How Graphics worked on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance | MVG
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.พ. 2020
- In 2001 Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance which had some familiar but also advanced graphical features that helped define the system into such a fantastic handheld. In this episode we take a closer look at the graphics subsystem for the GBA.
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► How Graphics worked on the Nintendo Game Boy - • How Graphics worked on...
► How Graphics worked on the Nintendo Game Boy Color - • How Graphics worked on...
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#Nintendo #GBA #Graphics - เกม
Correction : The GBA was released in 2001 and as the the release of this episode in 2020 , it would make it 19 years old not 22. Sorry for the confusion !
Well either way, thanks for the video! I wonder if there will be more indepth looks at consoles like this :)
Are you going to do a Neo Geo hardware analysis in the near future, not only looking at it's game history but also the amazing homebrew games that have come out for it?
Thank you for telling me that I'm getting old. I never knew about the GBA. Master System, NES, SNES and GB is all I've known. Then I grew up :p
thank you for correcting this here. hopefully the existential dread im feeling can correct itself as well
Could you do a video in this same break down and explanation of the PSP's graphics?
The GBA is one of the best "retro" systems to program for.
Powerful CPU you can use C on, very simple yet powerful hardware, tons of memory..
Even if you use pure assembler like a madman, it's the ARM assembler that gives you a metric ton of registers and very few instructions to memorize as its a RISC architecture.
yes absolutely. im going to explore this in a future episode
@@ModernVintageGamer cool!
It's just neat how "clean" the GBA memory map is.
@@ModernVintageGamer Can't wait!
@@dan_loup Actually working on a warioware-like minigame compilation for a friend as part of a gift.
It's a great project. Though i find it very hard because I'm a C noob but it's really fun.
Also besides tonc, I don't think are any good ressources out there. I mean, they exist but nothing that is fleshed out like tonc is. And even that is not for beginners.
@@subsystemd i like the techdocs the guy that does those no$something does, like the gbatek for the gameboy advance.
It's very technical, but generally describe everything about the system registers and stuff in a single page.
This is arguably my favorite video game system of all time. The library is breathtaking and simply unique. What an incredible piece of hardware.
And its just fun. No gimmicks. Just 10 buttons and unlimited fun.
It opened up portable gaming to much more longer and deeper games than what we were limited to with the original Game Boy. SNES on the go was the dream, and it's still an unparalleled experience considering how good those 2D games of the time were, many still hold up very well today.
I kind of have a love-hate relationship with the GBA.
I hate that when it was released, it was mostly a paper-launch and it didn't really get mainstream until 2002. By that time we already had PS2 everywhere, the Dreamcast was killed off, Nintendo was releasing the GameCube, and MS had announced the Xbox. Suddenly gaming looked phenomenal, but the GBA looked like a barely improved GBC in terms of graphics. None of the new games I wanted were supporting it. I also hated that it lacked the usual quad-Action buttons, with the shoulder buttons being mostly useless, and the screen was difficult to use outdoors especially compared to Nokia phones of that era.
But what I loved was the ergonomics. I loved that pixel art was practically perfected at that point. I liked the speaker was adequate. And battery life was seriously impressive. Also loved that the price was so affordable. I also like the simplicity of its software/hardware. I grew to love many games that it had, and many years later I think it was one of the best pocketable consoles ever.
But then again, the PSP only released a few years afterwards. That had modern games (eg GTA VCS), web browsing, video playback, music, and very hard to fault for anything. It was competing head to head against the GBA, and I was in Team Sony. Even the PS2 was better at that point against the GameCube in terms of games and support. So it was plain to see Nintendo hurry and discontinue the GBA asap, whilst rushing out with the Nintendo DS. To me that wasn't a worthy competitor, the DS Lite was. But by that point Sony was releasing the PSP-3000 and I still contend it is superior, especially against the DSi/XL. So I feel like Nintendo missed the release window by two years when it came to the DS Lite (vs PSP-3000), and by many years when thinking about the GBA. Then again, Nintendo had no reason to do so since they had no competition in the pocketable console market (yes, the Nokia N-Gage was a huge letdown, as well as most Symbian Java games).
