Streakmachine

2012-04-11

Retro review: GameBoy Pocket

You might know that I love retro video games. I enjoy playing games of the 1980s and early 1990s, most of the time a lot more than I enjoy modern games. For me the simple graphics and relatively primitive sounds capabilities of these old consoles have all the charm in the world, and since I haven’t played all the available games, there’s still a ton of fun for me to discover. Pretty impressive when you consider the advance of technology in the last 30 or so years.

The GameBoy was a huge hit when it came and portable gaming is still all the rage these days. Sure, for a lot of people it takes place on a smartphone or tablet computer instead of on a dedicated games device, but portable gaming is very much alive and well. But as other turn their attention towards playing the latest games with the most realistic graphics and orchestral scores, I turn my attention towards one of the better improvements Nintendo made to the original GameBoy, namely the GameBoy Pocket.

Launched in 1996, the GameBoy Pocket was a pretty big step up in many aspects, while still, in basic internal technology, being the same GameBoy that launched 7 years earlier. Today, I still find it to be a great portable games companion and one I got more or less specifically for Tetris enjoyment during breaks at work. It has since joined me for several gaming sessions out in the wild, as long as the seasons have allowed it.

Screen

One of the best improvements Nintendo made on the GameBoy Pocket was the screen. Instead of having to deal with the black on green screen of the original, the new screen is more of a black on white affair, and a whole lot easier to see what was going on. It still suffers some of the drawbacks of the original and the age of the device does it no favors, mine often displays signs of ghosting in fast maneuvers in some games. But by and large, it’s not a bad screen and it’s still a big step up from the original GameBoy.

The negative aspects of the screen is that it’s covered by a protective plastic that makes it difficult to see in some light conditions. Direct sunlight tends to be less of a problem, but sometimes it just reflects too much light. There is also not lighting of any kind built into the device, so playing in a dark room is pretty much hopeless. There is a way around the issue of having to light, but it requires some fairly heavy modifications to the unit.

Sounds

It’s the same lovely 8-bit joy and fidelity of the original GameBoy, only in a smaller package. If you love 8-bit sounds and music, the GameBoy Pocket doesn’t disappoint unless you hook it up to an oscilloscope to check the waveform. It might be a bit different from the original GameBoy, but I think it sounds as it should.

Ergonomics

Personally I think that the GameBoy is one of the best portable games machines, simply because it’s very comfortable to hold. Compared to a lot of portable games consoles, it’s a bit big and a heavy, but I find the size and weight adds to how comfortable it is. I have little trouble playing for as long or as short a time, simply due to feeling uncomfortable.

With the GameBoy Pocket, that’s not quite the case all the time. The smaller size makes me bend my thumb a little bit more for the A and B buttons, which after a while gets a bit cramp-like. The thinner case design also means I have to hold it in a different way and it just doesn’t quite feel as comfortable as the original.

As far as the d-pad and the buttons go though, it’s about the same level of responsiveness and comfort as the original. Nintendo made a good job of keeping the buttons have the same level of quality as its predecessor, even if they didn’t manage to make the GameBoy Pocket quite as pleasant to hold. Nevertheless, given how portable it is in comparison, I’d say it’s an acceptable trade-off.

Left to right: Original GameBoy, GameBoy Pocket, GameBoy Color, iPhone 3G

Battery Life

For any portable games machine, battery life is one of the most important aspects. The SEGA GameGear is one somewhat famous example with a constant hunger for new AA batteries and relatively short play time. Fortunately Nintendo chose to make the GameBoy Pocket a very power efficient device.

The original GameBoy was pretty good when it came to staying alive on one load of fresh batteries, lasting some 10-12 hours. While the GameBoy Pocket doesn’t improve on the original design in more ways than that it’s smaller and more portable, it maintains the same battery life of around 10-12 hours. Quite impressive when you consider that the original GameBoy required 4 AA batteries, while the GameBoy Pocket takes only two AAA batteries.

