Topic: Still Looking for the Best Way to GBA? Look No Further than Rose Colored Gaming

[Caliban]

No thanks. I will stick with my Game Boy Player.

[mburns]

The GB Player is nice if it's your only option (and if you have one of those Hori controllers designed similarly to the SNES controller), but it rubs a layer of vaseline over the entire image (even on sharp settings), forces letter and pillarboxing over the entire image instead of offering a pillarbox only option, and that Z-button overlay is one of the most annoying things Nintendo has ever done. And it looks pretty bad on an HDTV. If you've got an HDTV and a Wii U, take a look at GBA Virtual Console titles, then compare them to how they look on the GB Player -- there's no contest.

For my money, the Retron 5 is the best way to play GBA games on a TV, though it's sadly still a work in progress -- the emulation isn't up to snuff for Metroid Zero Mission yet (slowdown, though they're fixing in a future update), and it doesn't handle GBA save files very well currently. Anyway. Just my two cents. Glad you guys all love your GB Player, but there are better ways to play on a TV.

[Ian Sane]

And it looks pretty bad on an HDTV.

Doesn't every single videogame system made prior to the PS3 and Xbox 360 look like crap on an HDTV?  I've pretty much transitioned to the idea that standard definition games are to be exclusively played on old TVs.

[Mop it up]

Doesn't every single videogame system made prior to the PS3 and Xbox 360 look like crap on an HDTV?  I've pretty much transitioned to the idea that standard definition games are to be exclusively played on old TVs.

It depends on a variety of factors, including the type of TV, native resolution, settings, the cables used, etc. With the setup I have, SD content actually looks pretty good on my HDTV, so I have no problem with GBA games. They look just fine.

That said, a good-quality flat-screen progressive CRT is probably still best for SD games, but it isn't that big a difference really. And, for non-progressive content it actually is nice to not see the scanlines on an HDTV, which become really noticeable on a CRT after viewing an HDTV.

[mburns]

[Doesn't every single videogame system made prior to the PS3 and Xbox 360 look like crap on an HDTV?  I've pretty much transitioned to the idea that standard definition games are to be exclusively played on old TVs.

No, actually. Even though I'm using a Retron 5 now, I find that my SNES looks fantastic on my HDTV using S-Video. That's why the GB Player's fuzzy output is such a letdown to me -- seeing as it's basically a SNES 2.

[UncleBob]

Have you tried playing a GB Player via Component Cables?  Not perfect, but it looks much better.

[Oblivion]

Or could could use Retroarch:











That last one is actually a part of the emulator, by the way. Oh, and it works on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, PS3, Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, and Windows Phone.

[Oblivion]

If you want to see the pictures not fucked up, right click on them and open them on a new tab.