Great video, I basically kickstarted my programming career in my early teens by learning how to code C on the GBA. I released a few demos under the Milkmen name, and a game called Llamabost. All this was before coding tutorials online were really a thing, and most of what I was thought came directly from the GBA Dev community on IRC and forums. Today I’m a professional game developer, so I owe them a lot.
@DejaVoodooDoll Haha, can't believe you know it! Yeah, I coded the 3D engine for Unibrau with a lot of help from Kusma (from Shitfaced Clowns). There isn't really much to it besides being a bunch of 3D models synced to music with lots of flashing overlays. I still have the source code actually, and maybe the ROM's are out there. I can see that there's a couple of captures on on TH-cam also :-)
@@lordgraga Have any advice for newer programmers learning C? Project ideas, things to read?
@@daedreaming6267 I've been programming C# professionally for almost 10 years now (Unity), so I'm not super up to date with the C scene. Here's the best advice I can come up with right here and now:
* Learn how to learn. No learning resource is perfect, all tutorials and code examples have flaws. Learn from multiple places, and try to get the best you can from each of them. Get your info from various places. Be open and critical at the same time.
* C is a very small language with a tiny syntax. Learn to PROPERLY understand pointers (*) and references (&) and you'll be ahead of the curve. Unlike C# and other modern languages, C doesn't really have a standard library.
* (continued, sort of) You'll quickly find that you end up learning the specifics of whatever library or platform that you code for, as well as the language itself. Like I had to learn how the GBA memory and graphics system worked in order to actually make anything useful with C.
* Project idea (courtesy of my GF): Anything that processes large amounts of data.
* The best practices in programming usually transcend specific languages. Learn HOW TO NAME THINGS. I sometimes have variable names and methods that are 20+ characters long because that's the because it's much easier to understand for others. And some times I have single-character variables because they are used in a very small scope and it's easy to tell what they are.
* Watch "Simple made Easy" by Rich Hickey.
YESSS! I taught myself to program on the GBA! Minecraft, Zelda, and now goldeneye. Its not easy to make 3D on the GBA but I found a way.
How has nobody found this comment yet? well, I just wanted to say that you've done what other people thought couldn't be done. Making the GBA do all these amazing things, such as 3D-like graphics, and amazing demos, you've earned my respect. Maybe you could try taking advantage of the sound hardware or something. That's something I've always wanted to do. Or even make a full-on game with the raycaster engine you've made.
@@mr.9931 Thank you for saying that! :) I'm always having to find creative ways to make the GBA render 3D textured polygons but its so fun and rewarding.
@@3DSage Yeah, theirs a certain charm for doing something impressive on basic hardware and with limited tools. I've been trying to create tunes with the DMG gameboy, but I've always wanted to play around with the GBA audio features, but no such music tracker tools exist yet, so I'm stuck with the DMG chip. But it's kinda fun what you can do with it. A custom 4 bit wave? Cool. 2 bit stereo, why not? I haven't done much, but practice makes perfect.
I remember my friend Joe getting an import GBA the week it came out in Japan and bringing it to school, it was one of the most glorious systems me and my friends ever looked at, blew us away.
For that brief moment. Joe was emperor of the school.
@@Roule_n_Scratche Joe Mama
0:57 Golden Sun!
oh, my heart, how I love that game
I remember thinking how advanced the GBA was when it first came out, like this was the pinnacle of humanity's portable video game evolution and things can't possibly get any better!😂
Sebastian Elytron I mean, in a way the switch lite is basically an extra super duper gba. So you weren’t too off base!
@@alanthomas5959 yeah but we came to a end where graphics are so good that even games from 10 years ago still look great ...in perspective a game lunch in 1990 looks prehistory in comparison with one lunch in 2000...ten years of difference , hell crysis lunch 13 years ago still looks amazing...so from now on the industry needs a huge graphics jump to make any appreciable difference between generantions
@@alanthomas5959 btw...ark dosnt look as good as crysis and performs worse...
Some would argue that it hasn't!
