OLED for GBA

-=Kamikaze=-

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Call me a crazy ******* who deserves to be dragged down to the town square and stoned to death but would the marriage of Nintendo's Gameboy Advanced with OLED screens not be a match made by the holy father himself?

I mean there is right now prototype 15" OLED models which can display 64 shades of every colour. OLEDs trademark is that it’s thin and uses very little energy and the GBA badly needs a display that can produce it's own light. Last I checked the GBA can't produce more than 65536 colours anyway so an OLED display can display every colour the little wonder can produce. Since Nintendo's excuse for not providing a backlit display for the GBA was battery life there is no longer any excuse. They should get off there ass and start looking into this OLED thing so that we can get a new backlit GBA by 2003-2004.

* Edit by Taz-- Removal of strong language *
 
The latest issue of Edge (116) reveals a forthcoming revamp of the GBA. New backlit screen, Clamshell case & change of button layout. No mention of OLED though....

Yummy Fur
 
Curses!
I didn't expect this so soon, anyone wanna buy a used GBA?

Seriously though I didn’t expect Nintendo to even knows what OLED is since it is after all a very new technology which is still being developed. This means that the new GBA (if it indeed is coming) must be using TFT, I just hope it won't shorten the battery life too much.
 
According to Edge, the new GBA will probably use mobile phone (Lithium?) type batteries to counter low battery life. Think I'll wait awhile before flogging my GBA-- I've just put the Afterburner mod in it....

Yummy Fur
 
Sweet!
This was another thing missing on the original GBA, an official rechargeable battery solution.
 
Could be good! Remember this is still rumour, but Edge seem convinced this is going to happen. They say it could appear as soon as late November in Japan, priced at Yen 10,000 ie about £55 !!

Yummy Fur
 
I've been expecting Nintendo to release a backlit GBA ever since the original was released. But god damn only 55£?!? That's really cheap for something that is superior, what's the catch?

It's funny that IGN.com and videogames.com which are where I get all my video game related news from have not mentioned anything about this. They usually know about and report these things sooner that anyone else.

Here is to this little wonder showing up sooner rather than later.
 
The news has been around before the new Edge mag came out I believe, although not at IGN.com since sometimes they steal other people's work and claim it as their own. IGN was one of my main sources of news but now its just gone downhill IMO. Anyway there is an official rechargable battery in Japan for the GBA already I believe but it hasn't made it over here. Chances are though the battery will be of a custom shape so the days of popping down to the shop to get more juice for the GBA will be gone. Lets just hope it gives a decent amount of playtime... 10 hours plus.
 
Backlit screen, new button placement which hopefully ends the shoulder button problems, packed with a rechargeable battery pack and redesigned shell. This puppy could be everything we have ever hope for.
 
I just remembered another feature that I thought the original GBA supported but didn't. I always thought that the GBA GCN link could be used to play GBA games on your TV trough the GCN. It might be too much to ask for but I wish the new GBA will support this. How cool would it be to hook the GBA to your TV and play games on a bigger screen instead of crouching over the GBA's small screen. I didn't buy the GBA because it was portable but because it was going to have great games so I only play it at home. The gameplay screen shouldn't fill the entire TV screen but only 1/4 or less so it won't look too pixelated. Please Nintendo! Pretty please with sugar on top?
 
There is such a device out that will enable you to connect your GBA to the TV via a composite or S-Video connection. Apparently the image quality isn't too bad but its not overly reliable (many yellow or streaky screens). Plus to use this you would have to physically modify your GBA, more than an Afterburner for example. The device also has scaleable modes next to the original aspect ratio and the sound is in lovely stereo (should only play GBA games with headphones or hooked up to an amp IMO).

The original GBA didn't have a video out port at all and since the link only carries data its hard to make a simple connector. I guess Nintendo wants to keep the GBA portable at all costs but I agree it would be nice to play Mario Kart on a bigger screen with a few of your mates ^_^
 
I sure hope that it won't look like that! The flipping will double it's size and make it much less attractive to use in public. And more ram and CPU power?!? what about all the poor bustards who still have the old GBA what will they do when GBA2 games start to come rolling in?

