This weeks big news has got to be the 'GameCube GBA Player', a nifty piece of new hardware that allows over 1000 Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games to be played on your TV via your GameCube. It's the same width and depth as the GC and an inch height, making the Cube and proper Cube, as pointed out by our resident Schpickles. It slots into the High Speed Port on the bottom of the GameCube, showing that it isn't just Broadband modems the port can be used for.

What is great about the hardware is that you don't need anything extra to use it. Just slot it into the GameCube, it's powered by GCs power supply, and insert the GB game into the slot on the hardware. From there, you can control the game with your GameCubes controller and watch the action on your telly. So you don't actually need a GB to play the games. Of course, actually buying a GB is recommended, the main pull of the GBs are that you can play the games anywhere, at any time. But the device would be useful if say, your batteries had run out, or the whole light issue with the GBA really aggravates you, or one of your mates keeps harping on to you about this 'brilliant Golden Sun game' he has and you want to try it out without actually having to shell out for the GB.

So why would anyone with a GB pay 30 quid (estimated approx.) for this device? Well, as Schpickles talked about, it's set for a release here a little time after the proposed online date (which is currently March 14th, coincidently the same day Xbox Live launches) so could these be linked? Well, I believe there is much more to the GBA Player than just playing GB games on your TV, by combining the GameCube and GB, all the options GameCube has are opened up the GB. We're talking about online play here. Think about it, playing your favourite GB game against people from around the world. If Nintendo really work at getting it right, it could be so, so good. Playing GBA multiplayer against people even if your mates aren't around, or don't have a GBA, or downloading new items or maps for your game, or even, god forbid, Pokemon global. It couldn't cost as much as online play for GBAs big brother, and with the cutdone graphics, slowdown would be kept to a minimum. Of course, the online structure would have to be intact and working well for anything to be possible.

Nintendo have been stressing connectivity with their consoles for a while now, online play or not, so I think there's much more to this GBA Player than what meets the eye right now. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

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