rant time!! :evil: So a few months ago a friend gave me a PAL GC and one of the first buys I planned for it was the GBA player, since I only have a 1st gen GBA with the god-awful screen. Soon I realized that they are impossible to find in Portugal and it would be cheaper and faster getting a JPN one. I googled for some info on JPN/PAL compatibility but didnt find anything, I assumed the system booted directly from the hardware, similar to the MegaCD. WRONG! it needs a freaking boot disc which is conveniently region locked! So I went ahead and got a loose JPN GC with some cheap JPN games also. I already had the pads+mem card from the PAL GC and a RGB cable which should solve any NTSC picture issues so I expected to be playing some GC imports and GBAplayer soon! WRONG AGAIN! I wasnt getting any picture on my JPN GC, only sound... So after some more google'ing I found out that the NTSC GC's dont output RGB, only crappy composite/svid!! Also I found out I would even have to get a new memory card because a PAL formatted one wont work on a JPN system and so on... So now I ended up with a useless GC, GBAPlayer and games.... Meanwhile I got a Wii for Xmas and I also got a JPN Nights+Freeloader. As I google'd didnt find any incompatibilites with Freeloader besides not working with the newer firmwares so I expected it to work without a hitch.. FCKN WRONG AGAIN Altough Wii's firmware forces the video mode on all PAL games (PAL 50 ou 60) it doesnt do so on imports, so NTSC titles display on NTSC60 which means black and white picture for PAL users... "no biggie" I thought, I just need an RGB cable and I'm on my way! So I get a official RGB cable, power on the Wii, an awesome RGB cripy image appears on my TV, i put the Freeloader+Nights, load the game and....... ARRRRGGGHHHH The picture is all red!! WTF!! So nintendo did it again, and similar to the GC, when in NTSC mode the RGB output is simply disabled! BONUS Wii's freeloader also boots GC imports but forces a 50hz display,so it crushes the display and puts a huge black bar on the bottom of the screen and the games play about 20% slower and all the FMV's get out-of-sync. I feel like selling/trading all of this crap for a modchip and a 50 DVDR cake instead... /rant
Ntsc gamecubes can output rgb but only if its the earlier model thats got a digital socket as you can use the official nintendo component cable. In non progressive scan mode its pretty much the same as rgb & in progressive scan its even better. As for the wii, if you install the homebrew channel you don't even need the freeloader at all.
Yep, Install the Homebrew channel. I did and haven't looked back since. I'm not using it to play copies but for imports and emulation. Yakumo
"Also I found out I would even have to get a new memory card because a PAL formatted one wont work on a JPN system and so on..." Thats half true. You can format a PAL memory card to JPN or USA in the gcn bios. The actual memory card is not region locked, its a software thing which is kind of lame (freeloader seems to bypass this issue from what i've read)
oh come on! you're complaining about issues that you perceive as wrong - of course you need a boot disk for the GBA player, the same way you needed IPL4ROM in the DD Devkit, the never released PSX add on had a special cartridge, the famicom had a top loading connector etc. I don't see anything out of line with the GBA player. Also, although I live in Europe I got myself a US cube at launch. Why? because PAL support sucks shit and it's a fact. You complain about the lack of RGB but I say fuck RGB, I get 480p signal out of the cube even on the GBAplayer - bright, crisp, non-interlaced frames! Actually your beef with Nintendo seems to be about things that are not officially supported - and last I checked it's not unheard of to have region locks and features removed. Have you ever owned a nintendo home console before? Considering that NO GC disk is region free (As with every nintendo physical software distribution medium, save their portable lines) I can't understand your notion of expecting it to boot! Next time, please take the time to educate yourself before you start complaining about real world facts and blaming them on someone else =) It is YOU who have to do your homework before you start walking down unofficial paths, not nintendo's obligation to suit subjective opinions about what is "right". It's like buying a gun and saying "I was expecting the trigger to be on top of it, tilted to the left because I like shooting that way" - and then saying "fuck the manufacturer". Finally, I would advise you to get a GBA-GC cable in order to control the game using its original control layout - although you ll miss out on the supported rumble that some games offer such as Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga
It should be completely possible to buy Wii games and play them on a Wii, but of course there are the artificial coded-in restrictions which companies use to control release dates and partake in price-fixing. Region locking should be made illegal.
well, at least PSP and PS3 (good !!! ) are region free, and 30 % or so 360 games are too. Hum, do you know the last one? DSi are region locked. A shame, I know.
I hate to say it, but these issues are indeed common knowledge. If you'd even looked on eBay you would have found that there's a disc with the Game Boy Player - and common sense would dictate that it is region coded. Also, you're naming it wrongly. Please look at the box: Note: GAME BOY PLAYER. If you search for GBA player, of course you won't find much. I don't understand why, when you are in Europe, you would say it is easier to get a Japanese one? You could get one from Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the UK..... eBay has sites in all those regions and there are lots of shops, too. http://cgi.ebay.es/GAME-BOY-PLAYER-...ZLH_DefaultDomain_186?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116 http://cgi.ebay.es/GAMEBOY-PLAYER-P...m14&_trkparms=72:895|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318 Nintendo consoles not doing RGB is very old news. There was a mod on rgbcube.co.uk, here's an archive of it which may or may not work: http://web.archive.org/web/20040205191350/http://www.rgbcube.co.uk/index.html (the archive has many copies of the page, so you should get lucky - if not here's another copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20021030102923/http://freespace.virgin.net/paul.groundwater/Index.html). You could check out Ben Heck's forum, too: http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?t=5035
We lost a great topic about Zelda 64DD because of those legal people from Nintendo. Now we'll probably never see a prototype of the game in action.
wow dude. Fuck nintendo? This is common knowledge. This is how ALL systems are. You've got to be kidding me. Failure on your part. as for the GB PLayer - Get a free loader. Put freeloader in gamecube. Turn on. Switch to GB player disc. hit A. OMG YOU LOADED AN IMPORT.
mind you, Action Replay (Which contains freeloader) works better in some cases than Freeloader (I own both) - but none of the disks provides a complete import solution as bugs persist ranging from minor to fatal.
The DSi isn't region locked, people are only saying that bacause you can only download DSiWare games from the Japanese shop channel. I got one and it plays european and US cartrigdes without a problem.
God, I hate region locks. ...and as far as I know the Digital out is not compatible with European RGBs (as the s stands for composite sync) while component (Y'CbCr or Y'PbPr) isn't even RGB, and if it was, it would be RsGB with sync on green or something like that.