Hami Taur I agree, the returns are diminishing at this point. When the PS4 came out I remember not being super impressed with its graphics compared to the PS3, but when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out last year and I gave it a play through, there is a discernible difference between this and last generation lol
As a programmer, I really appreciate the level of detail that you go into in your videos. Great explanation!
"it's been almost 22 years since the launch of the GBA..." - I just felt myself age horrifically
Dr Stevenson it was actually 22 years since the GBC he just made a small error
@@beercavetech either way it's still brutal! I actually felt grey hairs growing on my head
Dr Stevenson well I’d certainly rather a few gray ones than to lose the ones I have! Lol
@@Zardox-The-Heretic-Slayer I was thinking the same thing. Hell, I remember playing the og grey Gameboy...age sneaks up quick
That is what I was coming to the comments section to say.
Seeing Golden Sun in this video brings back such great memories! Best underrated game ever
Is it underrated? Back in the day when GBA was hot, i remember Golden Sun getting some pretty good hype. If it is underrated, it's only because it's indeed even better than it has been acclaimed and is worth all of its acclaim.
Golden Sun had the absolutely worst, bar none, introductory tutorial of any game ever made. You shouldn't have to suffer for hours before getting to where the game actually starts.
As a JRPG, it was firmly in the "meh" category. It didn't do anything groundbreaking or inventive. Even Djinn were just espers, pioneered by Square years prior.
It was a generic story with a generic plot, and wasn't anything more than passable at best.
But remember that the first part was early in the library. It was pretty much the first straight JRPG that wasn't a port and looked good; you had MMBN but that was a mix and almost its own genre.
Lmao no
@@Face_RC I agree with everything but espers, the way they and the djiin works are actually very different and GS was actually quite innovative
I still remember the day I got my GBA... so many phenomenal games for that system. My parents were reminiscing about it with me and remembered being amazed by me and my cousin playing with a link cable. Good times.
Just wanna say thanks for all these videos you make, they've taught me lots about things that I had no idea about (how a certain console's security worked/graphics for some systems), but I always find it super interesting! Thanks again!
10:11 almost 22 years since the launch of the GBA ... wasn't that the Gameboy Color though ? I mean the GBA launched in 01
Oops yeah my bad
@@ModernVintageGamer no problem, mistakes happen to everyone. Loved the vid through and through :)
@@ModernVintageGamer We human... Mistakes happens even if you are a coding genius.. no big deal, it doesn't take away from this amazing detailed video.. Thank You..
@@ModernVintageGamer 19 years is still a long ol time.
Mistakes were made.
From a video editor to another, your work impressed me straight from the start! I love how you recorded a separate video for each layer to make the 3D layer explanation/animation, brilliant!
Thanks a mill bud. Been waiting for the continuation of this series. You know your hardware inside out.
5 years later: How Graphics worked on the Nintendo Switch
I'm waiting that video xD
You do calls to OpenGL or Vulkan - the end! =P
@@Kniffel101 yeah it gets less interesting because we already have a basis of how it works, and the short cuts are not the same as back in the day with hardware etc.
@@NonsensicalSpudz
In theory someone who knows a lot about the Tegra X1 could directly talk to the GPU, but that'd require more knowledge than I assume to be available to anyone outside Nvidia's hardware team.
@@Kniffel101 I'm sure there are still interesting tidbits to talk about when it comes to developing for modern consoles. NVN on the Switch and GNM on PS4 probably allow for functions that are very specific to these console's respective GPUs.
Loving these videos!
Hello, Nathan!
Chad
Wassup
Can I just say i love the background music on all of MVGs videos.
Your videos always come out when I'm on my lunch hour at work. Always a treat! Thanks MVG!
GBA is my first handheld console since I truly remembered. so, can you make A video of how DS Graphics work? It should be great to see next week!
Doubt it would be particularly interesting because as the DS era began, handhelds started to use traditional 3D rendering methods rather than hacks which achieve the illusion of depth where there is none.
That sounds like a video that would take a lot longer than a week to put together.
@DejaVoodooDoll dsi too?
