GameBoy Advance MP3 Player - Why? 

The icons say "Music" "Voice" and "Karaoke" - not sure where city death came from, but that should definitely be an option on any music player.

The "weights" are ferrite beads. Its used to avoid interference in the cables, PS1/2 controllers have them, many old USB cables too. There is a type of ferrite bead you can use on a PCB as well.

somebody needs to produce an original song using nothing but this

You have to bear in mind that most kids didn't have phones when they had Gameboys. Especially in 2002. I definitely couldn't have afforded an MP3 player, so something like this would have been cool to have. I image the voice removal would be fairly simple. Have you ever accidentally pulled out your headphones and the voice disappears but you can still hear the song?

Those "weights" on the aux chord are ferrite cores. There's powdered iron in there, which is used to reduce noise. They do this to older USB cables and such. You might find them as "tumors" attached to a USB cable!

Tom Nook has such a menacing aura

"For a grand total of 425... yen" oh, almost had a heart attack there

"Is this promoting piracy!?" Everdrive: Exists

4:00 "you can remove the voice from a song?" kinda. i've seen those functions implemented, usually they hope that the various music instruments are spread out over the stereo but the vocals are exactly centered. then you can subtract one channel from the other, and it cancels out. also cancels out any instruments that happened to be on both channels tho. and it leaves you with mono output. 5:40 those weights are "ferrite cores" (pipes made out of an iron compound that interacts with magnetic fields), through which the cable is coiled one or two times, helps remove any radio interference the cable might pick up by "eating up" the magnetic field those create.

There was another MP3 player made by Nintendo later on for GBA. The Play-Yan. It was made by Nintendo themselves and came out in 2005. There was even Mario 1 sprites animations in the menu. Barely bigger than a regular GBA cartridge and it worked with SD cards. I tried getting one on Ebay for some time but now they are getting rare and the price is just too high.

I like how you're reviewing all the gba accessories i used to want as a kid. There was also one called the game duck, that let you play your GBA in the rain... No reason why. It's hard to find it though

"For commercial use in Japan only" "Made in the Phillipines" Getting some confusing vibes here

That thing is *hideous*. The Play-Yan was an official MP3 and video player for the GBA and it was superb. 👌

Weights on the aux are magnetic noise filters, very odd thing to include with it.

I remember road trips being a pain in the ass as a kid because of all the separate electronics I had to bring with me. This would have been amazing to have so I could record the music from my cassettes and CDs and not have to worry about bringing a separate player.

btw elliot, the live translation thingy isn't really good. Using the "scan" functionality in the app and highlighting the text gives you a much better, more accurate translation

I'd love to see you do a comparison between the music recorder MP3, the Nintendo MP3 player brought out in 2006 here and the official play Yan micro from Japan. That would be awesome 😁

Is it really an evolution, for something with graphics and audio to just play audio?

Imagine having this in school. You would be the cool kid with that thing.

This was, unironically, my first MP3 player. I recently found it in storage and am listening to music on it right now. Still works!

Crazy thing is, at the time Nintendo had the GBA SP released, Sony had either just released the PSP or was about to release it, and the PSP could play movies, read E-Books, and play MP3 files on top of playing games and surf the net.

keep in mind that the iPod in 2002 was selling well but need an iBook/iMac to connect to obtain music, and my guess that they made it as an affordable alternative (possibly since flash storage was super complicated to do) to play via the gameboy.

the weights on the AUX cord are probably ferrite beads.

I believe this was actually sold in North America at some point, under the name GBA Jukebox. I think that they started selling them around 2003 outside of Japan, but I'm not sure if it was only a North America distribution, or if it was worldwide

The "weights" on the aux cable are ferrite beads for noise reduction. The same kind used for most DC power supplies (that weighted cilinder usually next to the end plug).

Ahh yes my favorite settings: Mugot, City Death, and Carao.

Vocal removers like that typically remove any mono audio (that's playing the same on both sides). Since lead vocals are typically in mono, it can work for a lot of songs. However, if there's any stereo separation at all, those bits will still be there. For instance, if there's any stereo reverb or chorus on the vocals, it'll remove the main mono audio but leave the stereo echos, etc. And if there's any vocal harmonies, those are typically separated in stereo as well, so those won't get removed either. Also, sometimes the drums (or other instruments) are recorded in mono, so you might lose those too.

that weighted thing is a ferrite (magnetic) rings, over cables in order to suppress noise and filter out unwanted external interference. They are often placed over USB cables.

We have one of those, but it was sold in America, and it was called the GBA Jukebox; it also included the Compact Flash memory card, and has the same buttons as that one you have there; ours came in black, though.

I can’t stop watching your videos they’re awesome my dude

Yes!!!! I was excited to see this strange device now here it is. Also just wanted to say thanks Elliot for the recommendation of getting Solar Striker I bought a month ago and can't stop playing it's me new all time favorite

Those “weights” on the auxiliary cable are to eliminate electromagnetic interference. That is probably the highest quality auxiliary cable you’ve ever seen.

