An Ode to the Game Boy Advance
brainbaking.com
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Clock rate of the ARM7TDMI is indeed around double the GBC (GBA runs at 16.78Mz, while GBC runs at 8.4MHz), but cycles-per-instruction is far lower on the GBA's ARM7TDMI than the GBC's Z80-like processor.
On GBA, most instructions take 1 cycle to execute (when running from fast memory). Not all instructions take one cycle, memory Read/Write instructions, branches, and multiplying takes more than one cycle.
On GBC, an instruction basically takes 4 cycles per memory access. This includes the instruction fetch itself, each other byte of the instruction, each memory read/write performed, then 4 additional cycles if the instruction performed 16-bit math. (Also stuff for branches too)
But GBA doesn't always run code from fast memory. It gets the worst-case performance when executing code directly from the cartridge. When running 16-bit THUMB code, it takes 5 cycles. When running 32-bit ARM code, it takes 8 cycles. This means that a game needs to copy code into fast memory if it wants to run at a high performance.
So with the full penalties that come from directly executing code from the cartridge, and you're comparing the simplest instructions, it does end up being only twice as fast. But when running code from fast memory, it's around 16 times faster.
The average mobile phone is smaller than most generations of game boy.
Additionally, unless you’re purposefully buying phablets or only used the mini/micro/sp, device sizes on phones hasn’t been increasing significantly over the last decade. In most cases, it’s the bezels getting smaller and screen sizes growing to be a larger part of the same device size.
Here are a smattering of measurements in millimetres. By volume, modern phones are way smaller. The biggest change is they’re longer in one dimension, but still very comparable. .
Original Gameboy 148mm (height) x 90mm (width) x 32mm (depth)
Gameboy advance 81mm x 140mm x23mm
Pixel 9 152.8 x 72 x 8.5 mm
Gameboy mini 101.5 x 52.5 x 15.5 mm
Gameboy advance SP 82x23x84
Gameboy Micro 101 x 50 x 17.2
iPhone 16 147.6 × 71.6 × 7.8 mm
Taking the pixel vs the advance for volume, the Pixel is only 35% of the GBA, or if you take by area, ignoring depth, Pixel is 96% of the size of the GBA.
If your pockets could fit a GBA, they certainly can fit a standard mobile phone.
There’s always been a market for the large portable console, also with the promise of docking. It’s just that compute was difficult to achieve until recently, and the market for the small end has been eaten by phones, and so they only make the larger end now.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_handheld_game_consoles...
But realistically, there’s always been three categories to personal compute and gaming.
For lack of better words, mobile, portable and home use.
Mobile was the gameboy and now the mobile phone.
Portable back then was the game gear and sega nomad. Today it’s the switch, steamdeck, and for a while the PSP and PS Vita. These provide cut down versions of home console games or better fidelity than truly mobile.
Home use being permanently plugged in like the SNES/N64.
It’s not that the small handhelds have gotten bigger, it’s just that they’ve stopped making stuff in that smallest category.
The fact is that mobile phones have taken over that mobile market completely. There’s no space to compete so that market is dead for game console makers.
This has been the trajectory for decades now.
It seems in all categories people tend to purchase devices with larger screens. I wonder if this is caused by the nowadays much larger proportion of adults using these devices, where the Gameboy, etc., we're seen more as children's toys - meaning smaller form factors and screens might have been a better fit.
Those sorts of games are best suited to smaller screens but that’s the market that smartphones have basically taken over.
So if you need to differentiate a gaming product from the smartphones that everyone owns, you kind of need things like bigger screens, better ergonomics and more immersive games etc
The more likely reality is that gamers have different expectations today.
The kinds of games you’d play on everything prior to the 3DS are things you’d play on mobile phones now.
That leaves the middle area of more high fidelity games, with better ergonomics and closer to home consoles. That’s what the Switch , the PSP and Vita and 3DS occupy.
They can’t compete anymore in the absolute mobile end of gaming space , so moved into the space in between. That requires larger devices to provide the experience gamers want that they can’t get on the average phone till recently.
But I think you are on to something, and not just that kids (or adults) don't go outside or interact with friends as much as they did in the past. It's just very enjoyable and comfortable to curl up with a portable game system at home, much as one could with a good book (if we still read books.)
But I really like the Switch in handheld mode, and I actually want a bigger screen since for me it's more of a baggable rather than a pocketable, and many games have tiny text or UI elements sized for docked/TV mode rather than handheld mode.
[0] For a while Nintendo was claiming that the Switch wasn't their new portable console, it was just a console that happened to be portable. There would still be a successor to the 3DS at some point. I guess you could argue that's the Switch Lite, but I still feel a little betrayed to not get a smaller next-gen handheld.
[1] I'm aware there's a flourishing market of mostly Chinese arm64 devices running Android and loaded with emulators for every system you could imagine. But I want an x86 device to play my existing GoG and Steam games.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/vita-revisited-playstation-...
Part of the problem is that the people who grew up with Game Boy type devices have shitty eyes now, and squinting at a little 2" screen is getting uncomfortable.
The original GBA is the most comfortable handheld I've played. Fit perfectly in my hands and my pocket.
Does anyone have any recommendations for a modern variant for pc/web?