HARDWARE
Linker:$35; Card: $99
An illicit tool for building your Game Boy Advance library
The Flash Advance Linker is the centerpiece of a nascent home-brew gaming scene reminiscent of the early Apple II coding craze. The tool allows you to develop Game Boy Advance apps and - filling the same role as the first affordable floppy drives - share your programming handiwork.
One of my favorite freeware games is Pong Fighter, written by Guyfawkes. The graphics are quaint, but it works just fine, and the action is as addictive as the original quarter-eater's. The quality of other first-gen efforts is improving and the price (free) is certainly right. You can find more offerings at www.gbaemu.com. And definitely encouraging is the work under way to port emulation systems (MAME, Atari 2600) to GBA format.
The FA Linker works by transferring games from those tiny, odd-shaped GBA cartridges onto any computer's hard drive - where they can be manipulated. It'll also copy files from a hard drive to custom Flash RAM cartridges that slip into a GBA. As such, the Flash Linker is perfect for creating backup copies of your game library - just in case you damage one of your $40-a-pop titles. "Flashing" is simple: Connect a cable, plug in a game or Flash card, and use the accompanying software to indicate what you'd like to copy from. Unsurprisingly, software pirates have adopted the Linker for downloading games from the Net - poking around Google, P2P networks, or IRC channels turns up even hard-to-find Japanese imports.
Likely due to such illicit efforts, gray-market electronics like the Linker aren't sold Stateside. When FedEx's tracking system ID'd my international shipment as "delayed pending regulatory agency approval," I wondered whether I'd ever see my goods. But I received my (rifled-through) package from "Lik-Sang, Dragon Industrial Building, Kowloon" the next day.
Although the Flash Linker isn't the most high tech or glamorous bit of electronic gear I've handled - it requires AAA batteries, eschews USB and FireWire in favor of an old-fashioned printer port cable, and comes with just an unmarked floppy disk and mini instruction pamphlet - it's powerful.
My only regret is not opting for the DC power adapter. Writing data to the Flash card's EEPROM requires a lot of juice, and you only get a few flashes before needing to replace all six batteries.
Lik-Sang: www.lik-sang.com.
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