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GBA Doom II Cartridges

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Does GBA Doom II come an different cartridges (different labels)?

Here's the usual one that I'm aware of: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Doom-II-2-rare-Game-Boy-Advance-SP-System-/190615516091?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item2c6191f3bb

But then there's this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Doom-II-Nintendo-Game-Boy-Advance-Extremely-Rare-Cartridge-Only-/150714855069?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item23174e2e9d

I am aware of how Doom II GBA (and maybe other GBA games) are often found as bootlegged cartridges and the design does look a bit sketch (despite the seller's claims and his feedback history). Or is that really a super-rare edition?

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This is one of the reasons why Amazon is SOOOOO much better than shitbay.

Or Craigslist for that matter.

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Top-rated seller my ass.

I've tried looking for stuff on amazon, myself, though it doesn't have a lot of stuff ebay tends to have.

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Xeros612 said:

Doom would NEVER have an E rating.

Nope, no Doom game has ever been rated E by the ESRB, according to their own database.

Likely to be a bootleg, but could be just be from a (legit) batch of misprinted cartridges. Weirder stuff has happened.

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The fact that it's called a "recreation" is also suspicious. Maybe someone simply compiled prBoom or Chocolate Doom for the GBA, slapped a WAD on it and put it into a GBA cart?

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i actually own that second cart. picked it up at a second-hand store.

it has a weird title screen hacked into it, and the save function doesn't work.

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Maes said:

The fact that it's called a "recreation" is also suspicious. Maybe someone simply compiled prBoom or Chocolate Doom for the GBA, slapped a WAD on it and put it into a GBA cart?


Like the SNES version of Doom, Doom2 for the GBA doesn't use the Doom engine: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/GBA#Doom_II

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Vermil said:

Like the SNES version of Doom, Doom2 for the GBA doesn't use the Doom engine: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/GBA#Doom_II


Heh then maybe a "canonical" source port, even if bootlegged, would actually be a welcome improvement ;-)

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Maes said:

The fact that it's called a "recreation" is also suspicious.


If you mean from that "Special Features" section of the description, that's one of those stock blurbs that are usually attached to games (especially when sold on Ebay). They are legitimate descriptions, though whether they're fully valid or not is independant; Final Doom PSX has a description (often used on Ebay) that claims it has 40 levels.

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buttspit said:

I am aware of how Doom II GBA (and maybe other GBA games) are often found as bootlegged cartridges and the design does look a bit sketch (despite the seller's claims and his feedback history). Or is that really a super-rare edition?

Dunno about the cartridge, but that label is fake, at least for a US/NA edition.
Here are some small pictures of actual GBA Doom/Doom II carts.

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I also have a bootleg with E rating.

It has an old demoscene-style "greetz" screen when you power on the cart, so it's obviously not legit.

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Maes said:

The fact that it's called a "recreation" is also suspicious. Maybe someone simply compiled prBoom or Chocolate Doom for the GBA, slapped a WAD on it and put it into a GBA cart?

Piracy aside, if they've ported Chocolate Doom to the GBA I'll be very interested to see! :-P

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With the GBA's 16Mhz CPU and 256k RAM I find this somewhat unlikely. It struggles emulating even complex Gameboy Color games.

(of course you can guy a GB flash cart and it switches into GB compat mode but that's not the point)

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Super Jamie said:

With the GBA's 16Mhz CPU and 256k RAM I find this somewhat unlikely.


That's just the same amount of RAM as the Sega 32X. Don't forget that ROM space can be used as RAM for certain immutable stuff like patch_t format graphics, most map structures, flats and sounds (provided they are not too different in-memory than on-disk, in which case a specially crafted IWAD would work better).

With some compromises on the resolution/frame rate, with the nearly 1 IPC performance of the ARM CPU and a proper chunky display, it would be much more playable than e.g. on a 68030 Amiga.

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That's like saying cutting your arm with a knife is less painful than cutting the whole arm off.

Sure it's true, but really neither are going to be pleasant experiences.

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Sure, but since when was technical excellence/actual playability a driving factor in porting Doom to X?

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Super Jamie said:

True. Doom is the new "proof of concept" that a language works on a platform.


