Deadpan Robot Gameboy Bits

Contact for Deadpan Robot:

@DeadpanRobot

www.deadpanrobot.co.uk

Today I received some Gameboy Advance parts from Deadpan Robot - a red shell, a glass screen lens, and a backlit replacement screen complete with 40-pin cable adapter for installation in my AGB-001 (original) GBA. I ordered from them for two reasons: I didn't want to order from China, wait ages, pay loads of EU customs, and I wanted an easy communication in case of problems. They are also from Hertfordshire and I'm a Watford boy, so that caught my eye. Total cost was £76.00 including postage, which Paypal translated to €89.72. Not cheap, but half the cost of an AGS-101 in Amsterdam.

The GBA shell is well produced.

Here are my thoughts on the products.

First of all I'd like to comment on their customer service. I had trouble with their website only iPhone, and later my Mac, not allowing me to select shipping options to Netherlands (they are based in the UK). They responded to my email within a day, and after a little to and fro put it right, and gave me a 10% discount for my trouble. Not bad. Communication was friendly and open.

The products were posted last Thursday, the same day I ordered, and made it across the North Sea by the following Tuesday. Well packaged in a little box, each Item bagged and the screen was well wrapped in bubble wrap and inside a cardboard box.

Packaging was top-notch and everything was intact.

I had a manky old GBA whose screen I had smashed in an earlier frontlighting attempt. The white shell had gone a nasty dark yellow and the screen lens was scratched.

Before I could install the screen, which is a replacement for the GBA SP, I had to modify the shell of my GBA to make space. A raised ridge had to be shaved down, for which I used my Dremmel and a grinding attachment, tidying up the resulting mess with a scalpel. The screen the dropped in place, protective film protecting it throughout. I folded the video cable (too long with the adapter cable added) and installed the buttons and motherboard. The cable slotted into place and the motherboard was screwed down.

My old GBA had not aged well.

Soldering the power cable for the backlight was a real pain. It attaches to a tiny surface-mount component. My soldering iron is large, I need to invest in a finer tip for this delicate work as my main use for it is in building and modifying guitar pedals, using full size components. At first I ended up with a dollop of solder across three legs of two components... after cleaning that up I was able to get the wire soldered in place, and routed away from the edge of the shell.

I got the shell together, placed the screen lens in place, transferred my serial number sticker (using a hot hairdryer and a scalpel) and inserted some batteries.... success!

The screen's brightness seems good, there is no noticeable interference on the screen. So far so good. (The strange flickering you see in the photo is not visible to the naked eye).

Success!

In GBA games I found the colours to be good. It matches the Gameboy Micro's glorious display as far as my eyes tell me. With Gameboy games the colours may be a little over-saturated. I've tried Tetris and Super Mario Land using their Gameboy Colour palettes, and Tetris DX and Links Awakening DX to check GBC native versions. It's certainly not game breaking, and as I can't play GBC games on my Micro, I can't comment on how they would look on that backlight screen. I have read that it's a result of games being made brighter to compensate for the GBA's lack of lighting, which makes some sense.

Brightness is great sitting here in normal indoor daytime light, but lack of adjustment may be a problem for night use during which it might melt my retinas. The display is sharp too. It's a pixel-perfect recreation of the original, so no scaling is at work here to spoil things.

Overall I am very happy with the screen. Apart from the soldering it was very simple to install. The shell modifications may put some people off, as may the tiny space for soldering, however for me the results are perfect. The GBA SP is a lot more difficult to open, and I much prefer the form factor of the original - not to mention the cartridge slot location - so for me this is the best way to enjoy my old games.

GBA games look SO good on this display.

The shell leaves a bit to be desired. It is good, and fits around the motherboard properly, but I had a couple of problems screwing it together. It came with five screws, where ten are needed - three to attach the motherboard, and seven to attach the rear of the case. (EDIT: Looking closer it appears that the screen's added thickness is the problem, causing a lot of outward pressure on the shell. I may open it up later and see if I missed any parts that could be shaved a little further, but I've done so well to leave the inside dust-free I'm hesitant to risk ruining that).

