How the Game Boy Advance's graphics modes made it so advanced

While I was working on Game Boy Color games for Xantera, we were tentatively planning to develop games for the Game Boy Advance before the console had come out. Before that could happen, the company went out of business.

I'm fascinated by the technical details.

The lack of a backlight was a drawback, but later models had one.

I wanted to get a Game Boy Advance. I think I didn't get one because I was busy with a new job and had become more interested in PC games.

I have a handheld that can play Game Boy Advance games. The system's low resolution makes the games look bad, even on a handheld.

Tomy pocket game Pacman

Obviously, not a video game, but I am fascinated by handheld games in general.  There are a few mechanical games that are interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJOQqw6PmA

Touch Me by Atari

Play Almost ANY Pinball Machine for FREE at home!

The Duo We Wanted // RETROID POCKET DUO REVIEW

Earthquake San Francisco 1906

Bowling Tomy Pocket Game

@john2001plus

0 seconds ago

It is like a bowling slot machine.

How Small Can a Video Game Actually Be?

 

 @john2001plus 

3 minutes ago (edited) 

This video describes my early game programming days, starting with very primitive 8-bit computers.

3D Escape 1000 Mazes by Entex

These Arcade Games DON'T Make Any Money?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umEpMKRjk-c

Massive 1966 Sega Periscope Arcade game. Firing Torpedo's is fun!

Never saw this one.  I would have loved it.

I remember playing a standup periscope game in the late 1960s, and I loved it.  I would have been around 9 years old.

It was the first arcade game I played, and it was in a long-gone pizza shop near the river in Madison, Indiana.  

I would take a bigger interest in arcade games in the 1970s.  First was a really lousy racing game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09D8tek091s) in a "dime store" in downtown Columbus, Indiana.  Then I found a mechanical shooting game I liked at a department store.  Then my sister and I became hooked on a mechanical baseball game that was in one of those really small corner grocery stores.

Apparently, arcade games have a long history.

Columbus got its first mall around 1973, and an arcade opened a year later, which changed my life forever.  The arcade started with mechanical games.  The first video game was Pong, which I didn't find very interesting.

I Played 15 Atari 5200 Games YOU Recommended

10 MORE Atari 5200 Games You Recommended

The 20 Greatest ColecoVision Games of All-Time

ColecoVision | The 25 greatest games

Turbo is a questionable #1 choice. Compared to other driving games, it has a fixed perspective. I'd rather being playing Pole Position, which gives a better 3D effect. I am such a Donkey Kong fan, it would have been one of my top choices. The Q-Bert game shown appears to be Q-Bert Qubes.

Donkey Kong (Coleco Handheld)

This would have been fun to play.

Konami Code on an Arcade1Up Ms. Pac-Man?

@john2001plus
3 minutes ago (edited)
Ms. Pac-Man started as a third-party hack of the original Pac-Man called Crazy Otto. As a result, the original Pac-Man maze exists inside the original Ms. Pac-Man, but there is no apparent way to play it.

In the early 1980s, I started a game of Ms. Pac-Man and somehow got the Pac-Man maze for the first screen. This bug was likely very rare because I have never heard of anyone else seeing it. Maybe the glitch was unique to the machine I was playing. In very rare cases, a RAM bit will get flipped or misread, resulting in a bug.

(Chat GPT found a story of one other person encountering the same bug of getting the Pac-Man maze on Ms. Pac-Man.)

The Anniversary Arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga had a secret code to play the original Pac-Man game.  There was even a bug where you could play the attract mode of Galaga for a while.

I would really like it if I could play Pac-Man on my Ms. Pac-Man Arcade1up.

This Vectrex does things I never thought possible

10 Essential Games for ColecoVision

The Best 2600 Game, Period