Game Library

All of the original GameBoy titles run excellently on the GameBoy Pocket, leaving you with some 800 games to choose from. Since they’re not made anymore, the used market is the only way to get them, but the good news is that they won’t dig too deep into your wallet. You can get a whole bunch of games for very little, and that includes some pretty darn good games, might I add!

Conclusion

The GameBoy is one of my absolute favorite games consoles so far and there are an awful lot of great games available for it. Since the advent of affordable and capable rechargeable batteries in AA and AAA configuration, it’s no problem keeping the game on in the older GameBoy devices. The GameBoy Pocket has the great advantage is standing with one foot in retro land and the other in slightly more modern technology, enabling it to be smaller and a lot more “pocketable” than the original. It might not have the awesome ergonomics of the original model, but it delivers on all fronts to more than make up for it.

It doesn’t have Angry Birds, but you won’t run out of new games for a while!

DISCLAIMER: I don’t care much for Angry Birds.

2012-04-10

Boing Boing: Secret history of the near-construction of a lifesized Starship Enterprise in downtown Las Vegas

If they had built it, I would have come. Most likely several times at that. I mean, a real, 1:1 scale U.S.S. Enterprise (Enterprise-A judging by the concept art). For me, that would have been awesome beyond awesomeness.

And then, of course, someone had to raise the red flag. Grr!

2012-04-09

App Store Translation Woes

I took a look in the games section of the App Store and I happened to find a few things that make me rather irate. Few things manage to consistently upset me as much as machine translations or just poorly performed translations, specially in software, but otherwise too. Sadly, I see no other explanation for what met my eyes than that Apple has, for some reason, managed to accept some sub-par translation work into their system.

To clarify my complaints I took this screen shot and marked the errors I saw. Let’s just say I’m not impressed. (full resolution picture here)

“Åtgärd” is not a games genre. It’s the exact translation of action, as in that you must take one. If you ask any gamer, I don’t think a single one will think about “action games” if you tell them to explain what a “Åtgärd” game is.

“Spelhall” might be a nice way to describe the place where you can find lots of arcade machines and other games, but it’s still not what we call arcade games. They are called “arkadspel”, amusingly enough. If you want to make it short, just go for “Arkad” and most people will understand just fine.

The headline for the sub section of the App Store also bugs me a bit, since it’s simply not translated. This despite the fact that most other places of the App Store are indeed translated. Call me picky, but a company that has been very good at making consistent computer software should not be making these mistakes, right?

I would like to say that this highlights the need for proper human translators, rather than just running things through a machine translator, like Google Translate. A computer still doesn’t know what the heck the context is, even if you provide it with one, and you get this kind of lackluster outcome. Far from the impressive and easily accessible virtual store for applications I know I would like to visit. Heck, I’m sure there are even more horrendous examples in the bowels of the App Store, but I just can’t be arsed to go look for them. This is bad enough!

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Spilling the beans properly

Since I’ve been getting a few questions here and there, a few people already know about it and I haven’t exactly been making a big secret of it for that matter. I thought it would be a good time to spill the beans properly once and for all.

I’m writing a book.

Yup, it’s all the rage right now, but I’ve been writing a few books over the years, some of which never really left the outline stage and some that became a rough draft. This time around I’ll actually finish the whole thing up and publish it, for sure. Hopefully some people will even buy it. Given how I’m a completely unknown person I don’t see how any publisher would touch me with a 2 meter stick, so it’ll be self-published on all the usual places.

I won’t give away too many details about it, partly because as I’m neck-deep in writing things, it can change an awful lot in a very short space of time. Just know that this book is fiction and in the sci-fi genre. There will be some laughs, some action and maybe even a few kisses if I can find some volunteers for that. Have any idea how tough it is to make fictional characters interact with each other like that? They have to be motivated, payed, have their own fictional trailer. It’s a mess!

Of course a book doesn’t grow out of nowhere, and I have in fact been tinkering with it for some time. If you have been paying attention to my twitter feed over the last few months you might have seen that I have been dropping some statistics on my writing, like the amount of words I’ve managed to write in a day. I suppose, in some regard, I’ve been writing this story for years, just that I haven’t been able to distill it down to what I wanted until now. The characters and their motivations started falling into place, I had the main plot figured out and I even tossed in a few good twists and turns for good measure. Basically, it started reaching critical mass.