Luckily I had my old GBA shell, and so these screws were available to me. I also have a problem with the one screw that sits inside the battery compartment - it will not screw in enough to hold the case fully closed. (EDIT: I used one of the supplied, shorter, screws and it worked a treat. Again the problem seems to be the screen pressing outward, so I won't do the screws too tight). I'll try one of the shorter screws that came with the shell and see if that solves it.

I also have a problem with the L trigger. It works just fine, but does not spring back in a nice, tactile manner that you'd expect. The R trigger is fine. I've had to slightly loosen the shell screws by L trigger to help with this.

The glass screen lens is a great upgrade to the plastic original. Whilst it won't scratch so easily, I worry about it cracking - but as I look my things I'm sure it will be ok. The wording "Gameboy Advance" at the bottom of the lens is a little rough, but you have to look closely to notice.

That little red wire is a pig to solder.

The final comment concerns installation. There are no instructions for the shell or the screen. There is a section on Deadpan Robot's site, but it is empty. The site says all over the place "site under construction" so I'm sure it will come in time. Lucky for us there are instructional videos on YouTube. I followed this one by Does Not Compute which has all the information you'll need. He also does a follow-up video in which he addresses issues he had with low brightness and low quality image on his replacement screen - issues I didn't have with this one. Overall installation is simple enough if you take time to be careful, but that one piece of soldering is very fiddly and it is easy to mess something up with it. Additionally the screen is not a perfect fit for the original GBA form, and as such expect a few problems squeezing the case back together.

So, thanks DPR for making my day. I love my new GBA in all its backlit glory. I will be in touch when I'm ready to upgrade my SP AGS-001.

PlayStation 4 Shenanigans

In all my years of computer use I've only ever had one hard drive fail. I have hard drives today that are 15 years old and still work, the 1GB one being particularly useful in its immensity.

Said hard drive failed after a power cut occurred while I was enjoying some time with my Steam catalogue. The drive crashed as best I can tell, which rendered the drive unusable and the data unsalvageable.

Well, that same thing happened last night - except the "power cut" was caused by my one-year-old baby boy yanking the external hard drive from my PS4 while I played Day Of The Tentacle. I can't access the drive from my PS4 or my Mac so I'm calling it dead. At least all it had on it was games that are easy to recover and no personal info for nefarious sorts to find.

It was a blessing in disguise in any case, as I'd filled my 2TB internal and 1GB external drives with games, thanks to the console's requirement to install every game, and had to delete some games to make space.

I'm aware some people do this regularly, without a thought, however - I've been around long enough to understand the fleeting value of these machines and the games we enjoy on them. If that suits you, then fine, but my intention is to enjoy these games in 10, 20, 30 years time, and that means long after the servers are shut down, possibly long after Sony has gone away. Deleting the games from your drive also removes the patches that are regularly installed which means when you reinstall the game in some years time you will have only the original code from the disk. In short, I would like to keep 100% of my library installed at all times for posterity.

As such, I'd previously upgraded the 500GB drive that came with the machine to a 2TB version, and was using the original 500GB one in a USB caddy. Because this is how my brain works, I kept all my disc-based installs on the internal and all my PSN and PS-Plus installs on the external.

So, I went and bought a 4TB USB hard drive. Re-downloaded all my non-disc games overnight (took about 6 hours), then copied all my disc-based games from internal to external so they're all in one place (and so I wouldn't have to reinstall all of them and their updates). This took 4 hours.

Got hold of the 4.71 installation file and put it on a USB stick. Swapped the 2TB drive for the original one and booted up. My saves are automatically stored online thanks to a PS-Plus subscription I pay too much for, which saves a step.

While the firmware was installing I got to thinking - will I even be able to use the games on my external drive, or will it force me to reinstall everything (again)?

Well the answer is yes. It took a long time (we're talking about 111 games) during which I got to watch a "please wait" screen, but then the home screen came back with my games library intact. Great.

Now I'm downloading all my saves. It's also taking ages. Everything this console does takes ages. 10 minutes so far and it's about two thirds done.

6 hours to download my games, 4 hours to transfer the others to the external drive, 10 minutes to swap hard drives and install the firmware, 5 minutes to recognise the games 15 more to download my save games. And now I have ten disc-based games to reinstall.

And to think just the other day I remarked on Twitter that I could select "install", wait, hit start, and be watching the intro to Half-Life all in 40 seconds.

