We all suspected that the Game Boy Advance was basically moribund, because it lacks the high-tech money-printing capabilities of the DS. Confirming our suspicions, Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned in an interview with Kotaku that Nintendo basically didn't care about the platform anymore.
But Nintendo was not the first company to attempt to sell application software on a gaming system, however. That distinction probably falls on BASIC Programming for the Atari 2600. Nintendo wasn't even the first company to sell application software on a Nintendo handheld. In fact, Game Boy non-games appeared in 1991. They didn't change the face of gaming. But they make for an interesting historical footnote now, and isn't that better than selling millions of copies? It is for us!
Continue reading Non-Game Boy: Serious games before they were cool
Backwards compatibility has always been a mainstay for Nintendo's portable systems, with every single new iteration reaching back toward the past to play legacy content. Even the Nintendo DS, third cousin twice-removed of the original Game Boy line, has a convenient second slot to play GBA titles, but it's not perfect. The slot is unable to play original Game Boy or Game Boy Color games, and for us old-schoolers, that's a bit of a buzzkill.
If you're near a Best Buy store, gather up your $2 bills and get going, because they're in the midst of an epic videogame clearance, and you'll want to get there before the unscrupulous speculator types grab all the stuff to sacrifice to the ravenous eBay. You've got to be wily to get to the goods before the FatWalleters and the CAGs!
Excellent -- the rest of us actually have a few games hitting shelves this week, and Japan doesn't have quite the flood they've enjoyed lately, so things are reaching equilibrium. Now let's hope for an upcoming deluge of goodness for everyone. Starting next week, there are some interesting titles heading out into the world ... so let's see what we have to tide us over.
Filed under both tough love and weird news -- a 12 year old boy who couldn't bear to wait for Christmas to open his shiny new Game Boy got to endure a visit to the pokey after mom called the cops. Ouch! The boy was charged with petty larceny, and his mother said she hopes this will calm him down a little, both in school and at home.
Oh no! Kirby: Squeak Squad and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. What's a DS owner to do? The obvious answer, of course, is to forgo buying any holiday gifts this year so that you can instead be assured of enough cash to buy both these games for the really important person here -- yourself. Your friends and family will totally understand. And hey, if they kick you out, at least you can take the DS with you!
Yes, that's right ... the GBA's Wario Ware Twisted, relesed in 2004 in Japan and 2005 in the US, is finally making its way (officially) to Europe. Is there anyone who wants this two year old game yet that hasn't already imported it? And likely for less than the price it's sure to have when it streets.
Quite possibly the only sane thing we've received from Japan this week, the Japanese hardware sales charts show it like it is -- no silly comparisons, half-truths or fuzzy mathematics in sight. The ranking, according to number of units sold:
9,460 (7.17%) 2,997 (13.84%) 21,377 (1559.23%) 1,756 (9.25%) 526 (12.78%) 307 (27.91%)
360 (21.77%) 41 (4.27%) 10 (33.33%) 5 (25.00%)
| Name | Date |
|---|---|
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Bleach: Dark Souls |
Oct 6 |
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Legend of Kage 2 |
Oct 6 |
| Crash: Mind Over Mutant |
Oct 6 |
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Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals |
Oct 6 |
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My Japanese Coach |
Oct 14 |
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Korg DS-10 |
Oct 14 |
| Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 | Oct 14 |
| FIFA Soccer 09 | Oct 14 |
| Populous | Oct 14 |
|
Rock Revolution |
Oct 14 |
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Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia |
Oct 21 |
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Theresia |
Oct 21 |
| Spider-Man: Web of Shadows | Oct 21 |
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Away: Shuffle Dungeon |
Oct 21 |
|
Tornado |
Oct 21 |
|
Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon |
Oct 21 |
| What's Cooking? With Jamie Oliver | Oct 21 |
|
MySims Kingdom |
Oct 28 |
| Ninjatown | Oct 28 |
| The story |
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