Game Boy Micro Comments by Tom Bramwell

No score? EG disappoints me. Don't really get Ninty these days.

I'd buy that for a dollar. (If I didn't have an SP).

Love my PSP. Still want one of these though. A proper portable...

They're nice, but mostly pointless.

That said, they could attract a new market to ninty.

Why? Why? Why?

Biggest waste of circuits since Johnny Five.

Just to confirm, I've dropped my PSP from a height of around 1.5 metres / top jacket pocket whilst running and its happily flown threw the air, landing with a loud 'THOONK' against a large metal radiator before sliding across the floor.
Not a scratch. Apart from a white paint smear where the paint chipped on the battery compartment ;p

So your not strictly telling the truth when you say 'not a scratch' ;)

I like this but have too much on my hands with the PSP and imminent DS purchase (advance Wars is going to shift a few units!)

I'm really interested in how decent the d-pad is on this for games like Street Fighter 2 before I purchase.

The original GBA d-pad was fine(ish), the SP one is terrible, as is the DS one. The Micro one looks more like a NES d-pad, which is a good thing, if it feels that way too.

THIS IS IMPORTANT, HELP ME.

Expensive, isn't it?

This will sell to the iPod crowd. Stylish, cool and tiny.

I might even get one... but I am spending my cash on a DS instead for XMas.

Expensive? Yes, waste or circuits? Personally I don't think so.

For the ultimate in portability it dont get much better than this.

I think that this will be a success (more of one if it were £10-20 less!!). In Japan it's been a huge success, selling 150,000 in the first few days, now i know we wont buy them like they do but there are some great games on the GBA platform, and although I have an SP there is something about this that is so tempting!

It also looks cool and it's tiny, and as the world has just gone nuts over the ipod nano, it may do rather well.

I think it looks great. I also think it's a bit useless though.

Hardware sales in Japan this week.
PSP:70,000
DS:70,000
GBA Micro:170,000

So turns out that even the white psp and WE9:UE cant help the psp, but a smaller, pointless GBA with a Famicom face place sells by the bucket load

Hmm - I am not sure whether this will appeal to the 'iPod crowd' as while the iPods do look cool, it is actually only as cool (as you perceive it) as the music you put on it. For me, there are NO GBA games that I like. I am sure there will be people screaming 'what about Mario/Advance Wars etc etc - but no, when i had my GBA SP, I tried loads of games and none of them held my attention. So the idea of a cool, silver tiny console is great until i realise that I will only be able to play exactly the same crappy games...

I demand a score! I cannot function without quantitative assessment of how this compares to Halo!

This thing might be worth a punt if it wasn't so ludicrously overpriced in this country.

The main thing that I've wanted to know (and this review neglects to mention) is the screen size - is it too small to play games on?

And, more importantly, will I be able to play Gunstar Super Heroes on it without getting hand cramp (and possible eye strain)?

Evidently Nintendo has some really good designers in their company and they CAN design things.


So why didnt they work on the NDS!?!?

"silly little peripheral that I've never been able to find"

I don't think you're looking hard enough. Just about every Game and Gamestation store sells those headphone adapters.

Kay

Check out

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/micro/index.php

Lots of GBM stuff - some very silly, but somewhere he actually shows you what the games look like on screen, and they look very good, even text.

satisfies those elements of the hardcore with plenty of disposable income - the sort of folks who saw the Famicom (NES) faceplate and thought, "Crikey, I'm sold.". That's me, well it is if you take away 'the plenty of disposable income' :( even less now. But I do have a Famicon Micro.

/dances

The d-pad is FANTASTIC. The L and R triggers are "Hmm".

You have the Famicon one - how cool, Lik-Sang have just confimed my back order is now on it's way - I'm so excited!! Actually more so then when I got my DS or PSP!

I know I'm sad.

/checks collection of Mario tat *sigh*

Well im not interested. But it seems the japanese prefer small gadgets over huge heffers (such as the xbox). Last weeks Japanese sales:

Game Boy Micro 48.55%
Nintendo DS 20.57%
PSP 20.00%
PlayStation 2 6.95%
Game Boy Advance SP 3.18%
GameCube 0.54%
Game Boy Advance 0.18%
Xbox 0.03%

Total 100.00%


Which is kinda interesting... Maybe.

True, the Famicom version is the one that's really tempting me.

I was sceptical at first, but now I understand Nintendo's way of thinking - in Japan at least, where people are obsessed with small gadgets, this was always going to be incredibly popular. I don't know how it'll fare in the UK - it won't steal the PSP's thunder, but I can still imagine a lot of people (with money to spare) looking at it and thinking 'Wow, that's so small!'

Is text legible on this thing? Games that have been around for a while were designed with a bigger screen in mind. That would suggest that text is going to be too small to be comfortably readable on this...

"Biggest waste of circuits since Johnny Five. "

My father was a technical assistant on both the Short Circuit movies, and I'll have you know that for all the puppeteering that went on (i.e. faking robotic movements and such) there are some true robotic feats going on within that robot, due in no small part to my father's passion for robotineering.

I take great offense to what you've said, as you obviously have no clue about the hard work and effort my father put into that robot, even if it wasn't really a robot and was more like a puppet, but with wires and camera irises and stuff.