RetroSpective: Top 5 Retro Gaming Memories

A child of the 80s, coming of age in the 90s, I grew up in small town UK and so my earliest gaming memories include playing on friends' C64s and Spectrums, and my Uncle's Amstrad CPC464. As for our home - we had a Commodore 16 handed down by a different Uncle and I naturally had a nice selection of Systema LCD games that I still find occasionally fun.

As my friends and I entered double digits things changed, and we found ourselves in the 16-bit era. Several friends owned Mega Drives. I was later to the game with an Amiga 500+ coming in late 1991 (Cartoon Classics pack which included Bart Vs The Space Mutants, Captain Planet, and a game I only recently replayed - Lemmings). Later still I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which helped cement my future as a gamer.

So, with no further ado, I share with you my five top retro gaming moments. Those moments that shaped my gaming life in its formative years. In no particular order.

1. Pinball At The Artichoke
In exercising the deepest recesses of forgotten memory I stumbled upon something very sweet. Way back when we still lived in Croxley Green, we would frequent a pub on The Green called The Artichoke. It's still there - it's more of a gastropub these days and I still go there when I'm visiting locally. Back in the 80s they had a pinball table tucked in a corner outside the ladies toilet, and we would spend hours on it while our parents got drunk. Their friends, also drunk, would make sure we never ran out of credits or those small bottles of Coke they have in pubs.

2. St. Osyth
On the Essex coast, just up from Clacton-on-Sea, St. Osyth was home to my grandparents' caravan, used for holidays when my mum and her siblings were young. It was history before I came along, but it meant that the town had a place in my Uncle's heart (the same one who owned the CPC464) and so he'd take me and my cousins there for a day of french cricket and arcade games. Four of us? Well that's the perfect number for Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, The Simpsons, Gauntlet, or Wrestlemania. At 10p a go, even in those days we could enjoy a good few games before it was time to head home.

3. Left 4 Dead
I absolutely hate online gaming. Seriously, it stresses me out. From my first internet connection in 2002, playing Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast for 15p a minute, through 2009's slightly improved and slightly less expensive in the long run 512kbps ADSL, to today's 300Mbps low latency network, I draw no enjoyment from online interaction with dickheads. In 2009 though, something magical happened - I was invited to join a "mature gaming community" called The Art of Warfare (TAW). I'd dabbled a little with Left 4 Dead and found it tremendous fun, so agreed to give it a go with an organised group. Well, to cut a long story short, I quickly moved up the ranks and ended up running the L4D division of said community which did wonders for my self-confidence and, over a few hundred hours of gaming gave me such enjoyment that I doubt I will ever match. I also have crippling RSI in my right hand from the intense use of a mouse, and a handful of lifelong friends that I owe to that time.

4. My Amiga 500+
I remember my dad bringing this home for me. I wasn't expecting it, but my word was it exciting. I remember him helping me to set it up, plugging in the RF converter so it would work with the TV (he may have bought me that at the same time), powering it on, and encouraging me to work out that the animated graphic was directing me to insert a disk. I recently rediscovered my old Amiga library (much of it at the time courtesy of X-Copy2) with the help of an emulator, and the sound of the disk drive took me right back to my old bedroom, the tiny desk and the red metal chair with plastic seat that collapsed one day, cheekily telling me I'd become too big for it. It's a rare positive memory of my father, and I cherish it.

5. Super Mario All Stars
This is a key game (collection) for me. Despite what you've heard a hundred thousand bazillion times on YouTube about the massive importance of the Nintendo Entertainment System, it simply wasn't that important in the UK. I knew three people who had one, and they all had rich dads. However, Super Mario Bros had attained something of a legendary status in my mind, at least in part thanks to playing the games with those three people - and in no small part due to the fantastic Super Mario Land games on Game Boy that were far more readily available. When I was able to finally own a SNES, I spent days and days deciding between the Super Mario All Stars or the Street Fighter II Turbo pack-in. If you understand that at this time I was incredibly lucky to get the console at all, and in several years of ownership I only ever had four games, then you'll see how important this choice was at the time. So I chose Mario, and set in place the pieces that would ultimately begin a (so far) lifelong love affair with Nintendo. Easily the most important video gaming item I ever owned.

