hiidenkonttibeta

Spent the weekend in Helsinki. We visited Talvipuutarha, an “indoor garden” first opened in 1893. I was told that once there were birds living inside, but now there were only some fish in addition to plants and flowers.

Bandai is probably best known (in Western hemisphere) for their anime releases, including such masterpieces as Cowboy Bebop. But they do a lot more, portable game systems for example.

Their game system is officially released only in Japan. Because of that, all the games are in Japanese (as far as I know). SwanCrystal is the latest of WonderSwan portables (first released in 1999, so it’s a pretty new system), released in 2002. It looks like this:

It has a 16-bit CPU running at 3.072MHz, 224×144 resolution display with 241 colours (out of 4096), and it runs 15 hours on a single AA-battery. There’s a lot of interesting games for WonderSwan, e.g. some Final Fantasy games and several anime-related titles.

今日ロツアーリでろうそくがたくさんがつけてありました. それはどうしてだったか知りません.

Jotkut ympärillä seisovista ihmisistä pitelivät käsissään paristokäyttöisiä kynttilöitä.

The next handheld console is Sega Game Gear. Released in 1990, this is a bit larger device than GBC and NGPC – for example, it runs on 6 AA-size batteries. It’s basically a portable Sega Master System console, and able to run SMS games with an adapter. This is what it looks like:

It has 8bit Z-80 processor (seems quite common CPU in handhelds) running at 3.58MHz and 160×144 pixel backlit screen with 32 colours on screen (out of 4096). But, due to backlit (and probably other factors), it runs only 3-5 hours on 6 AA-batteries.

I have several games for Game Gear already (got 5 of them with the device):

• Wonder Boy
• Ninja Gaiden
• Castle of Illusion (starring Mickey Mouse)
• Columns
• Shinobi
• Marble Madness

Got another game console. This one is quite common: Nintendo Game Boy, Color version (for the less nerdy, this refers to the colour display instead of colourful cover; the original Game Boy had a black & white display). It looks like this:

GBC was introduced on 1998 and it has a 8bit 8MHz Z-80 processor, resolution of 160×144 pixels using 56 colours, and it should be able to run 13 hours on two AA-batteries. No backlight on GBC display either.

Thanks to Tapani-さん for acquiring this from flea market, along with game “The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons”.

Marrasyö toi valkeuden synkän maan päälle.