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Portable gaming systems have been an important part of the technological revolution. Before there were PDA’s and iPads there was the original GameBoy. Most games for the Gameboy were created specifically for that system. Yet others were ports of other popular games. Killer Instinct the Gameboy version is an example of a Gameboy port of a SNES game that was a port of an Arcade Game. After detailed inspection of gaming on these small screens, I noticed something when playing a retro NES game on the GameBoy Advanced. There was a problem playing NES games that required more hair-trigger response reflexes. It seemed that the small screen somehow made it harder to avoid damage and hit the correct areas that I wanted to. This was compared to playing the game on a larger screen.

What could be doing this? There was no way that the smaller screen affected the actual pacing of the game. So, the only thing that could actually be changing in this situation was the human player him or herself. When we look at a screen on a television there is sort of sweet spot for viewing distance. This actually is different for each person, but generally the larger the screen, the farther back the viewer sits in order to have a comfortable view without going cross-eyed.

The people who sit close to large television screens have to move their eyes more in order to make sense of what is going on the screen. The farther back you sit, the more one can absorb the entire screen without moving the eyes. The drawback is that it is harder to pick out details in the periphery if you eyes are stationary. Also, the eyes can get tired depending on what kind of visual gamer one is. Arcade machines tend to but the gamer at a slight distance by the very wooden box itself. The designers understand that people can hurt their eyes by getting to close to machine and try to create an apparatus to compensate for that, without sacrificing visual pleasure enticed by the moving colors and text.

Zelda 2, when played on a GameBoy advanced simply did not work for me. It felt like I had to work twice as hard to not get hit by small monsters like slimes and bouncing skulls. Also timing jump hits and being more adventerous with jumping down-thrusts in order to play with style was reckless when doing so on the GBA. So the experience of playing Zelda 2 on a small screen had some serious disadvantages. I don’t even want to imagine what it would have been like to try and play Ninja Gaiden 2 or Zanac if they were released as part of the Classic NES Series for the GBA. It probably would have been some sort of quasi-nostalgic nightmare state.

A game that translated well to the small screen was Metroid and especially Metroid Fusion. Wow, I had such a great time playing Metroid Fusion. It actually was the reason why I purchased the GBA SP in the first place. But that game had a different feel than Super Metroid or the original. The bright colors seemed to work in order to make threats more visible. And the mission objective system made pacing the game simple enough to keep one’s interest while waiting for someone to finish shopping for shoes.

-Tyler