Play-Yan is a peripheral designed for use with the Game Boy Advance line of portables. Taking the shape of a Game Boy Advance cartridge that accepts SD memory cards, the device includes a built-in MPEG decoder allowing for hardware playback of ASF (MPEG4) movies and MP3 music clips. Previous attempts at Game Boy Advance video have used software decoding solutions, resulting in lower quality, lower color clips.
The front of the Play-Yan cartridge has a port. This port is for directly plugging headphones into the device. If there are no headphones plugged into Play-Yan, sound is output through the regular Game Boy Advance or DS sound channels, emerging from the system speakers or through headphones that are connected to the system's main headphone port. Sound through the main system is tinny and scratchy, as if the system is struggling to output the sound; it's best to play sound directly through Play-Yan. And in case you were wondering, you can't output sound simultaneously through Play-Yan and the Game Boy headphone port.
One thousand yen extra gets you, in addition to the Play-Yan cartridge, a mini CD containing "Media Stage for Nintendo," a version of Panasonic's multimedia compression software that can be used to produce videos at Play-Yan specifications from the movie files stored on your PC. We found installing Media Stage to be simple even on a non-Japanese version of Windows XP. We had to go into the Windows control panel to switch our default language option to Japanese in order to get the software to actually run, though. If you find yourself having problems we'd suggest trying this.
Media Stage seems like it's meant exclusively for producing videos. We couldn't make it rip music from CD, nor could we do much with audio and image files aside from playing them back on the computer. As far as movie files go, we were able to get the software to detect Windows Media and standard AVI files, but not Quicktime files.
To compress a file for play on Play-Yan, you simply select the file and select "Compact" (the third option down on the right control panel shown in the below screenshot). You can select from a number of target platforms, including a variety of cell phones, with just one option for Play-Yan. Play-Yan itself has three video rates: high quality, standard and high compression. Before you start compressing, the software gives an accurate estimate of the amount of space into which it will compress the file.
These settings translate to low to reasonable video quality when clips are played back on a Play-Yan hooked up to a DS or GBA-SP. We noticed clear artifacts even in the highest quality setting, mostly on videos with high brightness. However, both the highest quality and standard quality settings make for reasonable viewing, especially with darker footage. Lowest quality is a bit harder to look at thanks to the drop in frame rate, but we've found ourselves putting up with worse on the iRiver color 320 series player, so if you want to fit a lot on a small SD card, the lowest setting could be your thing.
Actually getting videos up and running on Play-Yan is much simpler than it is on Sony's PSP. You can copy your movie files to any location on the SD card. After starting up Play-Yan, a startup menu asks you to select between viewing movies and listening to music. Select the movie option and Play-Yan scans the SD card, including sub-directories, and displays all ASF movie files in index form. We didn't have to worry about any sort of naming convention, neither for directories nor for movie files.
Outside of movies, the Play-Yan is also meant to serve as a first party MP3 upgrade for the GBASP and DS. As mentioned in our previous writeup, the compact size of the Game Boy Advance SP and the low requirements of music playback make the Play-Yan into a natural fit as a music player. Now that we have the device, we were able to put it to the test on a number of different songs of far greater variety than the Peach Sound Selection soundtrack Nintendo offered in our December demo.
As Play-Yan is compatible with standard MP3 files, we simply copied over our files as we saw fit. Play-Yan displayed the files separated into their individual directories. According to the Play-Yan manual, the system can display up to 90 directories or songs at a time, which is plenty (unless you have an absurd amount of music and an absurdly huge SD card). There doesn't seem to be any support for play lists.
While the Play-Yan interface, featuring the cute stick man character, is fun to watch, the music interface overall leaves a bit to be desired. Scanning is too slow, and you can't scan from one track into the previous track, which would be a nice feature for songs that span multiple tracks. Play-Yan allows for just the bare minimum forms of playback, including shuffle of songs in a current directory and repeat play of a single track and of a single directory. There's no A-B repeat, despite the presence of extra buttons for such a feature.
Despite interface problems, sound quality makes Play-Yan work great as a music player. While volume doesn't go as high as we'd have liked, Play-Yan does have a terrific bass boost feature than can be adjusted to various levels of bass. Sound quality and playback, while not having the clarity of higher end devices, is impressive considering that it's coming from a tiny Game Boy Advance SP.
To see Play-Yan in motion, including movies, music and mini-games, download the following video. This was captured off the Game Boy Player, so sound quality isn't as high as it would be with headphones plugged directly into Play-Yan.
PLAY-YAN
|
Having used Play-Yan for music and movie playback, we're overall impressed with the product. While movie clarity isn't anywhere near that of the PSP, it's passable, especially in comparison to the lower end media/music player hybrid devices like the color iRiver. MP3 playback benefits from the GBA-SP's small size and the Play-Yan's quality sound output; we could picture ourselves using the Game Boy Advance SP as an audio player if Nintendo or Panasonic would release a remote control.
The success of Play-Yan will depend on how Nintendo pushes it at retail. Currently, the device is only available in Japan, only via Nintendo's e-commerce shop, and at an unfriendly price tag. If Nintendo drops the price, fixes some of the interface issues, and gives Play-Yan a full retail push, the Game Boy line could go beyond just games.