That nes SP takes me back. I remember before he passed away my dad bought me that for my birthday. I loved that thing so much. I remember how heartbroken I was as a kid when I lost it in a move. To this day I miss that thing.

Those things at the end of the AUX cable aren’t weighs, those are ferrite noise chokes used to reduce high frequency noise in electrical signals.

This is actually pretty awesome. I would have loved something like this as a kid.

I actually actively wanted something like this as a kid. I had one of those Sony portable CD players. "portable". it skipped if you some much as walked while listening. But I ended up winning an original iPod shuffle as a prize for a fundraiser during jr. high school and that was that.

For a second I thought you were playing One More Time by Daft Punk, then just realized the song was a sample in it. Really caught me off guard for a bit there!

Entertaining and informative. Great video, thanks for giving me free entertainment :) Keep it up man

32 bit versions of all my favourite songs, SCOREEEEE

To this day we still don’t know why this exists

0:57 - "It doesn't seem they were ever released outside of Japan." It was released in the USA as the Gamester GBA Jukebox distributed by Radica. Despite Radica's reputation as the purveyor of crappy TV games, it remained officially licensed. My local pawn shop has one presumably new in package for $35 USD. Been there a few years at least! I did notice that the compact flash card was 4x larger (32MB versus 8MB). The karaoke mode is also intact. The way it works is that the voice is often the same across both stereo channels where the music has more stereo separation so it cancels out frequencies that are the same on both channels. I remember a WinAMP plugin that did this over 20 years ago. :)

the "weights" are ferrite beads/rings which are used to reduce noise in a cable by mitigating static or other interference of the cable

Another great video thanks again 👍

I remember buying this from a Best buy wayyyyy back then when I was a kid. Pretty cool to see an unboxing of this very nifty and obscure item

I can't avoid to imagine techmoan with this device. Awesome video.

Finally!!! I've been waiting, keep it up

This came out the year after the first iPod was released. Pretty awesome to have an mp3 on your Gameboy that early! Trick kit! Thanks for the Sendico hookup too! My retirement fund is quickly dwindling.

This device is actually really awesome :D Didn't expect it to have such a good interface either and all of that on a game boy!

I used to have one of these! Could only hold a few songs, but made the long bus ride I had manageable!

Great video! Sorry I’m late but interesting little thing! You can still get the ones (not GBA though sadly) with line input for recording, Sony’s dictaphones maybe others brands can record like that and be used as music players and my Victor Reader Stream does it too, very nice for ‘personal’ use recording of Spotify and RU-vid videos!

The music must be in stereo to make the karaoke feature work. I assume the Karaoke feature works by inverting either left or right channel and combining it with the other channel. What happens is that anything in the center channel gets cancelled off, it's where the vocals are usually placed in the mix but sometimes other instruments were placed in the center mix and also gets cancelled off.

I believe the “weights” on the AUX cable are actually to eliminate interference or something similar, I remember the PS2 AV cables had that where the wire has a loop on the outside of the plastic.

There was a black version of this launched in the US. Same product if I'm not mistaken. Got mine from Best buy, but sold it a few years ago

Hey there was an english release of this. It was call the gba Jukebox. Really hard to find tho. I can see there are alot of the Japanese ones going around. Great vids man keep it up!

This is when I was living in Japan. There it was more the era of Minidisc players, but you did see CD players occasionally. This would have been competing with MD recorders, but the price point would have been much, much lower. Good for kids. I like it.

I recognized the KEMCO logo instantly. Fond memories of that... Crazy Chase.

5:41 Those weights are most likely ferrite beads. Any wire can act as a radio antenna, and this can add unwanted noise to your audio track, or even create transmissions that can be picked by other neighbouring devices. In some areas of the world, they are required to prevent the creation of electromagnetic interference. Very important in densely populated areas. In short, these ferrite beads make use of the properties of electromagnetism to take high frequency noise and convert it to heat.

I had one of these when I lived in tenerife. The local vendors had a bunch of Ali express stuff and every game was a repro. Easiest way to tell was having an esrb rating on the box in a pal region. As for the product itself, it was before the ipod was as accessible or even known. So cheap mp3 players were the route to go if you wanted to listen to music in class. The radio tuner never really worked and it sounded mono if I remember correctly but you could place mp 3 files.

Great video I loved it!

For the karaoke mode I'm pretty sure it's a center channel dipper, or like a mid frequency dipper. I.e. it's just lowering the frequencies of where singing would usually be in, it's not the best method but it can work quite well for certain music.

This still looks super cool to me even at 26 years old On the 3DS sound app there is also a Karaoke option you can toggle on and off.

I have the Gameboy movie player. It plays mp3's plus you can create movie files that play on the Gameboy. Can watch a whole movie by converting movie file on pc and put on the compact flash card. It can also read ebooks and some emulators to play Gameboy, Sega master system and nes ROMs.

There's a GBA video player that only works on the GBA SP and the GBM since the GBA doesn't transfer enough energy through the cartidge slot, so because of that, the cartridge has a headphone jack. If you want to check that out, watch the DYKG where he talks about obscure GBA facts, right at the end of the video if I do remember Edit: After a bit of research, I saw that the cartridge is called Play Yan, it plays music and videos, it only works on GBA SP, GBM, DS and DS Lite. You should check it out! Thanks!