If you ask me this whole thing looks a little shady. I mean November is next month and I can't imagine that the big N would release a unannounced product so soon.
 
Check this out: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/display/activeModule.jhtml

Holy mother of crap on a stick! Looks like my premonitions of a OLED and GBA holy matrimony might not have been that far off after all!

What the hell is the picture of a GBA doing on Kodaks OLED screen technology website?!? The plot thickens! Maybe Nintendo was made aware of this new technology and decided to scrap the current GBA2 design (The one EDGE got the scent off) and returned to the drawing boards determined to make a new GBA2 with a OLED screen and all that that implies.
 
Just thought I'd mention that I have the unit that NeoBlade is talking about - to connect your GBA to your TV.

You unscrew the backof the GBA (srewdrivers provided) and then simply put their back on instead of the original back. No soldering or anything, just slip a ribbon connector into the screen connector inside the GBA.

I want to sell it if anyone is interested, please PM Taz and we'll go through the proper channels. It's NTSC only so your tv needs to support NTSC. We have photos I think.

The best thing I ever did with the GBA was get the Afterburner light installed - it's fantastic



Mrs Taz. :kisses:
 
Kamikaze, I thought the technology you were talking about sounded familiar... www.planetgamecube.com broke this news many months ago but nothing happened since. From what I know its more of a replacement for mobile phone screens than for the GBA, although it could be used on the hand-held of course.

However, Nintendo did sign a new contract with someone (Panasonic?) a while ago to manufacture the new screens for the GBA... So it doesn't look like Nintendo will be using this technology just yet, however I'm sure Sony and Microsoft would be interested.
 
The Playboy and Xboy? Pfft! We already have too many systems out there let's hope that SONY and M$ don't get any bright ideas about challenging Nintendo's handheld monopoly. With such heavyweight contenders as the SEGA Gamegear and the Atari Lynx under their belt anyone would be hard pressed trying to go head to head with the GBA. And specially since this new GBA is coming, I'm already trying to sell my old one. If it turns out to be rumours I’ll just use the money to buy the black version of GBA to match the colour of my GCN.
 
Well... You never know. Sony IMO would be wise to use the Minidisk or MiniDVD storage system for its handheld and equip it with a scaled down EE and GS from the PS2. The only big issue then would be battery life since using such hardware I'm sure would suck up power... IMO Sony would have a very strong chance of denting Nintendo's hold on the hand-held market if they really wanted to. However there are some big GBA titles coming out soon so it might not happen until next year or so.
 
On the new GBA or the long running specilation of Sony and Microsoft's hand held Dom?
 
Nothing new that has't been posted I believe soz Dom. IMO its a bad move by Nintendo so it'll be interesting to see how the public and the rivals react to such a move.
 
Hmmmmm.... I don't mind so much that SONY perhaps tries to venture into the handheld gaming market if their entry is a very potent product. I’m talking about a fast 32bit CPU, 3D capabilities that match and surpass those of PSone , storage based on a cheaply produced media like the minidics and nothing like the expensive cartridges that Nintendo uses and last but not least it’s size should be NO BIGGER than the current GBA.

One thing to bear in mind is that the advantage of cartridges is that they are extremely fast and therefor their content need not be copied into local memory. But minidisc is a disc based media (which the name kind if gives away) and is therefor inherently slow so any console using this for storage would need to have a lot of memory. The Playboy (he he… that’s a nice name for a handheld. Get it? Handheld) should use at least 8mb (mega bytes not those damned mega bits) or more of internal memory. This shouldn’t be a problem as memory is dirt cheap and there is no excuse to be greedy when it comes to this crucial component. And as long as I’m dreaming let’s go ahead and slap a backlit OLED screen on this baby because it makes sense, well at least it makes sense to me if I was building a handheld and load it with a good sound processor.

