Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Play-Yan gets update

Wired for stereo sound.

News by Ellie Gibson Contributor

Updated on 28 Jun 2005

Nintendo has announced plans to release a new firmware update for Play-Yan, the Japanese peripheral that allows you to watch movies on your Game Boy Advance or DS.

The new patch, which will be available for download on Nintendo's Play-Yan website from July, will enable the device to play back films encoded in the MP4 format.

At present, Play-Yan is only compatible with ASF format MPEG-4 files, which means nothing but boring old mono - but the patch will let users enjoy movies with full stereo sound.

The download must be saved in the root directory of the SD card containing the video file, and you'll need to insert to relevant card whenever playing an MP4 file since it won't update the system's software.

At present Play-Yan is only available in Japan, but Nintendo Spain exec Nicolas Wegnez recently said that "at least some units" will make it to Europe. More news as we get it.

Read this next