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Nintendo to be blamed for the
GBA light issue? January 2002 by Ansgar
The most obvious disadvantage of the Gameboy Advance is the
darkness of its display. This is not a trivial matter -
just change the scene from a sunny beach (beware of the
sand...) to just any artificial light environment (or just
a cloudy sky) and you'll notice Gameboy-kids trying to
tilt their GBAs desperatly to the single possible right
angle between total glare and complete darkness.
The always present add-ons industry just tries to
deliver crutches in terms of external lighting solutions,
as you all know with limited success. Unfortunatley,
even modded external lights have their limitations.
So, how could that happen, what are the reasons why an
experienced company like Nintendo did release a design with
such grave limitations?
Well, there are two major goals for any product improvement:
First, the improvement itself has to be evident (in other
words, most people who are willing to buy a Gamboy already
own one - Pocket, Color, whatever - the decision to
buy a new one requires major improvements towards the
old design). Second, the retail price must not exceed a
certain limit, otherwise the customers will be limited
to a small number of wealthy enthusiasts.
With the GBA design, Nintendo stuck into a dilemma.
Improving the display in terms of resolution, size
and palette colors could be considered as essential
for an overall improvement of the system (in addition
to processing power and, maybe, the prolongation of
operation with one battery set). At this point, Nintendo
had to make a decision whether to rely on a 'standard'
backlit display (which is almost useless without the
backlight switched on) and one of the (at the design time)
brand-new so-called 'reflective' displays, the same type
some of the best mobile all-purpose displays available (Ipaq)
already have been built upon.
For the sake of battery power Nintendo did a brave
decision, they chose the reflective type. With Sharp
an experienced manufacturer was found who was able
to deliver the required amount of displays at a
reasonable price.
Everthing fine? Unfortunatly not. Compared to the
Ipaq-display (which was an Sony OEM), the Sharp display
was much dimmer within an artificial light environment.
Now, even the Ipaq needs an additional light source
in complete darkness. Therefore the IPAQ has a built-in
frontlight solution (actually a side light, the only one
which works with a reflective type of display) based
on a cold cathode flourescent lamp (CCFL) plus light
guide (a thin plastic film graved with microlenses in a holographic
process which 'guides' the light in an almost 90-degree-angle
from the light source to the display surface). Besides,
CCFLs are, with respect to battery consumption, anywhere
between ultrabright LEDs and conventional light bulbs,
and therefore draw some power from the Ipaq power source.
But back to Nintendo. An internal frontlight would
have definitly exceeded the target of $99 retail price,
although technically practicable (as proved by
portablemonopoly). For this reason, Nintendo probably
decided *not* to integrate a frontlight, which
for sure had been a hard decision (don't think the
Ninendo designers did not realize the darkness of
their creation). What may have helped the decision
is that it was probably impossible to find a manufacturer
who was able to deliver the required amount of
customized frontlights in time (remember, at the design
time, it was a quite new technology).
But why doesn't Nintendo even offer an option for
bulit-in frontlights? Well, how could such an option
be shaped? An integrate-by-yourself-kit-option would
require the customers to open the case (they did
everything possible to prevent exactly that),
and an order option would perfectly show how crippled
the $99-versions look like.
So, external light solutions should address the
problem for the masses, but, and at this point Nintendo
*IS* to blame, Nintendo equipped the GBA with a higly
reflective plastic front screen above the LCD display
itself (which, in addition, is quite sensitive to
scratching).
An antiglare coating in mass-production would have
given a noticable amount of improvement for the
use of most external lighting solutions. Maybe, Nintendo
feared that the front screen would be to vulnerable
to chose a more expensive solution, but this
actually doesnt't matter, a damaged screen has to
be replaced anyway.
From this point of view, it is still unbelievable
that no third-party vendor offers a high-quality
replacement (no, please don't mention those
'ant-glare'-plastic-solutions currently available,
the best and only thing is optical quater-lambda-coating).
The process of replacing the screen is such simple,
that even Ninendo sells a kit for replacing their
high-refelctive screen against another original
high-reflective Nintendo screen for about $3.
Even with an integrated frontlight, an anti-glare
front screen would be highly desireable for all
situations with enough light from the surrounding
(remember the sunny beach scene?).
Frontlight kit...
Yes, an internal frontlight is still the optimal light
for any reflective display (and no other display
type would make sense for any mobile equipment
which has to operate more than three or four hours).
Although the Gameboy is not really prepared, and there
are some issues that have to be solved, like
how to get it all inside the case, how to get
the optimal voltage depending on the chosen type of light
source (LED or CCFL) and finally (the hardest problem)
where to get the light guide film suitable for the
3,5"-display - building a frontlight kit is not
a unaffordable task (well, commercial interests
like taking out patents sometimes not only speed up
time-to-market...).
Conclusion
Concerning the lighting issue, Nintendo did not have
too many choices inside the possible range for the
projected retail price, but the reflective front-screen
is no masterpiece.
Until the ultimate GBA is out (the one with
3D-acceleration, digital surround and a wearable
stereo-cyber-display), Nintendo will *for sure*
work at the display problem, since the future selling
success will depend on this issue. But they have to
find the manufacturer who is able to serve the
mass-production at a reasonable price (probably LCD plus
light guide plus light source in one unit from one
single vendor).
For the time being, a high-quality front screen
replacement with optical anti-glare coating would
be a great improvement for the average Gameboy
user, and a kit for self-made frontlights an additional
improvement for the home mechanics (or third-party
service enterprises), who currently spend their time
by modding light shields ;-)
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