@DejaVoodooDolli.e. pop island seems great dsiware but I think ds could run it. But I don't know if push polygons because I think it use voxel for terrain and polygon for players.
"The GBA has all these graphics, but you can't see them on the stock model screen"
I like how the sp version had a light, but I always liked the original Model better just for the controls. I don't like how close the sp version had the + to the A B
@@stevenmills6502 Analogue Pocket will be your worst nightmare
The backlight was really needed, but the original GBA had incredible dark blacks, which made everything pop. It's too bad the colors often weren't bright enough and it was impossible to see in the dark, because it was otherwise a beautiful screen.
Go outside on a shiny day and the original GBA's screen will be better than a $1000 Smartphone.
@@KayJay_EU That situation is godly for those screen. Nowadays everyone plays shut on the bed sheets in the dark so this situation isn't important anymore.
The production value for your videos are insane MVG. Keep up the great work!!
I love the technical aspect you provide in your videos. Just everything I love, retro in the deep ! :)
What's so interesting about the GBA is that the video chip's sprite transformation hardware could be used to accelerate the drawing of affine transformed quads as textured sprites, which allowed the GBA to offer hardware accelerated pseudo-3D graphics with texture mapping resulting in a few very impressive 3D games like Asterix, racing games and a few FPS games...
I think my favourite example of this is Banjo Kazooie Gruntys Revenge.
It's just a really solid pseudo-3D platformer and honestly I see it as more Banjo-Threeie than Nuts and Bolts ever could've been (although that game is good just not a good BK game)
I don't think that's entirely true. The GBA has zooming and rotating sprites but it cannot map them in any sized quads like 3DO/Saturn does for their polygons. These games with polygon 3D engines usually have their own pure CPU software renderers written on the ARM CPU, usually on top of the bitmap linear modes (mode 4,5,6) where it was much easier to render pixels than in tile modes.
And they are real 3D. Which means real 3D engine where there is code to rotate and translate 3d points, project them on 2D screen, then draw the polygons by interpolating the textures in 2D (most of them were affine mapping too, no perspective correct). But the whole engine runs on the CPU.
Hi MVG, I wanted to say I really appreciate all of the effort you put in each of your videos. You are by far my favorite youtube channel. You articulate things very well and have an addictive enthusiasm for the scene! I always look forward to every video you put out.
Btw, small anecdote: I was 8 years old when I got a GBA for Christmas and I remember being absolutely blown away by the background parallax scrolling in the games. I didn't understand what it was or anything but it looked amazing to me and I immediately fell in love.
Wow, I can't believe you have almost 400k subscribers now. It's been an incredible journey following your channel. You couldn't be more deserving of the recognition. Thank you so much for all of your content, it truly brightens my life.
Getting a lot of videos out recently sir. Well done. I love them all!
It’s amazing how they managed to make 3d games on the GBA!
Next: "GBA, mistakes were made".
I give it a week
No code signing or region lock, so basically any flash cart will do the trick.
There are a few nasty BIOS bugs.
I'd like to see one about the hardware bugs of the NES.
@@pointybits6496 I give it 11 minutes.
@@SyphistPrime That's why bootlegged games are ridiculously prolific within the GBA games market. I'm surprised that Nintendo didn't implement some sort of copy protection.
Love these techinical videos, makes me want to go back to the hardware you talk about and make games for them.
Definitely loving your technical experience on these!
The screen of the AGS-001 really let the console down.
And even the first iteration of the clamshell wasn't much better. Lit the screen and then washed everything out. lol Sad day!
The screen of the AGS-001 gives a little more or less than twice the battery life as compared to the backlit AGS-101, and you can turn the light off to save even more power, so it's not without its advantages.
Arnox Immordium I have to agree I really like the original screen just as much as I like the later back lit one. There was something about the old screens that was actually not that bad. Coming off the GameBoy color I guess I was just really used to it. But going backwards from backlit, definitely you can see the difference.
