We actually didn’t get to go hands on with the Game Boy Player, but Bill Trinen demonstrated the hardware with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, as well as using the GBA connectivity feature of Kaze no Takuto. (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker here in the states)

Playing with a Game Boy Advance Game:

First Bill fired up the machine with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. He whipped through the options rather quickly, but here’s a quick breakdown of some of what you’ll be able to control.

Frame: Change the border around the screen. There are presets built in, or games will be able to be programmed with additional borders.

Controller Setting: Change the controller settings.

Screen Size: Full screen or letterboxed.

Sharp: Change how sharp or blurry the graphics are.

Timer: Parental timer.

Change Game: Allows you to swap games without resetting the system.

After seeing the poor quality of how GBA games looked with hardware like the TV de Advance, or even the development hardware like the Wide Boy Advance, I was really surprised how well Link to the Past looked. I wouldn’t say it looked as good as a SNES, but it was very close to the original. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do a side-by-side comparison with a SNES, but with all the stretching the hardware is doing, it doesn’t look half bad.

You cannot do multiplayer split screen gaming with the Game Boy Player, but you can link to another Game Boy Player or Game Boy Advance with link cables. With a link cable you can in fact link up to 4 Game Boy Players that are connected to GameCubes (with 4 TVs) and play multiplayer. If you’ve got the hardware, this could be a total blast.

Playing with Connectivity:

Bill popped in The Legend of Zelda: Kaze no Takuto in one GameCube, and then plugged the Game Boy Advance / GameCube link cable into the Game Boy Player on the other system. Now you will be able to use the connectivity functions of the Game Boy Advance on a TV. The only game I can see this worth while currently would be The Legend of Zelda: Kaze no Takuto, but really, a Game Boy Advance would work just fine. It was cool to see this in action, but I can’t imagine a whole lot of people doing this on a regular basis.

The Hardware:

Not surprisingly, the Game Boy Player is basically the hardware of the GBA that can be attached to the bottom of the GameCube. When inserting a GBA cartridge, due to the placement of the cartridge slot on the bottom, you’ll have to slightly raise your GameCube off the ground, and then put the cartridge in. This prototype that we got to look at had a release lever on the right side of the unit, and a storage compartment on the left side for an extra Game Boy Advance game and a memory card. Bill wasn’t sure if the storage compartment feature would make it to the final version. For those of you who carry your GameCube’s around, it has screws that can make the connection more stable.

After flipping over my Panasonic Q after I got home, I understood why the Game Boy Player will not fit on the hardware. The legs on the unit would get in the way. You could remove the legs from your Q to make it fit, but personally, I’m not amputating my Q.

Overall, I’m really excited about this hardware. I normally use my Game Boy Advance if I’m traveling. Call me a snob, but if I’m sitting at home, I’m more likely to be playing a game on my TV than sitting hunched over with a Game Boy Advance. I think there are many awesome features this hardware can possess if utilized correctly: online gaming, further connectivity between a GameCube game and a GBA game (like with Pokemon), etc. But even if Nintendo doesn’t decide to take this route, come spring next year, we’ll be able to do what we’ve wanted to do since the GBA was released – play GBA games on our television.