Next we have the issue of battery life and using my SONY netMD portable minidisc player as a reference I can say that using minidiscs as storage should not be problematic. But once you throw in the RAM, CPU, GPU, sound chip and screen you could potentially run into problems if you didn’t do things right. The screen shouldn’t cause so much trouble since the OLED trademark is it’s uncanny low power consumption compared to LCD and other display technologies. I’m not going to stand here and pretend like knowing how much less power it uses but if it keeps being mentioned I thinks it’s significant. Lastly we have the three chips and as I understand it the smaller you make a chip the lower will it’s power consumption be, so all SONY needs to do is to shrink this chips as much as possible using the newest manufacturing technologies so to lower power consumption. As with the RAM… what the hell do I know? I’m not going to do all of work for those damned SONY engineers let them come up with a idea for a change.

But since we as opposed to Neo don’t live in a dream world I’m going to pretend that even after all the above techniques and more have been implemented to combat power consumption this baby still sucks more than a 2 dollar hooker on speed trying desperately to meet her pimps quota. So what do we do? Simple we pack this bad boy with a mobile phone like rechargeable battery that enables us to squeeze 10h of gaming out of it before a recharge is needed.

Let’s pretend that I pack all of these ideas up in a document, hire a lawyer to help me write a disclaimer that gives SONY the right to use all the ideas within without giving me jack so they can legally look at it and not just send it back. I then proceed to sending the whole package to a SONY executive that takes credit for the idea and gets promoted at the next meeting in addition to getting clearance to go ahead with research and production ASAP. Let’s continue our daydream by pretending that SONY builds a prototype and manages to convince a lot of the PSOne big players of the days past that this little wonder will be a cash cow for PSOne game ports and sequels and manages to secure a sizeable amount of exclusive third party content. We are talking about ports or sequels to such hard hitters as Final fantasy, Metal Gear and quality titles like Symphony of the night. If things come to pass more or less exactly as I have described them then and only then will SONY have a chance to rival and even surpass Nintendo in the handheld market.

Jesus! I’m getting a little turned on writing my deepest, darkest and filthiest fantasies about the ultimate handheld except for the one we are all borne with, well the men anyway.

Alas this is just that, a fantasy which will never come to pass and in reality the products that M$ and SONY will come out with will not even be in the same dimension as my hypothetical machine. They most likely will be plagued by the same problem that killed and buried the other handhelds such as size, battery life and a lack of innovation, appeal and titles so Nintendo will stay at the top.
 
You're not kidding

I said it was a bad idea purely because the original GBA has been out for a year and a half or so... Its too early to step up the hardware IMO but then Nintendo really does have an iron grip in this market segment... Personally I think its down to other 3rd Parties and Nintendo themselves to prevent the GBA becoming a port only hand-held.

Kamikaze has had quite a nice dream there ^_^ It would be nice if it did happen but as you said in your last paragraph such factors are important and its just a matter of exceeding them.

You're pretty much right on a few points as well but since the disks are smaller, the seek and access time will be lowered (as the Gamecube proves) so buffering data into RAM isn't too much of a problem. 8MB sounds alright but RAM as you said is dirt cheap so why not opt for 16MB and let it have fancy features like the GP32 (MP3 player, video player, etc). Also if its a Sony product I'm sure they would want to plug their "Memory Stick" so adding 128MB with such a card could be another selling point.

Battery life is the main killer though but consumption is improving... In 2-3 years time such techniques used for mobile CPUs and graphics chips should filter down and make things more affordable so really its down to Sony or Microsoft to take the plunge.

Right now though Nintendo does have a decent library of GBA titles, add that to the old GB library and thats game, set and match in terms of software support. With Square joining in it can only add to the already impressive support...

I would re-write all of that to make sense but I just got back home from work and want to go to bed -_- zzZZ
 

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