So what about you? Did any of these points align with your experience or trigger your memories? Do you have any of your own to add? Go write something in the comments. If nothing else it makes me feel good.

What Would I Tell 21-Year-Old Me?

I recently saw this question posed in an Instagram post and naturally it got me thinking.

I'm 36. 21 seems so long ago, and yet as if it were yesterday. A lot has happened in the interim years, a lot has changed - in myself, in the world, in the people I know. I'm married, happily, and have a beautiful baby boy and I am blessed to be a stay at home dad who cares for him 4 days of the week while his mummy works to bring the money in.

I'm in a band, which is fun and has some potential to become something in the local scene (well I would say that). I want for nothing, besides material things that I can save for.

You could say my life is as close to perfect as anyone has a right to expect. So - what would I tell 21-year-old me?

To borrow from Nike's advertising slogan - "Just do it", or words to that effect.

My whole life only one person has truly held me back - me. Sure, I can point to various authority figures and ascribe an amount of blame to them for failing to help me believe in myself, for putting me down when I needed lifting up, for telling me "music is a hobby". But ultimately I must accept responsibility for myself and my actions and decisions along the way. Every time I took the easy way out, or let depression and anxiety of the potential negative outcomes keep me from even trying, I let myself down.

Once upon a time I was a promising musician. I had a very small following locally who would ask when is the next gig, thrilled to be part of what I was doing. But I had to "get a proper job" which only increased my anxiety and lowered my energy levels such that I eventually stopped pursuing the dream altogether. Use it or lose it as they say.

Now, a married father, my capacity for taking any kind of risk is limited by the need to support my family. I am in a band now, my third in two years of living in Netherlands, and the first that truly feels right. Like most of the other guys in the band, family commitment prevents it from being much more than a hobby at this time. Sure, we have the opportunity to find our place in the local scene, to become a part of something comfortable and exciting, but I can hardly run off on tour and shirk my responsibilities at home.

So, 21-year-old me. Just do it. Get out there, make a name for yourself, find your place, before it's too late and your place is at home. Before you wake up, look in the mirror and see a fat, balding man approaching middle age.

Just do it.

Hakchi2 and the NES Mini Classic

In this post I shan't describe the process of adding NES games to your NES Mini Classic, as it's been noted elsewhere. It's really quite simple, and if you have the wherewithal to obtain the Rom images then you will get through it without difficulty.

My intention here is to document a series of difficulties I had running the provided Windows software on my Mac. (tl;dr version first).

tl;dr
If using a Mac with Parallels (and possibly other virtual machine options) to run Windows to install the Hakchi2 hack on a NES Mini Classic, make sure to run the hack software from the virtual C: drive under Parallels.

In order to maximise compatibility and to avoid game speed issues, be sure to use American version ROMs (usually marked with "[U]" within the file name.

Full
Wine (using Winebottler) didn't like it much. The software didn't look right, couldn't access the internet to download the cover art, and couldn't install the required driver to control the Nintendo hardware over USB.

I had a Windows 8 update disc to hand. The update edition only works for a while before it locks you out, but I'd only need a few hours so I went ahead and installed the trial version of Parallels 12, and on its virtual machine went my Windows 8. Everything was going swimmingly, and when I used Parallels to open Hakchi2 it looked like a true Windows program and ran as it should - including simple drag and drop functionality from macOS's Finder.

After several hours of adding games to the list and selecting the best available cover art I ran the process to install the extra games to my NES Mini (248 to be precise - whilst it holds more I don't want all the chaff). It seemed to be going well until it told me to wait for the power light to go out to continue - the light never went out, instead blinking slowly. I unplugged the console from my Mac and tried to power it on - no luck, it was stuck in this slow blinking mode with nothing on the screen.

I trawled forums looking for a solution but all I found was examples of the same problem, all using Parallels, but no solution, so I went back to basics.

My Hakchi2 folder was on my Mac's desktop, which Parallels has no problem accessing. I copied it to the root of the virtual C: drive of the virtual machine and ran it again (the copied folder retained the game files and cover art, as well as my list within the software).

Everything went right, and after a couple of restarts I had a working NES Mini Classic with a couple hundred extra games on it!

Doing some play testing, I discovered that some games ran way too fast to be playable, and some had terrible artefacts on screen making them unplayable - though only a couple suffered his second problem.

