Gamespot has an excellent video preview of the Gameboy Micro, including a shot of a black Micro without it’s faceplate.
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Gameboy Advanzed, a news site, has a collection of information on the Gameboy Micro. This page would be an excellent WIKIPedia entry.
DailyGame has a nice, fairly hi-res shot of the included Gameboy Micro faceplates.
I’ll be picking up a black Micro on 9/20/05.
I played with one of these at E3. They drop on September 19th for $99. Hard to justify, especially if you have a DS and a GBA SP. Still cool, though.
IGN Hands On with the Gameboy Micro
Paper Gameboy Micro Cutout
Size, Color, Faceplate previews at micro.gameboy.com
3D Preview of the Gameboy Micro
nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk is doing an excellent job of keeping up with all of the recent homebew Nintendo DS progress. You can try all of these homebrew games now if you already have a devkit(I’ve been using FlashMe and an old FlashAdvance 128), or you can wait a week or two for the G6 and the M3. I’m really exited about both products. The G6 has an excellent form factor and tons of fast memory, while the M3 will be cheaper and hold more movies and games, but will be a little more bulky.
Since the DS launched, I’ve purchased 11 games. Right now, I’m agonizing over whether or not to purchase Nanostray. The reviews are pretty good, but I don’t want to spend $30 on a weekend’s worth of fun.
FYI, you’ll notice that some of the games I mention are Japanese versions. I purchased them at Network Video in San Mateo, California and Play-Asia.com. Both stores have decent prices and service.
Kirby’s Canvas Curse(Japanese): Best DS game so far in terms of polish, gameplay, originality and depth. Worth the money.
Yoshi Touch & Go: 2 basic game mechanics(with a 3rd unlockable). Very few actual level designs. Lots of fun, excellent use of the touch screen. I’ve gone back to this game several times. Worth the money.
Nintendogs(Japanese): I don’t enjoy playing this game much, but my daughter really likes it. Usually virtual pets involve monotonous management, but not Nintendogs - it’s very forgiving and easy to interact with for short periods of time. Not worth the money, because it was an expensive import. BUT, the US version is supposed to be cheap. With a UI in english, I’m sure it’s going to be a good buy.
Star Wars Episode III: Not a very good licensed game. Not worth the money.
WarioWare Touched: Haven’t picked it up since I bought WarioWare Twisted. Not worth the money. BUY WARIOWARE TWISTED RIGHT NOW, INSTEAD.
Pac-Pix: Worth the money, definitely. Most unique game experience I’ve had in years. It’s short, but reuse comes with showing it to other gamers. It’s also one of the only games that I really felt used the second screen really well.
Electroplankton(Japanese): Like Pac-Pix, this ‘game’ is enjoyable for it’s uniqueness. Electroplankton also has variety in its favor - lots of cool little mini-experiences. Worth the money.
Super Mario 64 DS: Worth the money. I never played the original, so to me this game has a ton of depth for a launch title. I even enjoyed using the touch screen as an analog stick.
Meteos(Japanese): I’m really tempted to buy the English version now that it is out to see if it is more enjoyable, but I suspect that Meteos is only a ton of fun if you can play it with other DS owners. Unfortunately, I don’t know any other DS owners. Not worth the money to me, but I can see where it would be if my gaming buddies also owned DS’s.
Spiderman 2: Cool 3D/2D effects. Ridiculously unforgiving gameplay. Not worth the money.
Feel the Magic: Very polished, fun game. I really enjoyed Feel the Magic because it combined the mini-game-pack genre popularized by WarioWare with a lot of polish and a consistent feel. Worth the money.
It is called LumineSweeper.
I just contributed $ to the Nintendo DS Homebrew TCP/IP over WIFI contest/bounty as cohmapapp(my IRC handle). I’m looking forward to multi-player homebrew games on the DS!
[Note: for those visiting from EFNet/#dsdev, my nick is cohmappapp]
Today I purchased the Action Replay Max GBA/DS so that I could trade Nintendogs save games with others. There are no Nintendogs saves in the Action Replay online repository, yet(although I think that may be a region thing).
Here are my findings:
Problem 1: When the cartridge is booting, holding A+B+L+R+Start is supposed to erase all the codes and saves. On the GBA SP it does that. On the Nintendo DS, it puts the cartridge in System Test mode. Normally, System Test mode is achieved with A+B+L+R. So… it turns out that there is no way to erase the codes and saves when using the cart with the DS.
Problem 2: Even after deleting everything from the cartridge and it says 100% free, when I try to backup the save for Nintendogs, it says “There is not enough space on the unit to complete this operation.” When I use the System Test, it says that the Nintendogs save is 282144 bytes. The save can still be downloaded from(and, presumably, uploaded to) the device by connecting the USB cable and setting up a transmission from the GBA or DS to the PC, so this is not actually a huge deal.
In the System Test mode, you can see how big the save area is for each cartridge. Looks like Nintendogs is the only serious offender in my collection.
262144
Nintendogs (JAP)
512
Spiderman 2 (US)
Yoshi Touch and Go (US)
Pac-Pix (US)
Episode 3 (US)
Metroid Demo (US)
8192
Super Mario DS (US)
Meteos (JAP)
Feel the Magic (US)
WarioWare Touched! (US)
None (—)
Electroplankton (JAP)
Other facts about the Action Replay Max GBA/DS:
- It runs in GBA mode.
- When interacting with the DS cart, the DS cart is inserted into the Action Replay, which is a GBA cart.
- For the GBA, it does codes, not saves.
- For the DS, it does saves, not codes.
- Saves and codes can reside on the Action Replay cart, on your PC and in an online repository. Data is moved between the cart and the PC with a USB connection.
Using a suction cup, people are starting to get analog stick-style interaction with the DS.
Apparently, it all started on the gamefaqs forums and culminated in this video.
Later in the gamefaqs thread, someone claims that a mouse ball is even better than a suction cup.
My copy shipped today. Can’t wait!
A new team is claiming to have a DS Tunneling solution in the works. Will we be playing Yoshi’s Touch and Go over the internet soon?
I ordered Electroplankton and Meteos from Play-Asia on Friday. They should arrive in about a week.