Being a serial book writing failer, I’ve at least learned how to not write books. Lessons learned from all my previous attempts have made it into a work flow I’m fairly comfortable with. So far it’s helping me make progress on this book, so changes are I’ll be repeating this a lot in the future. Heck, maybe I’ll even write a book about it!

I do have a small backlog of things that I might end up dealing with in the near future. My “unfinished” folder is a scary and vast plane, filled with things that could have been, but have yet to be. But that’s the wonderful thing too, since I can now pick up one of these older projects, dust it off and make it into something I’m proud of. There is both fiction and non-fiction down there, so you won’t find me sticking to only one thing.

As I feel right now, I’ll be writing a lot more in the future and I’ll be putting out more books as I manage to complete them to my satisfaction. Not everybody will like my style or the genres I will move in, but I’m ok with that since it’s impossible to please everyone. I just hope that some people will like my stuff and spread the word. I’d love to make at least a bit of money from this, enabling me to continue writing in the future.

Stay tuned! More details as this story develops.

Update 09-04-2012 09:45:

Davy Buntinx spotted a mistake where I said the book is non-fiction. It is, of course, fiction. The error has been corrected in the text. Thanks for the heads-up!

2012-04-08

Macworld: What you need to know about the Flashback trojan

Lots of good to know information about Flashback and how to deal with it in this article by Rich Mogull. I recommend a read!

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2012-04-07

iPad as a Mac Retina Display - Matt Gemmell

I have seen a lot of commentary about the whole Retina display stuff on Macs, but most of the people who have weighed in so far have either gotten themselves lost in tech they didn’t quite understand, or they just had one heck of a hard time putting it into words that made sense.

Enter Matt Gemmell:

Now, when you have a high-resolution display, you have two options for how your software (or operating system) makes use of it:

You can draw everything using the same number of pixels as before, thus making making everything physically a quarter of its old size. That means that things will be tiny, and probably hard to read.
You can draw everything at the same physical size as before, and take advantage of having four times as many pixels in that area to make everything four times as detailed. This is what iOS does with the Retina Displays on the iPhone 4/4S and the new iPad. This means everything looks much more beautiful, and the same physical size as it always was.

I think Mr. Gemmell really put this into the right words, and in such a way that almost anyone should be able to understand it now. Do go read his whole piece, as the rest is just as good!

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John Moltz - Flashback

Mr. Moltz gives some perspective about the current ongoings with the Flashback trojan that have managed to infect some 600.000 Macs around the world.

Quite a few things about this whole thing have surprised me quite a lot.

There has been no mass media outcry and loud screaming about how insecure Apple’s products are, as I personally expected there would be when something of this magnitude occurred.
Many Mac users apparently such at applying the software updates in a timely manner.
Most people make a faulty assumption about that OS X is now as insecure as can be, while in the grand scheme of things the amount of infected macs are somewhere around 0.5% of all, globally speaking.

Now don’t misunderstand me and assume that I don’t think this is a serious issue, because I do. This is by far the largest outbreak of malware we have so far seen in the life-span of Mac OS X. Comparably, the previous “well spread” forms of malware wouldn’t have registered even a small blip on an appropriately calibrated radar, so to speak.

I’ll have to keep saying it, I guess:

Think twice about what you do and where you take your computer online, don’t trust everything you see and please try to apply system updates as soon as you can. For all our sakes!

2012-04-05

Egg Freckles: Snow Leopard Recovery

Thomas Brand is at it again and shares his ideas on how to make a recovery partition if you, like me, are still using Snow Leopard. A very good read, and not a very difficult process to go through. Well done, Mr. Brand!

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Linux Tycoon

You know of all the other tycoon games out there. Well, there’s a new kid on the block and it’s Linux Tycoon. Start running the distribution of your dreams and wow the world. It’s a game of course, so you don’t even need to know how to write code yourself.

[Via: Engadget]