More forum digging and I found the (simple if you know how worldwide gaming was back in the day) answer. The basic emulation within the console's firmware is based on a 60hz output, as in the USA in the pre-HD era. The games that were running too fast were European roms, which I had tended to use, being from that territory. They are programmed to run on 50hz hardware, and so in this instance we're running 20% too fast.

An easy, though time consuming, solution had me going through my games list one by one, replacing any European rom images with USA versions where applicable, and reflashing the console. I took the opportunity, given my now expert status, to increase the number of games I added to around 400, intending this to be the final
attempt (I don't want to pay €79 for Parallels after the trial!). Any games only available in Europe I simply deleted from my list - a shame, but they aren't enjoyable at that speed.

Now I have a NES Mini Classic with 440ish games installed, the vast majority of which run perfectly.

Why I Cancelled My Switch Pre-Order

Today I cancelled my Switch pre-order.

The reasons are manifold, and some have been repeated over and over by seemingly everyone, but here they are - my reasons.

1) The price. Actually I think the price is great. €300 or thereabouts for a brand new console. However, it's money I can spend better elsewhere right now - for example putting it towards a new guitar amp I need now I'm no longer playing bass in a band, but back on guitar. If there were any bundled games, or even a discounted Zelda bundle, I'd be more interested.

2) Lack of exciting launch (window) titles. Yes yes I know Zelda is coming, but I can buy that on Wii U (which I already own) for €60 without having to buy another console. 1-2 Switch, Bomberman, Just fucking Dance. No thank you, not for anything close to retail price especially. Arms looks like a fun tech demo, but not a full game, and the jury's out on Super Mario Odyssey. Nintendo have yet to disappoint me with a Super Mario game, and I won't jump on the "it's the true sequel to Super Mario 64 we've been waiting for" bandwagon (Sunshine being a fantastic game with a '64-style layout already...) but the presentation didn't impress me in the slightest. I'll wait and see how it looks when it's finished before I make a console purchase based on that game.

3) The cost of accessories. Yes, this is essentially a subheading for point 1. The extra controllers, and especially the spare dock, cost an insane amount of money. Seriously, I've put off buying a second DualShock 4 because it costs €65. €80 though for a pair of JoyCons, or €60 for a Switch Pro controller? No chance. And the plastic steering wheel adapters? They're ok at €15 for two, but couldn't they have been a cheaper pack in for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as they were with the Wii version? Ah Mario Kart - that brings me to perhaps my biggest reason for cancelling.

4) Remakes, remasters, and repurchasing. Sure, if you skipped Wii U you won't have Mario Kart 8. Maybe you enjoyed earlier Rayman games, but haven't played Legends yet. It's perhaps even feasible that you may not have played Skyrim. But Switch's launch window has altogether too many remakes - and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the one that really gets my goat. Collecting all the DLC in one package is nice, and the ability to carry two items harks back to my favourite in the series Double Dash but come on, why isn't this a new game with new tracks and new ideas?

It's not just modern games being remade - I'm also getting sick of Nintendo's money grabbing ways with their old software. I'm as guilty of helping this as anyone - I've purchased Super Mario Bros 1, 2 and 3 on Wii, Wii U and 3DS. Not to mention on NES, SNES and Gameboy Advance. In this modern age, however, it would be a nice touch if we could keep our purchases tied to our account rather than our console, and enjoy them across any and all of them. We pay good money for the games and the consoles, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect something that has been normal for over 10 years on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam, and nearly as long on iOS and Android. They should also fix the dark, blurry emulators on Wii U.

5) I have too many games to get through already. Hey look, this isn't Nintendo's fault at all! I have so many games on so many systems that I'd like to get through, and the main difficulty I have in doing this is that I keep buying more systems and more games. I have games as far back as Xbox and PS2 that I'd like to complete, as well as several RPGs on Wii and PS3. That's not to mention 80-odd games on PS4 and 25 on Wii U, AND 25 on 3DS, 95% of which I haven't finished - and I'll be adding Resident Evil 7, Kingdom Hearts I.5 & II.5 Remix to those in the next few weeks. And Zelda. Don't forget Zelda. So yeah, a new console will not aid me in catching up.