The screen was a pretty terrible experience on the original GBA, especially if you didn't keep it safe in a case it would get scratched to heck which was very visible in sunlight or a light source shining down on it. However the widescreen grip of the console was far more comfortable compared to the backlit GBA SP, which would give you hand cramps on it's cramped small square design cramming buttons into a small area and made the big shoulder buttons into tiny corner buttons. The GBA micro was the best of both worlds but sadly was largely forgotten about release around the same time as the Nintendo DS.
cattysplat yep. I have a micro and I adore it. It’s great if I just want to take a single game on the go somewhere
I remember getting to the end of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and seeing the GBA render that full 3D FMV cutscene *and* play an almost perfect rendition of Simple and Clean. I was blown away then and, a decade later, am still blown away now. That thing was a surprisingly powerful handheld, and will always be one of my favorites.
Chains of memories is probably the biggest game on GBA because of the cutscenes. That technology was used to make GBA VIDEO cartridges. There were some made for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spongebob, SonicX and a bunch of other cartoons. I have never seen it in the wild but I know there is a GBA Shrek 2. An entire movie on a GBA cartridge... the video quality is terrible. lol
This video definitely clarifies a lot of things I wasn't sure about, thanks!
Thank you for all your work, king. It's been a pleasure bingeing it.
Looking at this remembered me how good the GBA was. I've been 11 when it came out and not caring much about details. But as you pointed out, I remember the smooth scrolling and everything.. So I under-appreciated the GBA, even it holds one of my favourite games ever: FF Tactics Advance.
I remember Christmas Eve one year when I had finally got a n64 my cousin told me and my parents that the new Nintendo would be released in a few months called dolphin.
@@bootlegscarce0844 its basically the same console except with a 7nm gpu to prevent homebrew. It gives about 1hr of extra battery life but not perfoance boost.
Even "improved" joycons developed drift after same amount of time as first gen
Enjoy that you could hack and overclock yours... as well as homebrew
@@muaries12 No Nintendo already patched the gpu by mid 2018 iirc so they just have a switch with worse battery life.
Great episode!! I fell in love with the GBA upon its initial release and still collect for it to this day.
YESSSS THIS IS THE ONE I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!
Thank you so much for doing these videos, MVG; you rock!
I wanted to know how gba worked after making something for gb. This video was just in time 😍
Damn I was just thinking about MVG and bam it shows up in my homepage.
Your videos are do well put together. I can clearly see your blood, sweat and tears put into your videos. Good job, man!
Awesome video love learning about stuff like this I remember getting a blue GBA SP for my birthday one year and the backlit screen along with the huge upgrade to graphics and colour blew my mind as a kid still one of my favourite handhelds ever
I love the GAME BOY brand, brings me back to a time when things were simple.
My favorite GBA model is the GBA SP (AGS-101).
Mine is OG GBA with IPS V2 display or maybe GBA SP AGS-101 with the grip attachment
My favourite GBA model is also the AGS-101. Otherwise, the DS Lite comes in 2nd place.
Yep I was thinking the same
Gameboy micro is supreme.
I used to have the translucent blue og model (don't know the actual model number). Later on my younger brothers got SPs but for the most part I was perfectly happy with my og model, except when we were traveling out of state and I had to play games using passing street lights. Said lights were of course high pressure sodium lights (LED street lamps didn't exist yet) which have a terrible color range which I didn't understand at that point but in retrospect it's probably part of why it was so hard to see. I remember the battery cover was borked (plastic tab) and I had to be careful how I held it so it wouldn't lose power, no wonder I'm a save maniac.
Never got an SP myself nor a DS or DSi but did buy myself a 3DS which I still play from time to time.
I LOVE this kind of content. Thank you! Very well explained and detailed as always sir. ✌🏻
I'm starting to love this channel quite a bit lately :) Quality content there, my friend. These days we see enhanced versions of PS4 and Xbox ONE but we don't have a retail GBA with backlit LCD. Wish they would do that back in the day.
Another great MVG video. The GBA is still such a brilliant system.
Never been so early for an MVG vid!
Ditto
Me neither
Couldn't sleep through the night. Bad anxiety. It was great to see this pop up. The distraction I needed.
Because of presidents day?
