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| Games,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F5
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How many years of console based dominance? - too many for this old home computer boy for sure. So what’s the most successful system of all time? – check your beliefs in at the door because it’s still that lowly playground fave, the hand-held magic box that is the Gameboy. In spite of the fact that 90 percent of the games are poor-quality franchise platform stinkers and that most new games retail in excess of 25 bob, Nintendo’s cash cow still holds the firmest of grips on the market. It’s a shrewd combination appeal of Tetris, quality Rare Releases ( ‘Donkey kong country’ –oooo-ahh!), and more recently the mighty ‘Pokemon’.
And now things are really set to go skywards for handheld junkies, as Nintendo roll out the Gameboy Advance. With all the hype of WAP phone technology (it’s rumoured it’ll function as an internet phone thingy!), the hardware spec of a PlayStation (it can handle 3-D!!), and all the software back-up a giant like Nintendo can muster, this could see handhelds shaking off the nerd-factor for good. Well as a nerdy Gameboy owner, that’s what I’m hoping anyway, but the true details are slipping through in trickles only. On one hand you have booze-driven hacks like our own Jeff Mantis, who claims to have seen the prototypes running ‘Quake’ at twice the speed of a hot PC, then there’s the more sober reports from other quarters that say it’s not really going to have the mobile phone stuff, but will play like a mini Playstation.
All I know is this, Nintendo have learned from their competitors in the field (specifically the superior underfunded Neo-geo) and have made it play landscape style. Thank god for that. They’ve pulled in chip-sets that allow it to handle better than rudimentary 3-D. And most importantly they’ve boosted the screen colour output so it no longer has that dreary third generation print effect – finally you can play it in low light without losing points off your eyesight. Best of all from my point of view, with the new capabilities of the unit, games producers will be freed from knocking out the same old tired platform scrolling format that dogged so many previous GB releases – no more ‘Rugrats’, no more ‘Smurfs’. Ugh. It’s wishful thinking to imagine that kind of dross will fade out completely, but given the potential of this new pocket magic box, even your hardest-faced money-tight games developer is going to want to take advantage. ‘Doom’ on the bus! ‘Half-Life’ in the post office! – it’s on it’s way.
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