GBA on the big screen?

[airsoftmodels]

Should I buy a retron 5 to play GBA cartridges on the television? I find that I don't use my GBA very often because as I get older I am getting blinder.

I don't plan to buy any NES, SNES, or Genesis carts. I just want to play the 20 GBA carts I own, and some classic GB carts as well.

Is the Retron 5 worth the $139 asking price? Any reason to steer clear of this system?

[BassGuitari]

Any reason to steer clear of this system?

It uses stolen emulators. Otherwise, it's a fine system.

[CatPix]

For 139$ you should be able to get a GameCube if you doesn't already own one, and a Game Boy Player for it that will play your GB and GBA games on your TV, with real Nintendo hardware.

 

Remember that the Game Boy Player need his software disc to work, so be sure to check out for the disc if you buy one that have a very low price tag!

Edited April 18, 2016 by CatPix

[+wongojack]

I haven't used a Retron 5, but which controllers you can use to play the games might influence your decision. On the Gamecube, you have to use Gamecube controllers. On the Retron 5, you might be limited to using the stock controllers it comes from (which people complain about). OR you might be able to use other controllers that connect to the system (which would be pretty awesome).

[CatPix]

Well, for that reason, Hori (a well know Japanese pad manufacturer, that is allwoed by Nintendo to use their brand and logo since the Famicom era) made the Hori Digital gamepad for that use :

[KeeperofLindblum]

For 139$ you should be able to get a GameCube if you doesn't already own one, and a Game Boy Player for it that will play your GB and GBA games on your TV, with real Nintendo hardware.

 

*snip*

Remember that the Game Boy Player need his software disc to work, so be sure to check out for the disc if you buy one that have a very low price tag!

 

The only issue with the Gamecube is he'd be dealing with composite most likely. (Component is too expensive, HDMI mods are still in the works.)

If you are aiming for the GBA on an HDTV, the Retron 5 might be the better option for overall ease.

 

Otherwise, I'd agree that the Game Boy Player is the best option.

[leods]

Doesn't the Gamecube GB palyer only work with GBA games?

 

Also there's the retro Freak, that's a japanese retron 5 clone known for being less crappy. Maybe worth taking a look.

[CatPix]

Oh true, I forgot about the HDMI thing, and that they cut off on analog input on your side.

[+wongojack]

Doesn't the Gamecube GB palyer only work with GBA games?

 

 

It works with original Gameboy and Gameboy Color games too. I had Kirby's pinball in there for like 6 months at one point (orig GB game).

[airsoftmodels]

to all that have responded to my post, thank you.

 

i stumbled upon the super retro advance adapter for $35

 

 

this might work well for me, since i do have an SNES.

 

 

[Austin]

Retron 5 is not a bad investment if you have a lot of carts across a wide variety of platforms. I'm not sure if I'd buy one just for GBA games though.

 

I have a Retron 5 and a handful of GBA carts. Iridion II doesn't seem to want to work on it (yet it works fine on my GC GB player). So watch out for compatibility issues.

 

Retron 5 has the benefit of allowing you to use a SNES or Genesis controller with any other system. So, you could play your GBA games with a SNES pad, or a Genesis controller. Nice flexibility there.

[KeeperofLindblum]

to all that have responded to my post, thank you.

 

i stumbled upon the super retro advance adapter for $35

 

61AI7QrkcmL._SL1044_.jpg

 

this might work well for me, since i do have an SNES.

 

 

 

I purchased one of these myself. It works but... It isn't perfect. Mostly the video output on it is kinda poor (granted it's composite so yeah). It only uses the SNES for power and controls.

Other than that, it works pretty great but limited to GBA only. Probably perfect for what you want budget-wise.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I'll toss in another vote for getting a GameCube with the Game Boy Player attachment. It plays all Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games perfectly using original Nintendo hardware and is really the best option out there for playing any Game Boy line game on a TV screen. If you want to go through emulation route (I.E. a Retron 5) it would be vastly cheaper to just run emulators on a soft modded Wii, but I still think you'll be the happiest with a GameCube and Game Boy Player.

[Video]

There's quiet a few options, more than I know of. The easiest would be, if you already got a gamecube, get a gameboy player. (make sure you get the boog disc) A little more diffficult, a few years back, there was a Super gameboy style player for the SNES, don't know who made it, i wanted one, but never picked it up. And before the Gameboy player came out, there was a device you could buy, GBATV which was a GBA sized device that attached to the back of your console and let you plug it into a TV. I bought one of those, handheld games were alwasy great IMO, but being stuck on a small screen always bothered me, especially as I got older and my eyes became less cooperative

[leods]

I thought the game boy player played only GBA games. Now I want one of those. I'll keep an eye out for a good deal. And maybe I can even play some GC games too. lol

[Professor Gull]

I would choose the Game Boy player for the Game Cube as well. Even with just standard RCA's its still good enough to look at and very playable with the GameCube controllers. And you should have no problems saving your games as well.

 

I thought there was a mod you could do to get it to play a burned copy of the GameBoy player disc. i have not looked too much into this but it might be a good option if you can't find it out in the wild.

[airsoftmodels]

here's an update: i purchased the super retro advance adapter for $35.

i thought it would be good bang for the buck. i have an snes to play it on.

it arrived today. i hooked it up and it worked great. for fifteen minutes.

then, it just stopped working. none of the gba carts would work any more.

i tried the snes by itself to see if it broke - it works, and i tried the gba carts

on my gba sp and they worked. had to send it back. oh well.

[Austin]

F***********************ck. That sucks.

 

Have you thought about a Game Cube and GBA Player? Should cost less than a Retron 5 combined and give you good results.

[CGQuarterly]

Hey OP, just buy a Wii with a classic controller and soft-mod it. You can get a component cable for it for next to nothing, the GBA emulator is great (I mean, a Retron would be emulation as well), plus then you have all of the other classic system emulators. The Wii is an awesome little emulation box, plus then you can also play GameCube and Wii games, stream Netflix, etc.

[Guspaz]

I got a Game Cube with a Game Boy Player. It's literally a Game Boy Advance connected to the Came Cube, so it supports everything the GBA does (GB/GBC/GBA games, but not Super Gameboy enhancements). I then bought the cable to connect a GBA to the GameCube, so that I can use a GBA as the controller for playing games. I've got it hooked up to both a 14" Sony PVM, and a projector with an 80" screen. I mainly use the PVM because it has less lag.

 

The Game Boy Player disc isn't critical, and indeed, isn't the best way to use the thing. The homebrew Game Boy Interface is much better: it supports 240p output resolution, and has less lag. However, to use it you need some way of running homebrew on your game cube, be it via a modchip, or softmod, or the SD Media Loader. If you use one of those options, you can also load the original Game Boy Player software without having the original disc.