| Here's the review of the Game Theory Admiral, a new Famicom handheld with the most odd name ever, but my advise is not to hold that against it just yet.
A weeks ago I was browsing a website, not really planning to find anything I wanted. When I scrolling down over the product page, right there at the bottom of the screen was something called GTA, Game Theory Admiral which looked like a Gameboy Advance rip off and at first I actually thought that it was a pirate Gameboy Advance, but to my surprise it turned out to be something amazing, a new handheld Famicom! So I of course had to get one of these and it arrived yesterday. First impression when opening the package was how small the box the system is packed in was. Inside the box you'll find the system, cables, along with a small manual written in both Chinese and English. However the english text written both on the box and in the manual is so bad it makes absolutely no sense, but is actually quite fun to read, like the back of the box has a "Relevant crazy warning", or how about "Relevant again and again labor the excessive warning", or "Announcements concerning battery with warn"...... There are two version for this handheld. One is PAL. Another is NTSC. So, you must make sure that you get the right GTA version. Otherwise, you cannot connect it to TV. Also included was an yellow thing with a Famicom slot attached, used for playing Famicom games on the system, well actually it can't be used for anything else eventhough the slot on the system itself is GB size. The cartridge slot in the GTA is slightly wider, so are the pins, than the one used in the Dr. Boy. I've tried connecting an adapter to play NES games on the system, but the connection gets very bad, causing the game to crash. It's said though that another adapter will be released later, allowing you to use NES carts. However it may get a bit too bulky with the NES carts, but the Famicom games doesn't look too bad when attached. The box stated the GTA has a TFT. I actually didn't expect the picture to be as clear as it was, I actually expected it to be somewhere near the GameAxe eventhough being TFT. Unfortunately the GTA's screen is also much smaller, 3,8 x 4,8cm, and it also looks like the GTA screen cuts a slight portion off the left and right sides of the picture, but not enough to make any game unplayable. I've made a screen shot of the Game Theory Admiral to show how does picture quality look like. But please do keep in mind that the pictures aren't showing the exact difference, but it gives a pretty good idea.  
So the GTA is clearly much better when it comes to the visible, eventhough the screen is small. The battery consumpsion is also much less, while the GameAxe requires 6 AA batteries, which it will suck dry in an hour, the GTA only needs half, yes that's 3 AA batteries, but sucks them dry in the same ammount of time. Fortunately for the GameAxe you can connect a powersupply with a normal jack, you can use the Game Gear's powersupply. The GTA on the other hand uses a much smaller jack, you might want to try getting one of those powersupplys with more than one jack included, universal sort of thing, the tough part will be to find one that gives the right voltage (4.5V) and no more, cause then the unit won't work. Anyway before I managed to break the unit, I also got the chance to check out the TV output. While the blue version may output a PAL signal, true, the game still runs with the same amount of scan lines as a NTSC output, meaning that games, like Beauty and the Beast, will not run correctly. I might also add that the plug for the TV cable, which is far too short, is placed in a position, at the top of the unit, which makes it almost impossible to insert or remove without having to remove the orange adapter first. It's possible to attach 2 joypads to the GTA, unfortunately these also uses the same plug as the Gameboy extension port, meaning that no existing joypads can be used with the system. All in all a nice little and compact Famicom handheld. It is not too large even with the adapter attached. The screen is excellent , although it might seem a little small. A good advise from someone who broke his Game Theory Admiral is not to mess with any form of power supply, stick with batteries and hope for "Mystery" to release a powersupply later on, along with the NES adapter. |
