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DS Lite Question

M

mattbaker

n00b
Joined
Feb 1, 2006
Messages
20
I heard that the DS Lite might not be backwards compatible with GBA games. Is this true?
 
It's still BC with GBA games. They just stick out of the bottom a little because of the smaller size of the lite. Now, GB/GBC compatability hasnt been around since the SP...
 
so_cal_forever said:
Now, GB/GBC compatability hasnt been around since the SP...
Click to expand...

well shit. this i did not know. guess i'm glad i didn't sell both my GBA's (for a pittance) after all. There's still a ton of GBC games that i'd like to play. Still working on one of the zelda ones now.
 
so_cal_forever said:
Now, GB/GBC compatability hasnt been around since the SP...
Click to expand...


Ditto I didn't know Nintendo discontinued backward compatiblity of the GB/GBC. Been awhile since I picked up a Gameboy but if I did I would love to play Mario Land 2 and Mario Land 3,(whatever Wario's first game was).
 
The Gameboy Advance and Gameboy Advance SP play GB/GBC games. The GameBoy Advance Micro and the Nintendo DS don't.

The reason is in the processors.

Original Gameboy games ran on a custom Z80 processor at 4Mhz

Gameboy Color games ram on the same Z80 but clocked at 8Mhz - to play Gameboy games the GBC halfed the multiplier.

Gameboy Advance games ran on a custom ARM7 at 16Mhz, while the Nintendo DS games run on two processors - a 33Mhz version of the GBA ARM7, and a new custom ARM9. To play GBA games the DS turns off the ARM9 and halfs the ARM7 multiplier, just like the Gameboy Color.

The trick comes when trying to get GB/GBC games to run on a GBA. To make it happen, Nintendo had to put a complete 8mhz Z80 (a GBC) inside. Only one processor is ever powered up.

There are however several problems with this. The first is space - if you open up a GBA SP, you'll find the big old Z80 takes up a lot of space. The second is that the custom Z80 is a 15 year old, custom, obsolete part - and that makes it an "expensive" special order part. The last, and perhaps biggest problem is that the Z80 operates at a higher voltage then the more modern, power efficent Z80 - that meant the GBA had to have both a battery capable of outputting the higher voltage, and the hardware to shift the voltage down to the ARM7 level.

When the GBA launched it had this. When the GBA SP launched, it had it too. However by the time you get to the Micro/DS, you're talking about a game system that was phased out almost 5 years ago - the cost and complexity to support it vs the benefit (the DS already has access to the entire GBA library) was not that good. For those who want to play GB/GBCgames Nintendo still makes the "brighter" version of the GBA SP and will likely continue to do so until they stop making GBA units entirely.
 
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