Aching Brain

The problem with being a geek is that you tend to be prone to sudden fits of insatiable technolust.

The object of my affections today is the Game Boy micro. After a conversation with Pete last night about the deliciously retro Famicom style version (we thought it was Game And Watch) , I decided to check it out.

And that’s when it started to take hold.

What can I say? It’s tiny, so you can throw it in a bag or put it in your pocket without worrying about it taking up too much room. It comes with rechargeable batteries and you can buy a USB charger, so no more bulky power supplies taking up plug sockets. It’s got a much more sensible button layout than the Game Boy Advance SP. And damn it, it just plain looks good. I kind of fancy a silver one with a black facia, where the screen is behind the fascia and only visible when it’s turned on, although that might end up looking a little too much like a PSP.

Ah, the PSP. Much like the iMac and MacBook Pro mentioned in a previous posting, I’ve tried really, really hard to cultivate this sort of lust for one, but so far I haven’t made it. It’s expensive, it’s huge and aside from the Grand Theft Auto game and one that’s a bit like Columns for the Game Gear, there hasn’t been any ‘must play’ buzz surrounding any of the titles that I’ve noticed. It also uses expensive proprietary media (I’m looking at you, memory sticks) and I don’t really fancy the idea of buying movies on UMD disks as I can’t see myself watching them enough times to warrant it and converting them to another format to get a bit more use out of them would be an absolute arse.

Then there’s the GP2X. This one has a few things going for it. It’s cheaper than the PSP, uses cheap as chips SD cards for storage, has TV-out and is very, very developer friendly - it runs Linux (sort porting useful applications like mplayer, VLC, etc should be relatively easy) and has a publicly available Developer Kit and toolchain. The SD card reportedly supports SDIO cards, so you should be able to use stuff like SDIO WiFi cards and the like if drivers become available. The downside, of course, is that there are no recognisable games available for it, largely limiting you to emulators and home-brew stuff. There are a couple of GBA emulators for it, but all I see is poor framerates, lack of updates, trouble and faff. They are at a very early stage however, so it might be worth checking back in six months or so. Battery life is also supposed to be poo and it looks a little chunky compared to the micro.

Consequently all roads appear to lead to the micro. However I am a little concerned that it may be a little too small for my big clunky hands and the cost of the micro and a linker makes it more than the GP2X. I also already have a GBA emulator on my telephone, so it’s not as it I really need a dedicated gaming machine. Oh, and I’m skint. Which kind of puts paid to that one…

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