Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Revisiting The Game Boy Advance
By James Grahame
Deal Extreme is a weird and wonderful online shop in Hong Kong. They're worth checking out every now and then, just in case they've got some nifty new LED watches, compact flashlights or hand-held games in stock.
I came across their aptly named Designer 2.9" LCD Portable Handheld Game Console a few days ago. On the outside, it's the spitting image of a crystal clear Nintendo Game Boy Advance. However, it houses an ARM-core emulator and 2GB of memory loaded with about 90 GBA titles and over 300 NES games.
A USB cable is included to charge the built-in battery and transfer new games, although there's probably enough here already to keep you occupied for a few weeks. The surprisingly well-built unit does a pretty good job of emulating most games, although some titles exhibit a bit of slowdown and weirdness. Build quality seems rock solid, too.
My main gripe is that the display aspect ratio isn't quite right -- I'm guessing that the creators used whatever panel they could. All in all, this is a great way to get a vintage Game Boy Advance fix for under $50 (with free shipping).
Designer 2.9" LCD Portable Handheld Game Console with 498 Built-in Games