Hit the bell icon and you can be this early EVERY time!
Love your channel. I feel like I learn a lot although I don’t understand most of the technical part. But I really enjoy watching your videos nonetheless
Your channel is a blessing, always loving your content. Keep it up! :)
"There's more than meets the eye". Not hard, considering the screen was impossible to see under any lighting conditions. :(
@Jivansh Malik It did....my non-SP didn't tbough. It had some overhead light accessory thing that still didn't make it playable for me, so I didn't. 🙁
How the original was deemed to be ready for release because of this is beyond me.
@@ifmclaren yeah as much as I loved my GB, I was disappointed that the GBA was released without a backlight. so I didnt buy it. I waited until the SP came out.
@Jivansh Malik Only the AGS-101 revision had a backlit screen, the original GBA SP (AGS-001) had frontlight.
I partially agreed with you.
And any attempt to add a light through a third-party peripheral not only made things worse by putting glare on the screen, it also drained the batteries like crazy.
The N-Gage was the first handheld that really impressed me seeing games like Tomb Raider run on it.
I loved my N-Gage... having full on ports of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Pandemonium and Tomb Raider on a handheld was crazy in 2003.
it also was a great early emulation device, for example I played a lot of Mega Dive/Genesis on my N-Gage.
I remember being bored at the birthday party of one of my grandmas, and just finishing Sonic 1 on my N-Gage under the table lol... and then I played some Mortal Kombat 2.
back then having what was basically a handheld PS1 with MegaDrive and GameBoy emulators in your pocked was some scifi shit to me.
the N-Gage was also my very first mobile phone :)
Being from the UK the N-Gage was a cool gaming machine, but pretty bad mobile phone. I wanted one at the time, though I had a SEP900 so wasn’t too far off power-wise. Still, the aspect ratio of the screen helped kill the N-Gage imo, no idea what Nokia were thinking there 🤔
@@IainsTheName the screen was it's biggest issue true.
but games like THPS and Tomb Raider still played very well with the aspect ratio.
the MegaDrive emulator I used on it also had the option to rotate the screen 90° and you could map the A/B/C buttons to the menu buttons on each side.
and that's how I played Sonic for example. holding the N-Gage basically like a GameBoy and Sonic only needs a single button anyways.
the only genre where the screen ratio really showed big issues was fighting games, and funnily enough tho it got an exclusive King of Fighters game called King of Fighters Extreme.
I always found it funny that Nokia did not think about piracy at all and in the end you could just as well play many of these games on other Nokias with the Symbian OS.
@@maximumrisk2004 yeah and if you had a big SD card you could put multiple games on them, which was nice.
I had a 500MB SD card and all my favourite games on there + emulators and roms
Id love to see more of these, All the Handhelds, and some of the older consoles would be amazing, Great work on these BTW!
These videos are amazing, please make a Discord to keep discussing these topics!!
Man hearing the iridion soundtrack have me some nestolgic vibes
Shin'en rocked the Advance :D
As I type this I'm waiting for my postman to deliver my Gameboy advance sp. Haven't legit played with one since the early 2000s!
Always love a bit of time in-depth stuff also love the how security was defeated series, keep up the great work...
How about a MVS conversion video? Or have I missed that
Very interesting. Keep up the in depth technical análisis!
I really just can’t believe how the snes did get sooooo famous about it’s mode 7 ,8 modes and digital audio ,because,
1, The snes can only have 1 single background in mode 7, whereas the GBA can have 2 or even 3 background layers wich both can be rotated and scale wich blows the snes mode 7 milea away,
2, while the snes has 16bit sound output, but it’s 64K ram forced game devs to cram everything into that little ram spece per music & sound effects in a certain level, not only that but those samples had to be in 4bit BRR format, on the GBA , there seems to be no memory restriction, samples canbe as long as desired,also since those 2 8bit PWM soundchannels are designed with streaming in mind, despites those samples and the output is only 8bit, but it sounds more clearer with a higher fidelity, it’s not shortened and not flat out,
While the GBA has 3 modes, as opposed to 8 modus on the snes, but these modus turned out to be restriction modus, so the snes has more restrictions then the GBA, also the GBA can do sprite scaling as well wich the snes shamefully cannot do,
With that said, i really don’t understand why the GBA among it’s games has recieved mixed views, and/or why most gamers will argue that those snes versions of games are better then those GBA ports,also why is nobody prasing those software 3D rendered games on the GBA over the snes with external fx chip,, because those 3D games on the GBA are looking & running better then on the snes,
Yes i hate to eknowledge that the cheap looking small piace of plastic GBA has better hardware then the more appealing looking snes, my only complain about those gba ports is that they simply don’t feel original ,especially not with added content.
