The bootleg Game Boy Advance : First look and teardown

[ASSEMbler]

I love dealextreme. It's a quirky HK site that carries all kinds of
fun grey market goods like cell phone jammers and sim copiers.

Browsing the site the other week I came across item number
23834: A bootleg Game Boy Advance with 92 built in games.

As a long time collector of bootleg consoles, I knew I had to have
one, so I bit the bullet and paid the very steep $57.25 for a
cloned GBA.

$57 will get you a very decent GBA system (not the expensive AGS-101
"new brighter screen" model), or a DS. The only thing it really had going for
it was the built in games aspect, and the fact that it was a clone acting
as an equal to the original.

Three weeks later, it arrived at my door.






The Box was flimsy like all hong kong cardboard. What awaited inside
shocked me. Except for some small differences, I had what felt and seemed
to be a a real Game Boy Advance! It even came with a GBA charger, and
it uses a GBA battery! The shell even had the OEM logo on the top.




The only clue that this was not a real Nintendo system was that the screen
was not widescreen. The screens and opening are the same size, and the
shells are the same, only the aspect ratio is different.

I fired up the system and this is what greeted me:



I was very impressed by the quality of the screen. It was better than the
original GBA SP, but a tad under the expensive quality of the last generation
AGS-101 SP. The AGS-101 with the best screen still sells for upwards of
$70, used. The 92 built in games were nothing short of incredible in that
there were no repeats, and some games were quite good. The aspect
of booting the built in games, and still being able to accept GBA cartridges
deserves a better look.



Here's video comparison of the two systems side by side. It's hard to tell at first that it's fake.



Simply amazing what they can copy these days in China. It's a bit scary
really! What next? Real copies of the Wii?

Next I tried some compatibility tests. The unit is unable to play GBC or GB
games and loaded the menu every time. I tried using a Play Action Replay,
and that did not work either. I later found a neoflash cart, but the
battery was dead. The system did hang on load, so I assume that it would
work.

Curious about the inner workings of such a great copy, I pulled out my
tools and got to work. I decided to compare the two side by side for best
visual result. What followed was some of the most unpleasant screw removal
I've had in years. Both machines had super soft metal screws that wanted
to strip if given a chance.

After much cursing and feeling in the carpet for dropped screws, this
was revealed:




The Batteries are the same. The boards have similar architecture and the
Chinese ARM clone is based purely on reverse engineering and is quite an
accomplishment. If the designer ever reads this, I take my hat off to him.

The clone features some major changes, namely the two 128Mbit chips,
and an unknown Hynix chip (no docs or whitepapers available from hynix)
seen below.

w9812g6xh-6 (two) sdram 8x16
hynix hy27uto84g2a



So now for the bad news: It runs slow. About 15% slower than a normal
GBA. If they had fixed the speed, I would have said they had a blockbuster
on their hands! The slowdown is noticeable, and for $57 it had better be just
as good as the original! Sadly this shortcoming hurts it badly at that price.

The other shortcoming is the change in aspect ratio. The square screen
(while excellent) squeezes the graphics causing some pixelization.

All of these things would have been tolerable if not for the extreme price.
Until the price comes down to the $40 range or less, I cannot recommend
this product to anyone but the collector who needs to have what is sure
to be a rare machine from the minds in China. This is the new Game Axe;
worthy but ultimately crippled by price.

[MoBoRoS]

Woahhh!! Very thorough and impressive review indeed.
and a pretty impressive clone i might add! thank you for the review. Deal extreme has some pretty unique clones and items it seems..

[SuperGrafx]

So aside from Advance Wars, what are the other 91 games built in?

[ASSEMbler]

You can see it in the video.
Dai Makaimura
Final Fight
Choro Q, etc

[Yakumo]

Impressive but just like EVERYTHING to come from a Chinese manufacturer it's still a half arsed effort :( Why don't they just do that little bit extra to get the speed right? After all they reverse engineered a GBA!

Yakumo

[Johnny]

Quite an interesting clone. Too bad runs a bit slow.

Thanks for taking the time (and fighting those damn screws) to show us the internals of it.

[daytonausa]

Besides the speed problem, it's a very impressive clone. Not half assed at all in my opinion. Usually they give you some flimsy case that feels like cheap plastic.

Thought the speed issue is a big negative, I do like the included games. Might be worth a look. Thanks for taking the time to post the youtube vids!

[Mugi]

No pong and tetris ?
Bah, i owe you a dollar :(

the thing is fairly impressive indeed, a tad cheaper and i'd buy one for sure.
there's bound to be atleast few good games on the list and on that matter, i did pay more from my own GBA anyway.

i don't think the lag would bother me but the aspect ratio of the screen is kinda a killer factor.

[Treamcaster]

Thanks for the review Assembler!

[MoBoRoS]

I bet Golden sun will have more lag on that chinese clone than playin wow with a pstn.

[WolverineDK]

I expect that the next version will be as fast like the real GBA and will have a widescreen in it.

[MentalMan]

Yea whats up with the speed issue? Where is it originating from?

I doubt the cpu runs on a weaker clock, that would be illogical.

[XxHennersXx]

amazing! thanks assembler!

[Trenton_net]

As Assembler said, at that price point I'm not sure what the designers were thinking. Considering the used market for GBA systems there's no reason why you wouldn't just pick up a legit console that's more compatible and accurate.

My only guess is that they intend to sell this thing mostly to North Americans where the pack-in games might be the big selling point. Because in China:

1. Multi-Carts with more selection and games are easily found and much cheaper.

2. Flash cards are easily found, cost more than multi-carts, but let you load anything you want.

3. Most stores bundle flash cards, or muilti-carts at a little extra charge, or in some cases free when you get a console and accessories.

4. Even if the built in multi-cart and system did happen to be a little bit cheaper than getting the real deal, you still have to contend with - Crappy screen aspect ratio, slower performance (Slower than some MP4 emulators common in china!)

But considering this is a clone and not emulated, I do give my hats off for the reversing effort.

[nesworld]

I bought one of these aswell, it came in yesterday and I actually had/have a video review in the works, but assembler beat me :-)

Anyway this thing is nothing short of amazing, I had expected to find 92 NES games running through pocketNES, but no - this baddie has 92 non-repeated GBA games, that's just amazing.

The downside is definately the screen size and the bad quality speaker, oh yeah and it crashes in Grand Theft Auto after the intro (playing an original GBA cart)

Cartridges I've tested that won't run off the pirate gba... showing that it is indeed stuffed with flaws:

Grand Theft Auto (crashes after intro)
Super Mario Advance (reports "eeprom" save error and won't start)
Banjo Pilot (Black screen)
Banjo Kazooie (½ white screen, ½ black screen)
Qwak (not an official release, crashes on the titlescreen)
Excitebike (doesn't exit the white gameboy "bios" intro screen)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (restarts the game after entering name)

Oh yeah and my GBA clone has the same serialnumber as Assemblers :-)

[crissybwoy]

I'm very impressed with this. The fact that they have (almost) made a GBA is just astounding. Good effort!
Nice review aswell Kev, thanks.

[Taucias]

Is it a software emulator, I wonder?

[ASSEMbler]

possibly? the design of the mainboard makes me think not, it's too similar to the gba

[Polak]

I've just ordered one. I love GBA games, they are so playable and oldschool :)
I wonder if they are better made than DS lite refurbs from DX.

[ASSEMbler]

I've been playing more of the games, the selection is excellent.
the slowdown, I think it is some emulation as there are occasional artifact glitches.