Did you know that the first issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (and the preview issue before that) was branded as U.S. National Video Game Team's Electronic Gaming Monthly? It's been a long time since we thought about that group, although one of them has come to notoriety recently. Team member Steve Harris is EGM's founder, and many of the guys worked as reviewers and "strategy consultants."
The world of 1989 EGM is a different one than we know now. Companies like Taxan and Beeshu could afford many consecutive ad pages. FCI had its own strategy hotline. It was possible to write neutral-to-good preview text about the execrable Hydlide. And handheld gaming was just about to be elevated to the status of real gaming. Steve Harris's opening "Insert Coin" column refers to the rumor that "Nintendo may be leading the way with a mid-range cartridge system that will play a variety of games on a specially developed 2" LCD screen." Although the magic of that statement is diminished somewhat when a full writeup of the Game Boy, including a picture, appears toward the end of the magazine. Maybe he wrote that before that information came in.
Since we're unabashed game enthusiasts, we appreciate any opportunity to combine our love for modern day gaming with our nostalgia for gaming of the past. That's why we find these DS covers to be absolutely darling. The Game Boy cover makes more sense to have, since the system belongs in the same family tree as Nintendo's dual-screened handheld. Yet, the NES controller is a perfect shape for a DS pouch -- and who doesn't love a NES controller? -- so that works, too.
Should you like these as much as we do, you can check them out at Janis13's Etsy store, along with some other DS cases.
Posted Mar 27th 2008 6:00PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: GBA
Let's face it: we all love the DS, but if it wasn't for the handhelds of yesteryear, we wouldn't be enjoying the dual-screened bliss we do on a regular basis. Instead, our reality would be dark and cold, our fear of what is right in front of us only challenged by our incredible lack of knowing what is right in front of us. It would probably lead us to suicide.
But, lo and behold, the passage of time flowed in favor of Nintendo, as the Game Boy lead to the Game Boy Advance and the Game Boy Advance lead to that stupid Game Boy Micro thing the Game Boy Micro and then, finally, to the DS. But what about all of those great Game Boy games that time forgot?
Well, now is the time to rustle up those nostalgic memories you have pattering around your noggin. The games are:
Rolan's Curse 2
Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters
Mole Mania
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Mega Man V
Kirby's Dreamland 2
Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land
Personally, we would've liked to see Street Fighter II get some love (kidding!). What do you all think? What games do you like? What does this list need?
Making music with outdated electronics is no longer relegated to the GBA Micro. Oh no, you can, in fact, make some great music with a plain old original Game Boy Pocket. And Clay Morrow, the man featured in the above video, is doing just that.
Throughout his interview with Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont (videos by day, vampire hunting by night?), he explains the appeal of using a Game Boy, as well as how to use it. And, we also get to peep some of the sweet equipment he uses to make the whole thing possible.
Posted Jan 14th 2008 6:00PM by David Hinkle
Filed under: GBA
If you dig giant hunks of metal with marker scribblings all over them, then you'll want to cruise by this eBay auction for a Game Boy Demo Vision unit. The dev kit allows your Game Boy game to be displayed on your TV, like with the GameCube's Game Boy Player, only without the border.
As tempting as being able to use it may be, you will need a special kind of Game Boy unit in order to interact with this device. So, unless you have that matching bit, you're not going to be able to do much with this.
Here's an awesome DIY project you can try out with an old Gameboy/GBC game that you're not too fond of -- turn it into a USB drive! Themadscientist101 has a photo guide showing how to cut open a window and shave off some of the inside wall to fit a USB drive into the plastic housing. You won't be able to play the game anymore after modding the cart, but if you use something crappy like Mortal Kombat, that shouldn't be a problem.
Just think of how cool everyone will think you are when you pull out a Pokemon cart to show off the Pokemon strategy guides you downloaded from GameFAQs! The girls will be fighting over you. It'll be like the Axe Effect, but in Pokemon form. For real.
Themadscientist101 also has a Lego USB mod that the ladies can't resist. Jump past the post break for photos of the brick drive.
We were at the GameStop, browsing through the old stuff as we tend to do, when we happened upon a copy of Heiankyo Alien. We were giving serious consideration to buying it, but in the end, the inconvenience of not being able to play it in our DS weighed heavily on our decision. So Heiankyo Alien sits unpurchased and unloved in a glass case, surrounded by copies of Mary Kate and Ashley: Crush Course.
Backwards compatibility may be one of the worst ideas in gaming, but it certainly does come in handy. Game Boy compatibility on the DS would make for a much friendlier device, and one with which we'd be even happier. What single feature do you desire? It could be anything that a previous handheld system has had, or a new feature.
Back during E3, everyone got all excited because they thought some screens for a new Golden Sun game had leaked onto the intertron. Of course, it was fake as we soon learned why someone would play with our emotions in that way. Shame on them.