While the sound hardware of the GBA is superior you can only really appreciate that with headphones. The speaker is notoriously pretty bad and forces it to mono.
Mode 7 allowed for pseudo 3D games which was super advanced at the time. With the GBA full 3D games were already everywhere so it was more so a limitation than an advancement.
Make a video about the new leaked build of Starcraft: Ghost
Man I love this channel. Adam koralik and MVG have some great content. Thank you!
19 years old, wow. I feel old! I remember when I bought mine on day one. I still play mine today from time to time. Great stuff!
Wow, as a NDS homebrew programmer, I really enjoyed this video, keep it up with the great work! It's amazing the amount of things that you can do with the GBA (Or the NDS 2D engine B, which is virtually the same) and going really low level with the code, this has a huge potential, potential, that nowadays is lost due to the amount of abstraction in the code, call it API's, call it intefacing with the OS, then the driver... Yep, I know, is easier and in some systems is the only way to go, but I feel that there's something "magical" about this devices, just poke data to some registers, trigger the DMA to start copying more data to the OAM, and you have now a lot of sprites on the screen with only a little overhead on the CPU.
The homebrew community and the NDS was the system that inspired me to start programming, I learned how to code on the NDS (And also on the PSP, but in this case I went the Lua way with LuaDEV and OneLua), and what I can say is that nowadays I still code for it. Developing code for this kind of systems like the GBA / NDS or also the recently-unlocked DSi (My favourite one) is something that I feel really different, it's not like a Pc where you just call a function and some underlying magic prints text on the screen. In this case you are in control of everything, and this, is exactly the kind of thing I love about this systems, you will really learn with it. This helped me a LOT with subjects like computer architecture.
To end this, again, thanks for your work, really. You made me take my old Xbox and play with some homebrew again. I'm also now thinking of buying a Wii to experiment and learn about the PowerPC architecture... I think that there's something almost "magical" about this generation of consoles, powerful enought, and yet not so complex at the same time.
2:55
Making that transition HAD to take a lot of time
Well, not really :P
You can just record or screenshot the seperate elements when using an emulator, by disabling the ones you don't want to show, and then edit them together like that in post
The level of detail and knowledge in your videos are top notch. Digital Foundry should hire you.
Awesome as always !
Big up the MVG massiv 👊
the GBA and the Gamecube went completely over my head- I have never seen either in person and none of my friends had them
Then youre missing on some serious gaming machines my friend, to wash all the shame away do yourself a favor and go get them both.
The GBA was the first handheld console I ever saw. It was like the PSP in it's days when it was released. The first time I saw one was in a laundry mat. My mom would go there for laundry and I would use so many quarters on a Super Mario Bros arcade cabinet they had. And one day I just seen somebody sitting down on the cheap white plastic chairs at the cheap table with a purple GBA playing some I think Power Rangers game and I wanted one so bad.
@@iykury Advance or Advance SP?
@@iykury and did you have the cable to connect both consoles for specific games?
@@iykury My first two systems were the GameCube and Gameboy Advance as well lol.
11:54 oh my, what game is that? That background shading is terrific.
*edit* lol I search "gba rail shooter" and immediately find it can only be Iridion 3D.
Thanks for telling me the name
@DejaVoodooDoll aaaand what is the name of the sequel
Really interesting, thanks. Love the low level detail of these videos
There are so few people that can pull off technical documentation in a video format like this... your editing skills are off the charts, and really show how deeply you understand these topics. This is in contrast to 95% of the rest of TH-cam that just yells and flashes crappy half-assed animations pasted in + lots of yelling.
