If you’ve got the screwdriver, they’ve got the kit.
Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance was, much like its predecessor, the clear-cut winner of the handheld wars in the early 2000’s; not like the competition was half as stiff then. And that’s despite the fact that the original model of the GBA had an infamously unlit screen. Seriously, I was surprised at how hard Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was when I played through it again on hardware that featured some form of backlight; I didn’t remember it being that hard, because I couldn’t see what I was doing the first time through.
But I digress. Chances are, you can get an original GBA model on the cheap, assuming you don’t just have one rotting away in a rawer somewhere. And if you wanted to get some more mileage out of the little taco that could, you could grab a consolizer kit. That said, these typically require some confidence with soldering; which is why it’s a good thing IntecGaming’s released their new GBA HDMI Kit.
All you need is the motherboard from an original model GBA (AGB-001) and the kit (it actually comes with the screwdrivers necessary), and you’re good to go, no soldering needed. The kit uses spring-loaded pins to make contact with the board, meaning no soldering, and you only have to fiddle with a single ribbon cable. It even comes with a PCB to place in the now-(mostly)-empty GBA shell so that you can use it as a controller for the consolizer. It’s also capable of pairing with Bluetooth controllers, including the first-party stuff currently on the market, namely Switch Pro controllers, PS4 controllers, and Xbox One New Version controller, as well as 8bitdo’s wireless line. It can even output via either HDMI or AV.
YouTuber Macho Nacho actually got hands on with the thing. He praised the ease of assembly for the unit. That said, it’s not”perfect”, despite the many nice features it offers over a number of its competitors. Notably, the aspect ratio (both 4:3 and 16:9) is off by a bit from the native resolution of the GBA (3:2), meaning things are either a bit squished or stretched. There’s also the fact that the image quality is a bit softer than you might like, though it compares well to the Gamecube Game Boy Player; it definitely falls behind the crispness of Woozle’s GBA HDMI Consolizer.
That all aside, however, IntecGaming’s kit beats Woozle’s out in raw number of features, and price. Woozle’s kit will run you $160, while the Intec kit is $110, a full $50 less. It is, however, currently only available through Kickstarter, where it’s a little over halfway to being funded at $28,500 of its $49,685 goal. You’ll also probably be waiting a while longer; though they’ve sent out kits to influencers, the earliest backers aren’t supposed to expect their kits until around July of this year. There’s also the fact that the campaign is an all-or-nothing affair. There’s also the possibility of shipping delays, thanks to the tail-end(?) of the pandemic.
Source: Gizmodo
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