GBA/Gameboy Coming to DSi ?

[wraggster]

Last night, Nintendo held an event for platinum members of Club Nintendo to try out the new DSi. Quite a few interesting tidbits were shared at the event, including that DSi owners will be able to download Game Boy and GBA games. I am going to mark this as a rumor for now, however. We haven’t heard about this in Japan and Nintendo has yet to officially confirm the news.

- Will be only able to download Nintendo GBA/GB titles at first
- GBA/GB games will be region-locked
- Will be able to run the games from an SD card
- Calculators will be downloadable
- Opera available for download on DSi launch day
- Confirmed that owners will receive 1000 free points

http://www.nintendoeverything.com/?p=12752

[carlitx]

so instead o using the GBA/ GB game carts we already dished out money for, we get to buy them all over again... hip hip F you Nintendo.


Only bit of news that POed me for a long time from this company.

[mattsaysfooey]

Been downloading and playing gba/gbc/gb games on my DS for awhile now. Maybe nintendo should of offered this back when people didn't have flashcards. They are catching up to the DS Scene too little too late.

[slaanesh]

Does this mean the hardware to play GBA games is actually still present in the iNDS, just minus the GBA cartridge slot?

[Jeric]

Am I actually the only one to see their offering the GBA titles up as a download as a good thing? While yes its annoying to rebuy titles that've jumped formats, it means we won't have hardware obseliteness to worry about. The one thing that aggravates me, given the many titles that haven't made the jump, is the fact they are region locking GBA/GB titles. Smells like idiocy to me. The GBA was region free, why regionalize the titles now?

[royvedas]

ultrafail!

[Qmark]

Does this mean the hardware to play GBA games is actually still present in the iNDS, just minus the GBA cartridge slot?Maybe?
The ARM7 appears to be absent, but several DS games (if not all) use it as a coprocessor. It seems like the 67MHz ARM9 and the 33MHz ARM7 have been replaced with a single 133MHz ARM processor.

This processor is likely compatible with ARM7 instruction code, and Z80 emulation (GBC) would be trivial.