Interact Gamecube Advance Game Port
I'm happy to say I'm a Panasonic Q owner since 2002. I've always loved it, and always will. I also was happy to hear when they announced a special GBA Player for the Q since the legs are a bit longer on the Q, thus making the regular GBA Player worth nothing to us Q owners. "Yay!" I thought. Soon, though, 2 things occured to me. First off, the design was pretty crappy of the Q GBA Player. Nowhere near the bauty of the Q itself. Secondly, though I prefer it, mine has a country-switch nestled on the bottom left of my Q, thus the newly announced Q GBA Player would STILL be of no use to me. Thus, I thought, I shall never play my GBA games on my TV. Soon though, a new possibility arose. Interact announced their own version, which would connect directly to the memory card slot. "ALLLLLLLLLRIGHT!" said I. Thus I went out and bought it and hear is what I have to to report....
The package itself is basic. It comes with a one sheet instruction "briefing", a Gameube boot-up disc (barely packaged to avoid scratches) and the unit itself. The unit looks like a little docking station with a semi-long cable attached to it and at the end of it the actual way you hook it up. You simply attach the cable directly into the 2nd memory card slot. Next, load up the cd (which takes all of 3 seconds). You are instructed to insert the game pack and press the A button. Game begins to load (around 4 seconds) and, voila!, you can now play. Also, there is no external power supply needed. *One note though. The "manual" makes it seem like you have to turn off the system to switch games when its not true. All you do is press the Z button and it tells you to either press Start to resume or B to switch gamepaks. Very simple though.*
Ok, first off, there are no options. None. Zilch. Nada. Just plug and play. The screen is nicely centered though with a silver border, which I thought was tastefully done. Now, I tried out my copies of Lunar Legend and Castlevania: HoD. First off, Lunar. The music was a wee bit scratchy, but the graphics were very sharp and not pixelly at all. When the battle screen came up, I was like "Wow! now THESE should have been in the PSX version!" LOL. Overall, very nice, but I was sketchy about the audio quality. So I tried Castlevania. This time the music was nowhere near as scratchy and very listenable. Graphics, again, were very sharp and detailed. Nicely done.
Overall, although a bare bones package with none of the options the Nintendo GBA Player offers, it was a good purchase for me. The graphics and audio quality seem very well done (run through S-video). So, for any Q player/owners who dont wish to pay over $100-300 for the Panasonic Q GBA Player (why, oh why, was it NOT made metallic like the Q??!!), this is a very good alternative!
