Gameboy CT scan – design lessons learned
scanofthemonth.com
scanofthemonth.com
I don't remember why I didn't scan my DMGB. Either I had lost it, or it was too precious to me to risk breaking. As a kid, I bought it with my own money. I was probably 11 years old.
edit: I did find my DMGB eventually when I moved out of my family home.
It's DMG: Dot Matrix Gameboy. It's what the Gameboy enthusiast community calls the original Gameboy. The name comes from the model number:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy#Development
> The original internal code name for the Game Boy is Dot Matrix Game, referring to its dot-matrix display in contrast to the preceding Game & Watch series (which Yokoi had created in 1980) that has segmented LCDs pre-printed with an overlay, limiting each model to only play one game. The initials DMG came to be featured on the final product's model number: "DMG-01"
Haven't seen that domain in a few decades.
My other favorite Nintendo “WTF” is anything to do with the N64 controller, look it up a teardown if you’re bored
I seem to remember you could get the picture to fill up the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if this introduced some artifacts though.
The SP was better, but only somewhat: it had a button for front-lit lighting so the image quality was still pretty mediocre. I presume to save battery life, since a back-lit would have lead to much more light loss.
I've got one, but sadly the LCD has a bunch of dead lines. Apparently, that can be repaired pretty easily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_family#Game_Boy_Light
Then again, experience with hardware design didn't stop Nintendo releasing a critically flawed design for a ~25 year old invention.
- based on Linux
- runs most Linux/Windows Steam games
Cons:
- based on Linux
- runs most Linux/Windows Steam games
Seriously: I think the Switch will still offer the better "out-of-the-box" experience because all Switch games have been, you know, developed for and tested on the Switch.
If the Steam Deck crashes and burns, it won't be because of the out-of-the-box experience, I think. Besides, the Switch's out-of-the-box experience during launch wasn't exactly stellar either: https://youtu.be/Cb-srOfRqNc
"allowing the user to play all past Nintendo games, using the power of Linux"
At least for most folks in the United States, it's illegal to do so. Personally I'd like to see all of the old Nintendo games free to play, but that's not how it works under the current laws.
As a child of the 90s, I grew up in the heyday of wide scale music/software piracy. Unfortunately, now I'm at a place in my life professionally where I'm unable to participate in any of those activities.
The beauty of the switch (and many of the other recent nintendo hardware platforms) is that it allows a legal, low friction, relatively cheap marketplace and device to download and play many of their older games.
It's far from perfect (not all games, reoccurring costs to access, no actual ownership, etc.), but for me, and many other "normal" people who aren't going to to set up emulators and download ROMs, it's not half bad. That's a huge value prop for the switch that the steam deck won't be able to match.
As long as they are willing to ignore copyright law, which let's face it they totally are because copyright law is pretty stupid about this.
> using the power of Linux
Technically accurate but misleading statement. There's nothing particular about Linux that enables this.
> and you can and may jailbreak/root it out of the box
There is no need. It is not locked down so nothing need be broken. It's a PC with an OS and some software pre-installed on it.
You could dedicate an entire thesis worth of information to the DS section alone. This page should've focused on the Gameboys legacy, but I imagine it was difficult to obtain devices to scan, they likely used what they had on hand, and am glad they did create it.
If anyone wants to work together to make scans of more devices, I own a very large number of these handheld devices and would be willing to have them scanned.
Do note that they seem to remove it at the end of the month! You can still see some of the scans from the last couple months at https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com.
But this scrolling paradigm is just fantastic for looking through the CT scans on my phone - I can easily move up and down layers. Kudos to the web design.
The bar at the top made sense for pc, but it's a clear improvement on mobile.
I gave up reading it.
This, however, is tripe:
> For more than 30 years, Nintendo has stayed true to its holistic philosophy that making great experiences is about more than any given component or specification. This integrated approach to design, engineering, and manufacturing has helped them remain dominant in a space where rivals have come and gone time and again.
More like: Nintendo has stayed true to endless recycling of its IP which keeps game development cheap, while underspec'ing their hardware, figuring that game developers will slave away figuring out how to still make games run and users will grumble but put up with abysmal performance and graphics quality.
People might be shocked to know that the switch's giant screen is 720p, 30hz. Even in 2017, that was pretty terrible. They're desperately milking the Switch for whatever they can wring out of it, too - the recent OLED update shows the desperation. They went with a new display technology that adds little to nothing...because the SoC is so anemic, it can't possibly handle higher resolutions or framerates.
Describing them as "dominant" is a joke, too. Nintendo hasn't had market dominance since the NES; their console sales numbers are quite in line with Sony and Microsoft.
RE recycling IP: This won't go well indefinitely (and it seems like they're not introducing anything new), but we're right in the middle of a nostalgia hype, so for now if works very well for them.
For parents nintendo is a guarantee of having access to games made for kids. There are certainly comparable games sold for Playstation and Xbox lines but the price range and advertized games show they are targetting adults. Parents of young kids would tend to stear away naturally.
As a parent I am happy to have chosen the switch for the following reason:
1. Kids can carry everywhere, like they can play in the plane when going on holidays. 2. They don't have to monopolize the main family screen every time they want to play, yet you can still play in the living room. 3. It cost a lot lower than a playstation or xbox 4. Most games have a decent and long enough offline gameplay, keeping my kids away from being online and be exposed to harassment 5. It is not on a phone, so they don't have to own a phone or use mine.
On the cons side it is way to fragile and has been replaced once.
Note: my kids are 8 and 11 and not heavy video game players. They don't have free access to the console, which mean they didn't develop addiction yet and they can spend literally weeks without gaming.
Buy a bad Android tablet or even a good Android tablet and have your pick of thousands of pay to win 'games' and other addiction fuel. At least Nintendo has a machine that lets you have fun with games instead of nagging you for money or likes.
In a phone or tablet where text is the focus and pentile OLED layouts are common the extra PPI is beneficial but for gaming? And when their OLED screen doesn't use pentile?
I'd rather pay less for fun games than more for games that aren't fun but look nice. Microsoft and Sony often forget about the "fun" aspect.
Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Smash Ultimate, and Metroid Dread are all best-in-genre level games.
The reason to choose Nintendo has never been to get top-notch performance or graphics quality (not even in SNES days). Nintendo focuses on delivering a fun experience, often for the whole family. There's more to games than graphical realism and framerate.
Everyone makes consoles and games. Nintendo makes things people actually enjoy.