Topic: My 4-Player Link Cable test...

[UncleBob]

Okay, here's how it is:

Let's say you have two original GameBoy game paks - oh, Tetris, for example.  And you have two Advance-Compatible GameBoy units, let's say a regular GBA and a GameBoy Player.  Now, in order to link these two units together to play some green Tetris, *offically* you are supposed to have a Universal Link cable.  Great, except that no one sells the offical Nintendo Universal Link Cable.  So what other options do you have?  Well, aside from third party cables, you can take two of the offical GameBoy Advance cables and use them to link the two units together.  How, you ask?  (Come on, ask it!)...  Well, take the purple ends of both cables and plug them into the extention ports in the middle of the cables.  Then, take the grey ends of the cables and plug them into the GBA units - blammo, you've got a two player game of Tetris, ready for your pleasure.

This has been farily common knowledge for awhile now... But what about that F-1 Racing urge we all have?

Well, I finally managed to get two additional copies of the classic GameBoy game F-1 Race for a really cheap price, and, along with my copy I already had, I'm up to three.  So I finally got a chance to try something out!  3 Player F-1 Race without using the offical Nintendo Four Player Adapter (You know, that little used gadget that came packed with F-1 Race that was never really used for much of anything else...)  So I took three GBA Cables and hooked a purple end from each into a middle extention port on each, making a triangle in the center.  Then I plugged a grey end into a regular GBA, a GBASP and my GameBoy Player.  Slipping in an F-1 Race cart into each of the units, I powered them up and attempted to start a three player game.

Sadly, it didn't work.

After getting out my old Four Player Adapter and one of my Brick GameBoys, along with two Universal Link Cables, I linked my GBA, GameBoy Player and original GameBoy together - just to make sure that the three player was working (and that it wasn't something with the units or something or another) and sure enough, it did work.

What does this mean?  If you want to play a GameBoy Classic 4-Player game, you *must* have at least *one* Brick GameBoy (Since the Four Player Adapter requires one of the larger expansion ports to plug into).

Yeah, it's not very exciting, but I was bored...

[KDR_11k]

You are NOT supposed to form a triangle, that creates a loop and destroys the signal. Read the manual that comes with those multiplayer GBA games, the first cable connects two GBAs, the second cable goes into the splitter of the first cable and another GBA, same for the fourth.

[UncleBob]

Yeah, that's how it works for 3- or 4- player GameBoy Advance games.  However, I was attempting to get a 3-player GameBoy Classic game to work using the GameBoy Advance Link Cables, using the same method that you can use to get a two player GameBoy Classic game to work with GameBoy Advance Link Cables.

[KDR_11k]

Have you tried using the GBA game method?

[UncleBob]

Yeah, I tired that first and it didn't work...

[KDR_11k]

Guess a little reverse engineering is in order... I suppose you're not willing to try what happens when you simply cut those cables in half and connect the wires from three or more cables together? Or modify the four player adapter to have a GBA plug on its cable?

[Shecky]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Guess a little reverse engineering is in order... I suppose you're not willing to try what happens when you simply cut those cables in half and connect the wires from three or more cables together? Or modify the four player adapter to have a GBA plug on its cable?

I wouldn't cut the existing wires, I'd build seperate adapters (buy buying cheap gba and gbc cables and cut those

You could build an adapter to go from gbc to gba for your four player adapter - so that you wouldn't have to modify the 4 player adapter.  Chopping original equipment (4 player adapter, universal cables) never seems logical to me because you paid a premium for that

[UncleBob]

Well, even if I had the spare equiptment to do such horrible violations to precious Nintendo products (), I wouldn't have anything near the talent...  Although I suppose putting a Generation 2 Link Cable Connector end on the end of the 4-Player adapter would probably work to allow 4-Player GBA+ play... hmmm..

[UncleBob]

Wow... This was awhile ago...

On another note, there is a bit of a rumor that the original GameBoy classic game "Faceball 2000" (the only FPS on the 'brick worth playing) supposedly supports up to 16 players.  This is very interesting to me...

While just randomly checking stuff out, I found this:

http://faceball2000.gbadvanzed.com/rchampagne.html

When we developed the game, there was no "4-player adapter" available (yet) from Nintendo (and they didn't tell us it was coming). We wanted more than 2 people to be able to play the game simultaneously, so looked at the hardware specification and came-up with a simple way to connect as many Gameboys as we wanted (essentially a daisy-chain of systems). I built a connector and wrote some code-- and couldn't believe how well it worked!
The original idea was to pack-in this "special" connector (which would use the standard 2-player cable to connect to the "next" system in the chain) with the cartridge. The cost was low and it was a great feature for the game, but Nintendo would not allow it. Anyway, the project was almost ready to ship at this point, and that is when we found-out about the 4-player adapter. Our only choice was to support it, but I was able to leave the original "16-player" code in the game (it will auto-detect 2-player "cable," 4-player adapter, or the special daisy-chain connector for up to 16-players).
Oh, we limited it to 16-players, but it could have easily been more. Quite honestly, it was hard to find more than 10 people to test the game at the time of development! I remember holding two Gameboys (one in each hand) to playtest the game. I'm not sure that we EVER had a "real" 16-player game going!

Now, I've never been able to test the 5+ players theory (While I have managed to score more than one 4-Player adapter, I only have once copy of FB2X), but one of these days I'm going to.
(If anyone sees really, really cheap copies of FB2X, let me know, okay? )