The eyes have it

In terms of the visual output, the Game Boy Player does an excellent job of presenting a clean and pleasant image on your television. Keep in mind that your NTSC TV set is supposedly able to display a 640x480 image, whereas the native resolution for a Game Boy Advance game is 240x160. The Game Boy Player scales-up the image several times, but to avoid too much pixelization it blurs the picture somewhat.

The original

Blown up

The original Game Boy ran its games at a non-standard aspect ratio of 1.11:1; the Game Boy Advance continues this tradition of non-standard with an aspect ratio of 3:2 – neither of which fit the 4:3 of a normal television or the 16:9 of a widescreen. This just means that you’ll have to live with either some letterboxing or windowboxing. Just pick a nice looking border that even your interior decorator would be approve of.

The bright, the dark, and the ugly

The GBA SP breathed life into darker games; the Game Boy Player sheds even more light on the matter. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is literally unplayable on the original GBA unless you had help from the sun goddess herself. The situation was helped greatly when the GBA SP arrived on the scene, but only using the Game Boy Player with its bright TV output do things really come alive.

Then, on some other games, it gets a little too bright. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was made nice and bright in response to its glaucoma-causing predecessor. Perhaps a little too bright, causing the main character to look uncharacteristically pastel. Metroid Fusion looks fantastic on the GBA, but becomes quite bright and colorful when played on the TV.

For most games, this increase in brightness and contrast is great thing, even for games designed for the original GBA display. Golden Sun and Megaman Battle Network look better than ever. It’s just that games with a traditionally darker atmosphere such as the Castlevania and Metroid series feel a little out of place when played in full brights.