GBA

I was looking around teh good ol' trusty internets to see about breathing some life into Portagame. I really don't have the bandwidth (meaning personal time--I have a job to keep and a family to feed, and a wife who yells at me for being on the computer too much. sob.) to do game reviews. I have in the past said "So this seems cool" about a game or two, but I really enjoyed reporting on the new hardware and accessories for handhelds.

So back to my story. I was crawling the web, looking for things that interested me. I usually look for tidbits that don't already have fanboy gizz all over them, as I don't prefer to contribute to their noise (but have in the past). I decided to look at some the advertisers in my pocket to see if anyone was doing any PSP or DS promos for the holidays. That's when I noticed a promo for GameFly. Yes the GameFly that lets you rent PSP, GBA, and DS games via mail. Looks like they are gearing up big for the Wii launch and giving out a Wii everyday in November. A Free Wii! Did you hear me? A Free WII! (I give up on the fanboy noise thing). So if you are a poor Wii-less gamer (ah geez) who needs a Wii, go check out the ad below. You might just pee a little.

The main way to enter the drawing is to register for a new account. But if you have an account (you smart thrifty gamer, you) and you don't know about this promo yet (not so smart), all you have to do is login to your account and enter the contest. For the rest of us tin-foil hat wearing paranoids who don't like to buy things online, you can relax: THERE'S NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Find the rules page and there is a link to the alternate entry (hooray for legalaties!).

Now in the comments, please be sure to leave us with your best "Wii" pun. Thank you for visiting Portagame. Have a nice day. Buh Bye!

Before all you fanboys get so excited that you pee a little, I hope you take a brief moment to download the E3TV / PermissionTV Player. This application rocks. It will stream eventually play all three of the major press conferences from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, FULLSCREEN AND FREE OF CHARGE. If you have to go to school or work (What? You used up your vacation already? Call in sick already), the media player will download the press conferences for later viewing. So don't fret about paying Gamespot for a subscription or battling 1UP users for bandwidth. This media gobstopper of a goodie is coming directly from E3Insider.com, the official news site of E3.

Also, if you enjoyed last years Floored and FanCam blogcasts, the E3TV app will work like a podcast retriever and download those episodes for you as soon as they become available.

Hurry, the Sony event is only a couple of hours away. Download now before their server bogs up.

[UPDATE: The player is cool in concept but poor in execution. I still have yet to see the Sony conference available through the player and it has been over for 8 hours. Verdict: Stick with the low-res free Gamespot coverage.]

Nintendo and AOL are tag teaming to offer one lucky gamer the chance to be the first person (of general public stance, that is) to play the actual Revolution with the actual Revolution controller during E3. That winner will also win a Nintendo DS (I dare say it may be Lite) with Super Mario 64, and an all expense paid trip to the Mecca of Gaming: E3. Not unlike the movie Wizard and how it was a PR stunt for Mario Bros 3 to be publicly unveiled during a "contest", the winner here will be playing the Rev in front of a large audience of liveblogging media stuntmen (and bloggers). And it will be the first time a playable Revolution is seen by the press and public.

You can enter starting today at noon! To enter, GO HERE and follow the directions!

Good luck to all--may the best fanboy win!

[via Joystiq]

Just some more news about CES. According to our sources over a MacWorld.
Nintendo has been working with Car Audio manufacturer Visteon to produce a in car entertainent system that will truly keep your kids quiet. You see this one actually integrates with a GBA. The Dockable Family Entertainment System will play game cartridges for Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance as well as DVDs, executives said at a press conference. Kinda cool since you don't have to have your GBA with you, just the games. I wonder how well it would work with GBA Flash Carts, if at all? Also where on this thing do the cartridges fit in?

I ran across this great Game Boy Micro review the other week and wanted to share it with all of you. Although the Game Boy Micro isn't exactly breaking news this is an excellent little review from some press outside the Gaming Blogosphere and someone who is not a Nintendo Fanboy. I mean this thing is an awesome little gadget and has over 500 titles ready for it. They ended up giving it a 78%. Click to read the review from our friend's over at InfoSync.

Hey All this was first covered in July of last year but it warrants another look. This is a cool little machine that acts as a vending machine for movies for your GBA Movie Player. This Japanese only device allows you to insert your GBA movie player flash memory card, crank a handle and instantly download anime episodes to watch on your GBA. Episodes are around 25 minutes each and priced at 300-yen to download. The new twist? Now with EXTRA Pokemon episdoes, of course, for more mind-blowing seziures...

What is this? The week of the GBA Micro or something? Anyway another loyal reader sent in this link to Gizmondo.
Apparently through a series of small hacks and hardware you can now watch your TIVO programs on the GBA Micro. All you need is the PlayYan Hardware Device for the GBA along with this tutorial to convert your Tivo to Go to asf MPEG4 files which you can then watch on your GBA. Cool! I do the same thing with my Snapstream DVR and my PPC.

One of our loyal readers sent me this link to a great review of the GBA Micro. As soon as this site gets a little bigger I know we would all love to start to buying and writing up reviews of all the latest handheld gadgets. Hopefully that is in the near future.

The reviewer in this article does a good job of explaining the good and the bad and uses a ton of photos to make his point. I must admit the GBA Micro does make me want to play some Mario hardcore...

Hey All,
I just got a note in my inbox that GBATemp is alive and kicking. For those of you not familiar with GBATemp, it's one of the Net's best message boards dedicated to the GBA. They cover everything from Tools to hack your GBA to the latest emulators. Their release list is the best on the Net covering all US, UK and JAP releases. Plus where else could you see this screenshot?
LOL. I didn't know the donkey show had it's own GBA game...

In the gaming industry, it's all about the pre-orders. Think about it. Maybe the DVD industry is a not-so-close second, but no other industry thrives on pre-orders like the Video Games industry.

And with the preorder craze there is always a rush for companies to be the first to offer pre-orders of new systems. If your company is the first to accept pre-orders for a system, and sites like, well let's say a site like Portagame, finds that you're the first to offer preorders, and other sites find that Preorder news... Well if all that happens, then your company will most likely be much higher than industry averages for preorders of that system, and the company that makes the console will reward your suits with baskets of fermented grape juice and plaques to hang on your VP of Sales' office wall.

Whew. That was a blurt.

So, with following the pre-order standard operating procedures, EBGames will be clanking crystal with Nintendo for having the highest pre-order rates of the new Gameboy Micro. They're the first to offer US pre-orders of the handheld. The price of the Gameboy Micro will be $99 for those who don't know yet. EBGames has the release date set for Sept 19th.

Pre-order the Gameboy Micro (Black) for $99 at EBGames.

Pre-order the Gameboy Micro (Silver) for $99 at EBGames.