD2 connection

Ease of Use

Any, very easy. You need to put in the GB disc into the Gamecube, put in your desired GameBoy game, then turn the machine on. It all loads as fast as the GB games do. Once your game has loaded up you can press Z to bring up the options screens which are as follows:

1. Border You can select what border you would like around the playing area screen. There are 20 of these which are as follows:

1. Purple GBA
2. Yellow GBA
3. Platinum GBA
4. Gold GBA
5. Silver GBA
6. Army Camoflage (very scary)
7. Blue/Yellow Chequered Pattern
8. Red/White Chequered Pattern
9. Green w/ small yellow flowers (scary again)
10. Red & Yellow Japanese design pattern
11. Wooden effect
12. GC & GBA Egyptian Carving effect (very cool)
13. Space Age design
14. A Tetris like pattern effect
15. Red/ Purple frame
16. Blue crayon effect
17. Yellow woven effect with green pattern
18. Outer Space view (my fav)
19. Puple GC with flashing light!
20. Plain Black

Half of them arent too nice, but they first few and last few are rather nice indeed. Though, with the second option, you can change the 2. Screen Size so that it will fill the screen alot more, but not totally. This isnt reccomended for older games, but really looks great for Yoshi's Island and Metroid Fusion B-). 3. Controller Settings is the next option. Here you can choose if you would like to map the GBA's L and R buttons to the GC's L&R or X&Y. I prefer L&R myself. The fourth option is an 4. Anti-Aliaising switch. Here you can alter the screen settings slightly to give a smoother picture. Option 5. Timer I have no idea what this does. When the timer runs out some japanese writing flashes up at the bottom of the screen. Kinda handy i suppose if you just want a short game with your waiting for a TV show to start or you have somthing in the Oven downstairs. You can set it anywhere from 1min to 1hr. The last option is 6. Game Change. Here you can tell the GC to reset the GB game so you can change it without turning the machine off All in all its easy to work out as there are diagrams above each option.

When you want to swap games there is a handy Eject button (pictured above) which works almost too well as ive had a few GBA games fly out at me so far

Another thing id like to add is that you dont HAVE to use the GC pad. Using a link Cable you can use your GameBoy as a controller. Also, you can do 2 player link ups with the link cable (one player on the GBA, one on the TV), and with some games, 2 player on the same screen. (not sure if Mario Kart can, but think it does)

Graphics and Sound

How the games translate to the TV has been a mixed bag for me so far. Most of the games ive tried look great, Yoshi and Metroid Fusion especially, with Bomberman, Advance Wars and Zelda all looking good too. But a few games dont look so good. Suprisingly, Mario Kart suffers a bit of blockyness with the old tracks SNES, and i just tired Fire Pro Wrestling and that doesnt look too good, but then, it never did on GBA. Also, the old GB games dont look to hot too, but i didnt expect they would. As i said earlier, there is an anti-aliasing option and this works great on some of the slower games like Zelda, but i found that it made faster games look at little blurry so its best to keep it on the lower setting. Sound is suprisingly good too, now in proper Stereo sound (GBA only has a mono speaker). In Mario Kart i noticed little things in the music, mainly in the left speaker, which were not audible on the GBA without headphones. Metroid Fusion and Yoshi's Island sound even better than they did on GBA. I tried them with my reciever on a simulated DPLII setting and they sounded brilliant, especially with Fusions 'headphone' setting turned on.

Anyway, Its out here in the summer some time i believe and id definatly reccomend it to anyone not wanting to do the SP upgrade

Hori 'snes' pad



The perfect addition to the GB Player, and the perfect GC Fighting game pad. For many, the SNES pad is still their favourite, and as you can see, this pad basically IS a snes pad. It shares the same shape and style of the snes pad, but with GC face buttons. The main Stick, Analogue Triggers and C-Stick are gone, but what remains is all you need for perfect GB game controls. The dpad is very silmilar to the snes dpad also (which i regard as the best ever), slightly clickier, but pretty much the same. The big A button is very much suited the GBA games and im glad they kept it that way rather than making the buttons snes-like too. The buttons themselves i think are ACTUAL GC buttons used for offical pads, so its all good quality The only real change is to the rear of the pad. The sides at the back are slightly moulded outwards and fit the hand a bit better

As far as i know, the pad is only for Japan at the moment, but sales have been good from what ive heard so chances are it'll come it at some point. If not, there's always importing. play-asia.com do them the cheapest i think.



*Photo credit to 'mj1108' of ign

[Burai]

perfect GC Fighting game pad

Christ, do IGN actually know anything about games at all?

[mr_sockochris]

perfect GC Fighting game pad

Christ, do IGN actually know anything about games at all?

I wrote that

Admitted it cant touch those wonderful Ascii 6 button pads you can get for PS2, but as far as i know, you cant get them for GC, so it's the best thing for fighting games on GC without buying a stick which is really what i should have put