very important companion patch:
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the GBA could do reasonably good 3D software rendering given the resolution limits, but the issue is that most of the 3D games that would’ve theoretically worked on the platform were out of vogue by the time it was popular (or else maintained by western devs who weren’t willing to learn enough about the hardware), plus it didn’t really have enough buttons either
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Always annoys me when headlines say “someone did (X)” - you know who did it if you researched, just say their name or address them as you do in the article and call them a modder.
I don’t think that shitty headline is any diminished if it says, “Modder gets PS1 Classic Running on GBA” or even just drop the subject entirely and go for the even worse clickbait title “wow!!! You won’t believe what ps1 classic is running on GBA now!!!’”
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Well more specifically 3d games on the GBA such as the Doom port tended to undershoot the actual resolution of the GBA and do like 160x120 rendering. I gather the CPU is about as powerful as a 286, and that was rarely able to render a full 320x200 VGA screen in 3d (there were always tricks like opaque HUDs/spaceship cockpits, or Wolf3d’s omission of ceiling/floor rendering).
One impressive thing about this Tomb Raider port is that it does seem to be rendering at the full resolution of the GBA.
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a 286 is low I think, I’d put it more like a 386 without an FPU or an 020, plus some fixed-function transforms
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New version of Pokemon Crystal Clear is out. Nothing major it looks like, though.
ETA: Uploaded the patches here:
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I remember playing this on my modded Wii by tilting the Wiimote.
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Kirb-o Tilt N Tumble was pretty magic when it came out. The issue with it was that you had to tilt the system outside of the correct angle to see the screen in a lot of situations.
Yeah, it’s a real weird one, in that the best way to play it is many years later on either an IPS-modded GBC or GBA or an Analogue Pocket.
Original GB can’t play it.
Original GBC and GBA screens aren’t ideal.
GBA SP slots the cart in the wrong spot.
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what you gotta do is hold that game cube with the GBA player upside down and whip that guy around.
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Makes me wonder if you could patch this game and Wario Ware: Twisted to use a rotary encoder
also makes me wonder why I haven’t tried to play a Breakout game with a mousewheel
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Mousewheels have “steps” though, at least mine do. Though I also remember “modding” one once by removing some parts inside to make it feel buttery smooth. Should’ve done the same with the Zowie I had, that wheel was so tough to use, felt like a workout just srolling through a page. But anyway, I think the inputs still register as distinct digital steps no matter what, like it doesn’t feel as analog as moving your mouse does. Which is why it would probably be better to just move your mouse for Wario Ware Twisted.
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That’s what makes it interesting, the games in Wario Ware: Twisted are just polling how far on a line theybare, but the inherent softness of motion controls gives it a loosey-goosey feel. And you can tell it’s not exactly what the developers wanted because so much of it uses the vibration motor to simulate click-steps.
What would it be like with more precision?
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I have two (Japanese) copies of Wario Ware Twisted because I thought the rumble was broken on the first one I got. I figured out you can enable it in the options on the second one. Why is it off by default? Or did the people before me not like to play Wario Ware Twisted with rumble turned on? Like why? Scrolling through the options in the menu felt so good! To my great shame I have to admit that I turned the game off after confirming that it does indeed rumble. So as usual I’m full of poop and do not know what I’m talking about. Which is why I just now put it back in my GBA SP (whose L and R buttons stopped working after my “treatment”, I felt kind of embarrassed and didn’t want to disappoint all those encouraging blood potions, but I should’ve really provided an update in the other thread, I’ll try again with a different type of alcohol, promise).
After playing the Wario story I can’t imagine playing this with a clicky mousewheel. It could work in the options menu, where the haptic feedback of the wheel and the simulated option wheel in the game is a good match. But even there you can move the cursor a little bit without engaging a switch of a menu item, and my mousewheel only engages the tiniest scroll on a web page when it clicks into the next gear, so that might already be somewhat inaccurate, unless mousewheels are polled and deliver position data inbetween gears as well, which they might, I dunno. But the games themselves don’t always simulate a clicky wheel. Or none of the couple that I played did. The rumble was always context sensitive like a “regular rumble” in other games would be. And in the games where you have to swing around the GBA a lot and fast, I really wouldn’t appreciate working against the added friction. (Especially that of a Zowie mouse, sorry Zowie your wheels destroy me.)
So I stand by what I said, moving a mouse around would be a lot better than scrolling a mousewheel for Wario Ware Twisted, and for Kirby too, obviously. But you would miss all haptic feedback. Though there is a rumble mouse! And I had one of them at one point! But the old (Windows 98?) proprietary drivers meant that it was never really going to be useful much. Hmm. I think a force feedback steering wheel could work well for Wario. But flinging a GBA around still seems like the best way to do this. Unlike Kirby this does work in an AGS or even a Micro, so you can see stuff. (And it doesn’t need shoulder buttons, so I can play it in mine too.) The reverse bulge means you have to lay it upside down when you’re done playing, which is no problem, really.
Someone should just mod Kirby to work upside down and then another someone should just release a flash cart with a tilt sensor. Which will probably never happen. Yeah ugh. I’m gonna stop writing and start playing more Wario Ware now maybe.
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After googling my old rumble mouse it seems some new gaming mice have rumble too. I will probably buy one.
Become a popular Twitch streamer, then suddenly start arbitrarily streaming only in Esperanto.
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Let’s see, a full finger extension on my mouse gives me 13 clicks, if we set it to 1.5 finger extensions to go from ‘full left’ to ‘full right’, that gets us about 19 clicks across, or 5.25% travel on each click, or 12.6 pixels if mapped left-to-right on a Game Boy Advance screen. If we combine that with the curved movement (cursors in Wario Ware an s-curve shaped interpolation from old position to new), would the loss in precision be noticeable? I’m not sure, actually, given how much data we throw out from analog inputs already.
I only get eight clicks at most on mine, maybe I just have a shitty mouse. Or shitty fingers. But it is a relatively rare (?) and relatively expensive (?) Logitech MX310 (mouseflex).
Nicely balancing out a cheap DELL rubber dome keyboard.
After thinking on bulgy GBA carts some more I think the conclusion is that it’s absolutely fine to lay your GBA SP down “normally” with Wario Ware Twisted inserted. Looks kind of cool imo:
Original for reference:
And what is normal anyway, maybe I should have been laying down my SP on its top rather than its bottom all along, so that I don’t have to put it in my other hand to flip it open. Off-topic GBA life hacks revealed live itt.
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OH FUCK WACHENRODER IS OUT
https://cdromance.com/sega_saturn_isos/wachenroeder-japan/
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