The first thing to cover with the GameBoy Player is the video and this is certainly one of the GameBoy player’s weaker points. Nintendo has included two screen filters that are designed to lighten the effects of a technique used on many games called the “flicker trick”, where game developers literally remove every other frame of a sprite, the resulting flicker makes the sprite look transparent on a small LCD of the class that’s on the GameBoy Advance. The downside to this filter is that it makes any game not using the “flicker trick” look horrible. It leaves particles of an after-image behind which look particularly bad in side-scrolling titles. The only way to bypass this is to set it to the “Sharp” filter which essentially gives the raw video output from the player without any type of filtering.

     Another problem with the video performance of the GameBoy Player is occasional frame-rate drops which result in skipping. Like in the previous issue with the screen filters, this is again most obvious in fast-paced side scrolling titles. This may seem like a small complaint, but this is something I would not expect from a commercial product, much less one done by Nintendo themselves.

     The plus side to the GameBoy Player’s video is that it over-saturates color and increases contrast to compensate for the conversion from the GameBoy Advance LCD to a television. The player also allows for an option to enlarge the video to fill the screen while maintaining the GameBoy Advance aspect ratio (leaving borders only on the top and bottom) or shrinking the video down to a smaller size (leaving borders on all sides).

     The GameBoy Player’s audio is one of the perihperal’s strong points, the audio is reproduced true to the quality of the GameBoy Advance itself with a bit of added bass to compensate for the conversion over to a TV’s speakers. All-in-all, you can’t ask for much more.

     One of the best features of the GameBoy Player is the ability to link to other GameBoy systems through the use of the External Extension Connector located on the front of the system. As you may have guessed, this is the same connector used by the GameBoy Advance system itself. This can be used to play multiplayer games over the GameBoy Player with the Player acting as one of the GameBoy Advance systems. This port can also be used in conjuction with accessories such as the GameBoy Advance e-Reader when they are connected to a separate GameBoy Advance. Very useful for games that require the e-Reader to unlock certain areas and extras!

     Options within the GameBoy player are somewhat limited though. The five configuration options open within the Player are the Frame Option, Screen Size, Controller Mapping, Screen Filter, Timer and Change Game Pak option. The frame option allows you to choose from 20 different frames built into the player to border blank areas of the screen. Sadly, this is also one of the player’s downfalls. Nintendo only provides one “blank” frame which simply fills the blank areas with black, but still leaves a small ambient border around the screen as well as the “Z Button: Options” notice in the upper-right hand corner of the screen. Personally, I feel that this option should have removed all forms of borders and on-screen cues.

     The rest of the options are pretty straight-forward. The “Screen Size” option lets you choose from “Normal Size” which is accompanied with borders on all four sides, and “Full Size” which stretches to fill the size of your screen while maintaining the GameBoy Advance screen dimensions, allowing borders on only the top and bottom. The “Controller Mapping” option simply allows you to toggle the buttons used for the select button and the L and R triggers, the “Screen Filter” option allows you to toggle the various screen filters, the “Timer” option allows you to set an arbitrary timer to go off between 1 and 60 minutes and the last option simply performs a reset of the GameBoy Player so that you may swap game paks.

     Taking everything into consideration, I would certainly say that this is one of the best ways to enjoy GameBoy and GameBoy Advance titles to their fullest. There are virtually no incompatibilities or quirks such as those found in many emulators, there are no cheap accessories which risk destroying your GameBoy Advance to bring it on the big screen, and finally it simply presents the games the way they were meant to be played virtually completely true to the original. This is definitely an accessory that I would recommend to anyone who owns a GameCube and for only $50 USD, there is very little reason to pass up this great accessory!