A few gameboy advance questions

[lewiee]

Getting a Pink Gameboy advance sp for my daughter for xmas, and have been looking on ebay. Can anyone tell me is it worth getting a british one bought here or are the one's certain companies are selling on Ebay from Hong Kong with games any good. Also noticed there are lots of games on there which are from HK, cheap. Are these as good as the british games, and wil they work okay?
Thanks in advance for your help

[alphatyrant]

Don't know about the hardware, but the games are pretty much guaranteed to be cheap knock-offs, Probably dodgy copies, maybe even (like the old GB stuff) multiple games on 1 cart.

Wouldn't risk it.

[Matt KB]

Assuming they are legit, they will work on a UK machine - GBA games are region free. Of course you are likely to have little or no English text with many games from Hong Kong.

[evilashchris]

Get the pink DS and nintendogs.. you'll be the best dad in the world.. about a ton from play

[lettuce]

Ive gotten a few HK games from ebay, i know that theses arent offical ones, but you wouldnt really be able to tell, and more importantly your daughter wouldnt have a clue. I havent had a problem with these and work fine on my Gameboy Advance

[target]

Ive gotten a few HK games from ebay, i know that theses arent offical ones, but you wouldnt really be able to tell, and more importantly your daughter wouldnt have a clue. I havent had a problem with these and work fine on my Gameboy Advance

Yeah but the manuals are useless and they are actually illegal...
I recently got a warning from ebay that an auction I'd won was being looked at as part of an investigation into the supplier for copyright theft. But I'd already returned the cart for a refund, months before, when I'd realised it was dodgy anyway.

[bigjonnyauk]

yeah i would go for a ds mate gba is now old hat

[cat]

nah disagree... for kids a GBA is a great little console. Bought my son the limited edition mario console for his b'day, £60 in clearance deals from ***** with an additional two scooby games thrown in. Some good deals to be had if you keep your eyes open... although having to have pink might limit you somewhat, so glad I don't have daughters!!!

[bigjonnyauk]

http://www.simplygames.com/product.asp?id=4219

[chrisjm]

Ive gotten a few HK games from ebay, i know that theses arent offical ones, but you wouldnt really be able to tell, and more importantly your daughter wouldnt have a clue. I havent had a problem with these and work fine on my Gameboy Advance

monsters inc had naughty words put into the copy.
was in the sun and they accused disney of doing it despite it being a hacked copy :cuckoo:

they also can often have problems with saving.

[Hster]

...they also can often have problems with saving.

Yeah, I purchased 'Advance Wars' from eBay a couple of weeks ago. I believe that it's no longer widely available (discontinued?) and so I was pleased to find one. The fact that it cost about 7 quid including shipping from Hong Kong should have started alarm bells ringing, but I clearly wasn't thinking straight. As soon as the cartridge arrived I opened it up and lo and behold, found a small battery inside it where a memory chip should have been. The upshot of this is that when the battery fails, I lose my saved games. This of course wouldn't be the case with a genuine Nintendo cartridge. Additionally, I'll have to hunt a replacement battery down in the future thereby wasting some of my time. Apart from that though the game works perfectly, though the box and manual are of a low quality.

You pays your money, you takes your chances...

[lewiee]

many thanks for all your replies, will probably go for a uk gba sp, with a few english games. Would go for the DS but she probably wouldnt get a go on it, and i'd keep using it and fall out with mum!
Thanks again :thumbs:

[IAmATeaf]

Yeah, I purchased 'Advance Wars' from eBay a couple of weeks ago. I believe that it's no longer widely available (discontinued?) and so I was pleased to find one. The fact that it cost about 7 quid including shipping from Hong Kong should have started alarm bells ringing, but I clearly wasn't thinking straight. As soon as the cartridge arrived I opened it up and lo and behold, found a small battery inside it where a memory chip should have been. The upshot of this is that when the battery fails, I lose my saved games. This of course wouldn't be the case with a genuine Nintendo cartridge. Additionally, I'll have to hunt a replacement battery down in the future thereby wasting some of my time. Apart from that though the game works perfectly, though the box and manual are of a low quality.

You pays your money, you takes your chances...

I think you'll find that not all games have a memory chip, some of my kids GBA games have a battery, purchased within the UK and I'm sure 1 of them has a battery inside.

[Hster]

I think you'll find that not all games have a memory chip, some of my kids GBA games have a battery, purchased within the UK and I'm sure 1 of them has a battery inside.

I believe you're right, however, in this case my cartridge is definitely a forgery. It looks very similar to this :

http://ap.nintendo.com/gba_advance_wars.html

Ah well, I guess I just need to play through the game before the battery fails. I'd hate to be most of the way through, only to find that my saves had disappeared and I had to start from the beginning!

[Jorin]

I believe you're right, however, in this case my cartridge is definitely a forgery. It looks very similar to this :

http://ap.nintendo.com/gba_advance_wars.html

Ah well, I guess I just need to play through the game before the battery fails. I'd hate to be most of the way through, only to find that my saves had disappeared and I had to start from the beginning!
Crikey!!!

Not easy to tell the difference between the two, externally! :eek:

[target]

Actually, you can see the nintendo logo on a genuine cart without dismantling it if you look just above the connector. This isn't present on counterfeit ones (as shown in the pictures)