I never gone into your video so quickly, frankly because I don't know your real upload schedule other than you upload it every week. As a 927th viewer, I'm pretty happy to have stumbled with your video before going to sleep. Thanks for great video on how GBA graphics worked! I'm feel enlighten with your video and learned a lot of great things from you. Now, if you mind, I would like to have a sleep and maybe months later consider to have DS Lite just so I could play DS and GBA games. 😊
I've always called the Game Boy Advance a portable Super Nintendo. I know the CPU and architecture are different as the Game Boy Advance has an ARM CPU, but 11 year old me didn't care. It had SNES games...ON THE GO!
lol same. Didn't help one of the launch titles was literally Super Mario 2 All-stars version.
@@thecunninlynguist Yea! If some guy came up to me and said it's not real SNES hardware, would've just showed him Super Mario Bros 2 and said NUH UHHH!!!! Then probably would've gotten into a fight.
The days of being a child during Web 1.0 were different times. Can't even have playground rumours anymore, Nope, we can look everything up now.
Oooooh I see that CIB Golden Sun & Metroid there in the back! Loving the Rare shirt also, you make such *QUALITY* videos :)
Thanks for sharing these insights in the GBA hardware. I got it at launch and have never regretted it. Homebrew was very cool on it back in 2001. Many flash cards existed - some too slow for commercial games but good enough for homebrew. Exciting times back then.
Metal Jesus: DOESN'T TELL STORIES
Last Gamer: DOESN'T TELL STORIES (only tells stories of himself)
Gaming Historian: DOES TELL STORIES
You: DOES TELL STORIES
Mr S metal jesus 😂😂😂
0:58 Golden Sun! The masterpiece! THe best game on the system!
I love the effort and history you put into your videos, only you cover such orginal topics.
Wow, this is the earliest I've been to an MVG video!
i dont remember it as being very powerful. in fact it was pretty underwhelming, considering i had a PDA that had a 100mhz cpu at the time. "very powerful handheld" title, to me, only go to the game gear, nomad, psp, ps vita and switch
did your pda have any games that were on the level of graphics as the gba?
Beefy CPU and GFX hardware,
The sound hardware on the other hand...
Yeah, IF only they had sound processor equal to the SNES.
GBA sound through earphones is very lamentable indeed 😭
Did the GBA even *have* dedicated sound hardware? I seem to remember reading something about the GBA needing to allocate main CPU resources for audio, meaning the more graphically impressive games had to skimp even harder on audio.
That was such a great video to watch! Oh man, the nostalgia from the early 2000's....
Hey MVG, why don't you make an in-depth of the PS Vita as well?
As usual a very informative and professional video, thanks.
How graphics worked on the Gameboy Advance: really well.
please more content related to the gameboy series, like how audio worked or something
Words cannot describe how excited I am when I see a new video like this
Awesome vid covering my favorite console. Thank you!
Excellent job mVg you're always on point my friend.
Outstanding video! Thanks very much, you did a quality work :)
Learned a lot, thanks
I can't wait for the GBA homebrew episode :)
my first and favorite console of all time thanks for this MVG
Wow this is great hearing about this from someone other than my Machine Architectures II professor. This was a great system truly, so much so that my school used them for this class. All the tools you have are open source and yes, thumb mode was great. Even more interesting was the multiplication if you used fixed point decimals, where you'd end up having to shift your result to the right 8 bits.
Great video! Thank you for this peek into a world that a lot of us aren’t familiar with. GBA was one of my favorite handhelds. I still have a GBA SP that is held together with super glue. Still works great other than looking like hell
I'm glad you showed Golden Sun in the video! 😁
This was my childhood system. Many hours were put into the GBA and GBA SP
This and Digital Foundry have to be some of the best gaming channels on TH-cam. I love this kind of in-depth explanations on game consoles.
As always man interesting video very much enjoyed!
Very nice video! I hope there will be an episode for the Nintendo DS too!
Excellent and informative as always...thx!!