Friday, July 6, 2007

Playing GBA games on the DS hurts!!

Well, I wouldn't go as far to say "hurt", but I needed a powerful term that'd make you want to read. Anyway, I played one of my favorite Game Boy Advance games, "Namco Museum" on my DS the other night. The first thing that struck me was the superior presentation of the game on my DS over on my Game Boy Advance. I played it in the pitch-black darkness. I could see EVERYTHING. I couldn't say that of the Game Boy Advance, even in the brightest conditions. The sound was also much better. Some games on the GBA, I'd need to use headphones in order to hear well, and Namco Museum was one of those games. But the sound was perfect on the DS.

Awesome, you say? I'd have to concur. But then after playing Dig Dug and Galaga (my favorite video game of all-time, nice personal trivia for ya), it started cramping my hands. The DS setup (the two screens, etc. Even the DS Lite is bigger than my GBA SP) isn't ideal for playing GBA games (unless it's something like Fire Emblem or Advance Wars) .

I was actually thinking of either buying the DS originally or the SP2 of the Game Boy Advance. The SP2 is the same as the SP1 that I have, but it's much brighter (on par with the DS). I would have probably gotten it if I could have found it for cheap. As it was, it was usually around 80 dollars, only 50 dollars less than a DS. I figured that for an extra 50 dollars, I could have a brand new system with GBA support. So far, it's worked out really well. Nintendogs is still taking up a lot of time, and I'm slowly getting into Final Fantasy III. Going on the web with the browser still sucks though. Last night, I was in bed, I didn't feel like going on the computer, so I used the DS to surf the web a little, and it kept disconnecting. I don't know what else to do, I got rid of Zonealarm (a firewall), and I was right next to the computer.

Well, in the future, I think I'll buy an SP2 just for a more ideal GBA experience and to also be able to play my old Game Boy games. That's a feature the DS sadly but understandably lacks.

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