But, hope returns, as in an interview with Game Informer, Camelot reveals that Nintendo has told them that they want another game in the series. And, like a mob boss running shop on your neighborhood, you best listen to them. Camelot said "We have to do it! Not just that we have to do it, but we want to do it. Nintendo has asked us to please make it. But at the same time we haven't gotten around to making it. We're not really sure why (laughs)...One of the reasons that we haven't made golden sun is because there are so many fans of the game and we don't want to do something half-assed. We want to give it the time it deserves."
While we appreciate the care on their part to create a quality game, one deserving of the Golden Sun name, we think 4 years has been plenty of time to come up with a third installment.
The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at dsfanboy dot com.
The electronic blips and chirps, mingling with the crickets and other evening harmonies, are what draw you in at first. Against a building wall, a projected game of Super Mario World plays, but it's not any level you've ever seen. Nearby, a group of people sit around a Powerbook, one of them shaking a Wii remote while the others watch. Above them all, eleven Game Boys and a tangle of wires hang from a tree. What could be going on?
While riding the friendly skies with Singapore Airlines, one of the crew over at Siliconera found themselves in for a treat. Well, kind of. See, the airline offers emulated Game Boy Color games for use during your flight, to help you stab that foul beast called boredom directly in its disgusting, black heart. While a nice gesture, it turns out the emulation software has some issues.
First of all, there are only two categories of play: Pokemon and Adventure. Also, the titles under the Adventure category suffer from choppy frame rates and overall sluggish play. As far as the Pokemon games go, there is no save feature, hardly making an effort to actually progress in the game a meaningless one.
Other flights, however, featured different titles. Some flights featured The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Wario Land 3. Others even had Picross 2. All in all, seems like a good idea executed somewhat poorly.
The DS has hit the 50 million worldwide mark recently, reaching the halfway mark for the Game Boy's total sales. Sure, the DS is the fastest-selling gaming console of all time, but it still has a ways to go before it reaches the status the Game Boy enjoys. It has taken 16 years for the Game Boy to reach 119 million units sold, and the DS has reached 50 million in only 3 years since its launch.
So, are we taking bets on when the DS will surpass the Game Boy?
While we enjoy hacks just as much as the next blog, we're pretty sure we would never try this on our Game Boy. It's a treasure, to be held tightly at night as we drift off into a dream land filled with plumbers and bounty hunters. Some folk don't see it the same as we do, though, as they gutted open a Game Boy, stuffed it with 1MB of flash memory, a serial interface, and a custom ROM, turning it into the drum machine you see above.
See also: Nirvana: Plugged back in and electronicized
The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at gmail dot com.
Though the Game Boy brand's days are numbered, making way for Nintendo's dual-screened future and profit plans, at least one young gamer is doing his part to keep the old, gray brick's memory alive. Step past the post break for the full story and this week's edition of The DS Life.
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.
Now, according to George Harrison, it's not just Nintendo's "third pillar" strategy that's out, but the whole Game Boy line. He told GameDaily that "This year in our marketing you really won't see much push against Game Boy itself, so it will kind of seek its own level. It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark."
It makes sense for Nintendo not to bring back the Game Boy name when the DS has so much momentum. But, personally, we think it's quite sad to see a Nintendo standard go away. Oh, well, at least we've got the Wii now to take over as the most awkwardly-named Nintendo console on the market.
Since the release of Brain Age in Japan, Nintendo has turned their attention toward casual, nontraditional fare for adult audiences. Much of it, like Brain Age, is casual game material with a slight educational slant, but other successful DS releases, like Cooking Navi and Eigo Zuke, are not games at all, but rather educational aids and tools designed to use the DS's unique interface. They're all doing massive business, which makes it difficult to laugh at them no matter how silly they are.
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!
Did you know that the first issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (and the preview issue before that) was branded as U.S. National Video Game Team's Electronic Gaming Monthly? It's been a long time since we thought about that group, although one of them has come to notoriety recently. Team member Steve Harris is EGM's founder, and many of the guys worked as reviewers and "strategy consultants."
Let's face it: we all love the DS, but if it wasn't for the handhelds of yesteryear, we wouldn't be enjoying the dual-screened bliss we do on a regular basis. Instead, our reality would be dark and cold, our fear of what is right in front of us only challenged by our incredible lack of knowing what is right in front of us. It would probably lead us to suicide.
We were at the GameStop, browsing through the old stuff as we tend to do, when we happened upon a copy of Heiankyo Alien. We were giving serious consideration to buying it, but in the end, the inconvenience of not being able to play it in our DS weighed heavily on our decision. So Heiankyo Alien sits unpurchased and unloved in a glass case, surrounded by copies of Mary Kate and Ashley: Crush Course.
Back during E3, everyone got all excited because they thought some screens for a 
While riding the friendly skies with Singapore Airlines, one of the crew over at Siliconera found themselves in for a treat. Well, kind of. See, the airline offers emulated Game Boy Color games for use during your flight, to help you stab that foul beast called boredom directly in its disgusting, black heart. While a nice gesture, it turns out the emulation software has some issues.
We all suspected that the 