---

So there you go. The main reasons I cancelled my Switch pre-order. The last console I bought at launch was the GameCube. It gave me many of my greatest gaming experiences, and I've owned most every mainstream console released since 1990. These days though, it seems a wiser move to sit back and see how the machine's first couple of years go before making a decision.

The tech sure looks exciting, and it's great to see Nintendo looking outside the box - such as in 1-2 Switch, which encourages new ways to interact with your opponents. However the company seems increasingly to be doing it for the money rather than for the joy of gaming (of course the purpose of a company is to make money, I know. But it should not be to the detriment of the user-base or the final product).

Review - Super Mario Run (iOS)

We've been waiting a while for this one, huh?

The Mushroom Kingdom serves,
naturally, as your hub.

The gameplay is familiar territory for fans of Super Mario Bros, with a twist to fit it into the smartphone (specifically touchscreen) realm. It's another endless running game very much along the lines of Rayman Run, but set in the Mushroom Kingdom. The main game sees you work through 6 worlds each of 4 stages in typical Mario style - except you can't stop running. Tapping the screen causes Mario to jump, holding it longer leads to a higher jump. Small enemies are automatically vaulted, and tapping the screen as Mario does so will add flair to the move and increase the coins collected. There are 5 pink coins on each stage and these represent the main replayability - collect them all and their placement changes, and then again so that each stage requires you to get the 5 coins three times for full completion. Each level remembers your highest score - in coins collected - which you can compare to any friends you might add.

The level select screen,
unlocked with a *gulp*
In App Purchase..!

Collecting a Super Mushroom grows you into Super Mario as you'd expect, granting you one extra hit point in case you make a mistake. Dying, however, is not the end - you have a set number of bubbles (usually two) that carry you back a short way in the level to try again when you die, similar to New Super Mario Bros when played multi-player. You will occasionally find extra bubbles in item blocks to further protect you from failure.

Winning an online run is
quite gratifying.

Playing through the main campaign you will also unlock tokens which enable you to access the online competitive mode which sees you run against the ghosts of others to finish a stage with the most coins and in the most style - the winner gains Toads who repopulate their kingdom and unlock decorations and buildings to improve the kingdom. This is quite fun, and it's certainly satisfying to win a run. Matchmaking seems pretty solid with a choice of opponents based on your current placing.

Stages are themed around
familiar Super Mario levels.

This is great fun, and pretty much exactly what you thought it would be - a well-crafted game that goes far beyond most disposable iOS games. Whilst not as fully fleshed-out as its peers on Wii U or 3DS, it certainly carries and condenses all the charm and joy of its big Bros. The price of entry is also considerably lower than for Mario's other games - more so if you already have an iPhone or iPad, but don't own a Nintendo console.

You didn't think Bowser would
miss out on the action,
did you?

Afterthoughts:

This is the first time I recall Apple having allowed a game to sit on the App Store as "coming soon" for several months before release. I'm sure it helped build some hype amongst gamers who have long waited for Nintendo to cease their stubborn ways. Unfortunately I fear we're seeing a downside of Nintendo bringing its IP to other hardware - the game stands at 3 stars on the App Store a day after release, with many 1 star ratings. Reading through the internet, as you do, reveals that a lot of people are displeased at the cost of the game - apparently all smartphone games should cost less than one of whichever currency you use. Super Mario Run costs £7.99, €9.99 or $9.99. It's a fair price for the content on offer - a game that they could easily charge twice as much for on their own platforms, compared to what else is out there.

Unfortunately, Nintendo have a long way to go to shake off a reputation that leads them to consistently "lose" the console race with each new generation. I must say that this reputation is unjust, and Nintendo consistently produce great games to match their hardware, but at least this is a step in the right direction, and sure is a great experience for those that want it, but I fear that Nintendo won't find a new audience on the iPhone outside of the already converted. It's a shame, but it's not easy to sway public opinion when that opinion is negative. Super Mario Run, I feel, is likely to remain a niche product, loved by many, but shunned by most. The cost of entry is clearly a problem for a lot of people, and will place the game amongst the likes of the Final Fantasy series on iOS - games that will be picked up by people that are already fans but ignored by those who are used to paying €0,99 for Angry Birds.

At least I didn't have to pay for it twice to play it on my iPad as well as my iPhone...