What you don't know is that my father wrote up plans for how Johnny Five could be made to actually WORK! His plans were dismissed as a crackpot fantasy by the Director, Special Effects Supervisor, Osbudman, and Writer (though what a writer knows about robotics, I have no idea). After Short Circuit 2, he left the movie industry to work on his dream. He's been in the shed ever since. Simulations he wrote in the mid nineties showed that an excess of voltage resulting in electricity jumping between R15590 and C562 COULD result in the system software becoming self aware.

So FUCK YOU! Johnny Five COULD have been real, and if he's not dead yet, my father will prove it!!

That film is not so much "Science Fiction" as "Science... Maybe?".

LOL

Good good, d-pad is good! But now I have concerns over the L+R triggers. Damn.

Cheers jiroczech!

When are the new style GBASP's coming out? Are they out in the US already?

hey bezzy, is your father Chris Ross? if not did you father plug in lights on set?

Three handhelds on the market, all around the same pricepoint. Nintendo have gone bananas.

Anyway there's no point trying to make a Gameboy cool, because it just isn't. It's not going to woo the iPod crowd (as some optimist here suggested) - it is more likely to end up in a few Xmas stockings with copies of Pokemon. It's a dinky little toy, and quite nice at that, but it needs to be sub-50 quid.

"My father was a technical assistant on both the Short Circuit movies"

wow.. I bow down before you! Thats soo cool! :-)


As for whether or not it'll sell.. Looking at japanese market, it already is.. quite substantially so. Over here, people are quite happy to trade in their ipods for smaller ones, subsequently having a handheld console which looks "less kiddy" (as you guys like to say) and actually fits properly into your pocket may work over here too.

Doesnt interest me in the slightest as i have a DS (and i really do wish they'd redesign that to make it smaller).

I loved the Short Curcuit movies - repect ;-)

Chris Ross has NO VISION. He is stuck in a strange mind set where he thinks that everything in a movie should be an ILLUSION, like smoke and mirrors and manipulation of interpretation.

THAT IS WRONG AND EVIL.

My dad is from the school of thought that you should make everything look as real as possible by making it actually real. That goddamn robot could have worked! He made the circuit diagrams and everything!!

Anyway, my father gave the film the Alan Smithee treatment because he was so appauled at this special effects fakery. MAKE EVERYTHING REAL DAMN IT, STUPID HOLLYWOOD! MAKE THE EXPLOSIONS ACTUALLY BLOW UP THE BAD GUY LIKE A SNUFF FILM. It would make it more believable because IT HAPPENED.

Bezzy, you're insane.

Ahh, or am I the only SANE one?

Ahhh.

bezzy, FYI (and to use a quote i use very often, i cant remember who originally said it):

'they didnt leave the planet to make fucking Star Wars'.
Chriss Ross was a very capable guy.

oh yeah!

"bezzy, FYI (and to use a quote i use very often, i cant remember who originally said it):

'they didnt leave the planet to make fucking Star Wars'."

Well, my point exactly.

I think the comment on a waste of circuits regarding Johnny Five was more that the character the obviously very-well-made-puppet-with-robotic-shit-on was supposed to be, was an advanced killing machine, but turned out to be a peacenik hippy buttmunch. In the imaginary story. Thus a waste of imaginary circuits on an imaginary robot for the imaginary military.

Didn't stop the movies defying physics and managing to suck AND blow at the same time, though.

I am so getting me one of these! I only wish that the colours over here were the same as in Japan. :(

Johnny Five looked too flimsy, one AT rocket and he'd be scrap metal.

Was I the only one that found the scene in Short Circuit 2 where he gets beaten up and hit with an axe quite disturbing?

Nintendo should strike a deal with Nokia and produce a mobile phone that'll play GBA games as well

lol, no Bezzy, that wasnt your point :D

Those sales figures for the Micro massively depress me.

IT'S A FIVE YEAR OLD MACHINE. BEING SOLD TO US. FOR THE THIRD TIME.

I'm not sure why so many are suggesting Nintendo has lost it. Surely, attacking several market points with several models makes more sense for a company (see also: iPod) than releasing one model and, if you want something different, exclaiming "fuck you!" (see: Sony).

Was I the only one that found the scene in Short Circuit 2 where he gets beaten up and hit with an axe quite disturbing?

Only in that he recovered, to SUCK for another hour.

"the peripherals cost extra"

When don't they?

The faceplate stuff adds some value there and, to a lesser extent, satisfies those elements of the hardcore with plenty of disposable income - the sort of folks who saw the Famicom (NES) faceplate and thought, "Crikey, I'm sold.

That's - spot on - exactly how I felt. Also, I'm now thrilled to see that my Famicom Micro has finally been sent from Play-Asia.

As for the games, I believe there are quite a lot of excellent games available, so no worries there. Metroid series, Super Mario Advance series, Donkey Kong Country series, Zelda: Minish Cap, Mario & Luigi, Tony Hawk, Golden Sun, Fire Emblem, FF Tactics, Castlevania, Astroboy, WarioWare etc. Seems I won't be having problems filling it with goodness..