Category: Game Boy Advance

Revo K101 Plus - Hardware Review

20/2/2017

Blog post by Gemma @ Juicy Game Reviews / TheGebs24

The Revo K101 Plus is a neat little GBA clone device & more

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was Nintendo’s fourth major handheld gaming device following the Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Colour. Released in 2001 (firstly in Japan) the Game Boy Advance went on to sell a monumental 81.51 millions units worldwide. Despite the Game Boy Advance not being backlit the device had a powerful impact on gamers across the world including myself with solid titles like Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. The Game Bay Advance evolved in to the the Game Boy Advance SP (a front and backlit model) and later again in the Game Boy Micro. Overall the Game Boy Advance family had a production life of six years with the final Micro produced in 2007.

Nintendo seemed to have a monopoly on the handheld gaming market unlike Sony who clearly didn’t give the PSP or Vita enough love. It comes as no surprise that there are a plethora of clone devices on the market that attempt to thrust the Nintendo handheld games to the next level. Boasting things like crisper sound, sharper picture quality and so on. The Revo K101 Plus falls right in line with that current ethos. It is a GBA clone device (in varying colours and transparencies) that packs an immense punch when it comes to picture quality and sound. Not only does it run original Game Boy Advance games but there’s a Revo cartridge that allows you to insert a micro SD card in to the device. Original Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance roms can all be played from the micro SD card. Original Game Boy and GBC carts will not work with the device.

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The Modded Game Boy Advance - Brighter GBA games for all

22/1/2017

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Guest Blog post by: Robert @ C4ke

The Game Boy Advance & Colour family with a hint of cheery spice

During the lifespan of the Game Boy we've seen numerous iterations of this device brought to us by Nintendo. It all started with a tiny monochrome display with its distinctive olive green colour scheme. While the competition used high-end processors and colour displays Nintendo used cheap and readily available components. With an impressive 10 to 30 hours of battery life and games such as Tetris and Super Mario Land 2 the Game Boy's success definitely did not short-lived.

One of the key elements for the Game Boy's success is simultaneously also its biggest flaw, which is the non-backlit display causing many third-party add-ons to improve the experience in low light conditions. Who doesn't remember the Worm Light? This problem kept existing on the GB's redesigns and its successors, with the exception of the Game Boy Light (only released in Japan) and the Game Boy SP.

One of my personal favourite handheld gaming systems is the Game Boy Advance. I like the way it fits in my hands just as a normal controller. Though released in 2001 it still had a poorly lit display. Not much later after the official release of the GBA we saw the release of probably one of the first modkits in 2002, the Afterburner modkit. With this modkit you were able to add a frontlight inside the GBA that greatly improved the screen visibility.

At the end of the Game Boy's lifespan we received the infamous AGS-101 model, the official Nintendo GBA SP handheld device with a backlit display! This screen is absolutely stunning to watch and enables the player to almost play anywhere anytime no matter the lighting conditions. Thanks to the modding community we are now able to combine best of both worlds; The original GBA with an AGS-101 backlit display giving us excellent ergonomics with a stunning display! I've been able to get one of these modded GBA's myself recently.

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