And it took nearly 15 years for someone to finally prove this for Java ;-)

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Doom 1 does use a port of the original engine (via Jag Doom) on GBA. It's not unplayable, but it's not fast either, and tons of corners had to be cut to even fit the game into memory.

Also the GBA does *not* emulate GameBoy Color. There is a switch in the cartridge port which is only activated when a GameBoy or GameBoy Color cart is inserted (look carefully into the slot, you will see it, and then notice the difference in form factor between the original carts and GBA carts that enables this).

When this switch is held down, the system boot is redirected to a complete copy of the GBC hardware, including the Z80 CPU - the only thing shared between the GBA and GBC is the sound hardware, which is available to GBA mode as "chiptune" channels on top of its additional digital sound channels.

GB and GBC games run at full native speed when played on a GBA.

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The sound hardware is shared and has the same functionality but not the exact same sound. Even the GBC has different sound quality to the original DMG.

The GBA also does not have 100% accuracy for GB software. LSDJ on a GB flashcart runs noticeably slower on GBA than it does on DMG/GBC.

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Super Jamie said:

The sound hardware is shared and has the same functionality but not the exact same sound. Even the GBC has different sound quality to the original DMG.

The GBA also does not have 100% accuracy for GB software. LSDJ on a GB flashcart runs noticeably slower on GBA than it does on DMG/GBC.

Loss of 100% accuracy is not uncommon with iterations of old hardware like that. Mistakes in the original hardware may be omitted by lack of knowledge that they ever existed, or out of desire to remove their deleterious effects. Even minute changes to timing can have vast effects.

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I am always surprised at the amount of people who believe that it's trivial to emulate just about anything on a low-end ARM (<100 MHz) or a FPGA in real-time and at a reasonable cost. E.g. FireCore? Emulated on ARM! NES-on-a-chip? Emulated on ARM! PSX hardware? Emulated on an ARM! GBC on GBA? Emulated on....hmm...NOT! (with a Borat accent).

In reality, the (old, uncrippled) PS2 actually includes an entire replica of the PSX hardware, as the GBA includes a complete replica/clone of the GBC circuitry. The FireCore actually IS a 68000 core with some replica Mega Drive parts on-a-chip, the NES-on-a-chip is exactly what it says on the tin (well..provided it's not under the form of a blob chip ;-) etc.

"BUT MEAS, L0L, THERE'S STUFF LIKE THE G2PX THAT RUNZ LUNIX AND HAS AN ARM @ 533 mhZ AND EMUALTES EVERYTHNG JUST FINE AND COSTS ONLY $150! UR WRONG LOL"


$150 is A LOT when you check out how much a dedicated NOAC or FireCore "Mega Drive" cost, even when they are built-in a portable console with a reasonable 3" color screen, such as the Portable Dream Console or the Gameking III ;-)

When someone can produce a G2PX-like console at a price point well under $50, then we're talking. Availability is also another sore point: the GP2X is somewhat of an exotic device, normally not found in retail outlets around the world, except in its native South Korea, while dedicated consoles (including NOAC and FireCore clones) can be found even on the streets of third world shitholes.

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Vermil said:

Doom2 for the GBA doesn't use the Doom engine: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/GBA#Doom_II

It's funny because I actually liked the gba version of Doom 2 more than the original Doom 2, but then again that might just be because I had to play that version before I mananged to get the original version.

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but Meas, l0l, there's stuff like the G2PX (which I also own) that runz Lunix and has (two 200MHz) ARM CPUs and emualtes everything (below N64) just fine and costs only $150! ur wrong lol

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Super Jamie said:

emualtes everything (below N64) just fine


Unless the emulator coders took great care in using super-optimized emulation cores and special versions of popular emulators, that just ain't gonna happen. I remember that emulating a 68000-based arcade system with all of its paraphernalia with full speed was barely feasible on a Pentium 200 (and went down the drain if the emulated system was multi-CPU or used special hardware), and that was back in 1997 when speed got absolute priority over emulation accuracy.

Today, MAME, at least the desktop editions, are MUCH slower than the older ones, and even the various FastMAMEs are not comparable with the really old ones (pre-2000) and with dedicated multi-arcade emulators such as RAINE. Hell, it's still considered a bannable offense to complain about its speed in the MAME dev forums, ever since they adopted that "accuracy vs speed" policy.

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