The Gameboy Advance is the best thing to happen to airline travel since the abolition of in-flight smoking. I spent virtually all of a recent 5-hour flight twiddling my thumbs, but in a good way. Despite being stuck in an insanely difficult boss battle in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrows for much of the trip, the hours raced by. <singsong>Fabulous!<singsong>. I also dosed myself with a couple packets of Emergen-C before and during the flight, and for the first time in a long while I did not develop a cold the day after landing. Now if someone would just invent the Cone of Silence for screaming children, air travel might even become tolerable again.
Posted by Peter at November 24, 2003 05:52 PMI believe Bose has already brought us into the Maxwell Smart era.
Posted by: Jonathan on November 24, 2003 06:12 PMI would point out that Virgin Atlantic have NES games at each seat, but if you have a Gameboy Advance, I don't suppose that would represent a great step forward... :-)
(Virgin Atlantic do let you send SMS messages while you're in the air, though, which is a cute gimmick at the very least.)
Posted by: Chris M. Dickson on November 24, 2003 06:26 PMOh man, I've just had a killer thought. You know how people write MAME for obscurer and obscurer platforms? Someone ought to write a custom version of MAME for whatever computer platform is used on airline at-seat systems, then officially licence a few dozen good ROMs - say, Taito or Konami or Sega's entire arcade back catalogue.
I'm not quite sure how the licensing of GPL would interplay with that - it might well be that MAME's license says You're Just Not Allowed To Do That. However, if it were possible, it would be a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Next step: big .mp3 server, entire publishing company's back catalogue. Heck, you could probably put a thousand movies in DivX form (because those little screens aren't going to need a great resolution) and sufficient computing power to serve them to n hundred passengers at once, or even just a 25% selection of the full range to the peons in cattle class, in a machine the size of the drinks trolley.
Wheeeeeee!
Posted by: Chris M. Dickson on November 24, 2003 06:34 PMCousin Peter's trip to New York:
http://www.balloondog.com/cousinpeter.jpg
Posted by: Russell on November 24, 2003 09:36 PMDo yourself a favor and pick up the GBA game Wario Ware. This cartridge has hundreds of wacky minigames presented to you in a frenzied manner. Instead of telling you how to play each game, a one word clue pops up on the screen, and it's up to you to figure out what you need to do before the time runs out. As you progess, the games come at you faster and faster, until your poor fingers just can't keep up. The best part of the game is how wonderfully Japanese it is, it's like the videogame equivaliant of MXC or Bonzai! Get this game, you won't be sorry.
Posted by: Jake on November 25, 2003 10:20 AMThanks for the recommendations. I just bought a gameboy with WARIO WARE and CastleVania.
...now what should I make for dinner?
Posted by: Russell on November 27, 2003 08:10 AMAhhhhhh The GBA- never has there been a better bathroom buddy.
Yeah, Wario Ware is a nice appetizer, but you need a good entree- pick up Advance Wars 2 and Final Fantasy Tactics-these games are brilliant. So far I think My FFT game is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 hours, (don't you hate it when they keep track of time played?) and I might be around half way done- now that's some good bang for your buck!