Imagine if it has 'Never gonna give you up' included

I think those "weighs" on the aux cable are ferrite cores. Also I the Google Translate app has a live translation function by using the phone's camera

Vocal remover was a common feature for a while. Had a 90s Sony stereo that did that.

Wow Kemco bought the macventure games to the NES and made the crazy castle series, they're still around making JRPG games for mobile devices and modern consoles!

Those voice cancelling karaoke modes just take advantage of the fact music almost always has voices fully centred, but the instruments pan around the left and right channels. So it inverts the phase of one channel and combines it with the other, to make anything in the centre, like vocals (and sometimes, unfortunately, some instrumentation), get cancelled out of the resulting modified waveform. I think I'm remembering the details there correctly but at the same time my memory's bad enough that I'm very possibly getting some minor details wrong.

I have one of these. Bought mine at Walmart back in the day. I used it for my Mp3 player for a while. I think I got it around 2003.

You have to show the Nintendo MP3 Player. An official MP3 and ASF Video Player for GBA. In Japan, the name is Play-Yan Micro.

I had one of these! The US version was black if I remember correctly and the UI was a bit different, I don't remember a karaoke feature 🤔 cool stuff!

Need to go for the headphones....lovely.

Some suggestions for the next time you make a video about media players or similar: -Try to connect the device out (or the gameboy headphone out) to the camera. If your camera doesn't have that option, just connect it to the line in of your computer/laptop and use a good audio program like audacity to record the audio. -There are extremely cheap USB multi-card readers that have compactflash slots. You can use one to download the files to your computer. -It would have been fun and informative to know if you can put your onw MP3 files in it from a computer. -Also it would be interesting to know what are the technical specifications of the MP3 created with that (format, bitrate, frequency, stereo or mono, etc) -If you want to use music for testing this kind of stuff and you don't want your video to have copyright problems, just pick any music track from the "RU-vid audio library". All the stuff found on this library is to be used 100% free on RU-vid.

SEGA SATURN also has voice cancellation. It's a simple function (see Audacity tutorial, basically you overlay original and inverted track) but does not work with all music/voices. But yes, it does work to some degree on most songs, depending on the frequencies or tricks used sampling it I guess.

Gonna be honest, I like because of the beginning

This did come out in the USA, I own a black colored one that was released by Datel (the action replay people) still own it too.

"Made in the Philippines"...wait what? Im a big fan of your videos. Hello Elliot from the Philippines.

When you use google translate, forfuture reference on the bottom after you take the picture click "scan" and you'll have an easier time and it also tends to be more accurate

Yessss been waiting on this one 🤙🤙🤙🤙

I used to have that. WHen i was 13-14. I also had the camera for the GBA. Damn that was sooo long ago.

The weights are ferite cores. They nullify electromagnetic interference on the line. On a digital cables like USB or controllers, it's useful. On an analog cable like audio, I'm not sure it helps.

We all love your videos

when I was a kid I remember seeing some sort of gba mp3 player at gamestop here in the US.

Things on the aux cord are power cleaners helps keep static down

"Weights" Awesome review.

The "weights" are magnetic filters to prevent signal interference.

That aux cable looks like it has two ferrite beads in it to reduce line noise and reduce feedback.

thats amazing wish i had one back then would of used it all the time

I bought something similar to this in the US for my DS, but it was more of a "play your own audio and video" than a record and playback tool. It was extremely complicated and I returned it because I was 12 and I wanted my $80 back. But there was absolutely a hype factor. I thought I would look so smart and cool playing movies and music and from my ds, save a boat load of money on not having to buy an ipod, etc. It also used a compact flash card like this one. Wonder if you could find it. Do you do DS videos?

MP3 player are expensive back in the day, I remember buying a portable VCD player for playing it, and its only last about 3-4 hours of play time with doible AA batteries.

Just a quick question about the refurbishing process... Is Ethyl Alcohol (70%) as good as IPA? Should it be used to clean motherboards etc..?

Karaoke used to be a common feature on some of the more expensive cassette decks. It basically just lowers the volume on the average frequencies of human singing.

I recently purchased a boxed Innovation Gba mp3 player from Cheapgamestuff on eBay for 12.34 usd free shipping. It doesn't do as much but can display bmp pictures too. Same seller has a gba personal organizer from Innovation. I picked that up too for $8.54

GBA 1w speaker in mono "it doesn't sound too good through the speaker" about right.

I actually owned one of these back in the day. It was very cool.

I had one of these years ago but it was called the game boy advance jukebox in the uk but it was black instead of grey

I'd love to see you try out the Game Gear TV cartridge, assuming there's still some way of actually receiving video on it (would likely have to broadcast analog video yourself in order to test it.)

I could see my self rocking Linkin park on this.

damn... TRF with the tps-l2 walkman... very nice

Kemco developed/published games for the GBA, too. I remember getting a racing game called "GT Championship" with my original GBA (it was ok)