gametime

got my adorable orange japanese gamecube and gameboy player set up. i was worried about reports of the ‘frame’ around the gameboy image, but it’s totally cool. twenty options, number one is just the screen casing and blue shell of a gameboy advance, number 20 is a blank black frame. perfect.

also, you can zoom in so that it’s just letterboxed. and when you’re playing original gameboy games on this(which you can do, because those things predate region-locking) you can use the same shoulder buttons you did on the gameboy advance to pop the old square image out to fill the widescreen.

essentially it’s a perfect gameboy advance emulator, with one special trick; all those gameboy advance games that use a wierd isometric engine and look gorgous in their 16-bit glory, but are awkward to control with a diagonal world and horizontal d-pad? totally easier with an analog stick.

i spent about five hours playing baldurs gate advance, and that was supposed to just be a quick test before i popped in a dozen other games that i haven’t tried out yet. i looked up and it was midnight and i hadn’t eaten.

now i’m going to have to pick up metroid 2: the return of samus, and all the other gameboy advance games i’ve had on my list. this is absolutely my favorite thing ever.

makes up for the classic arcade star wars game, on the rogue squadron 3 demo disc, being insanely hard to control with an analog stick. maybe an actual joystick? maybe not. it’s just too sensitive. and there’s no settings! but it’s a glorious port even so, and now i have it forever. i wonder how it’ll play with a wii-mote?