this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

And if Wikipedia is to be believed it's presented in a eye wateringly high resolution of 112p.

This high of res.

Edit: Of course the bit rate was pretty damn low as well. Here's a comparison video I found. This comparison uses the higher bit rate version from the Shrek GBA video cart not the Shrek+Shark Tale video cart though so keep in mind, this is the better version.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not gonna lie, 112p video is actually kinda amazing for a gameboy advanced cartridge. I dunno how much space that'd take up, but I'd bet it's more than your typical GBA cart.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They also ran at a much lower frame rate and compressed the audio quite a bit

Basically they had to fit both movies in less than 64MB.

[–] prayer 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, we still do a similar thing with movies today when we want to send them on discord, crunching it down to 25-50MB

[–] Raxiel 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wasn't expecting to watch Tremors while sitting on the toilet this evening but here we are.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That makes two of us

[–] Raxiel 4 points 1 year ago

Careful, they can sense movement

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

64 MB... including the player and codec! The GBA cannot decode video natively so a lot of trickery was required to get a decent performance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly

It's honestly impressive they even were able to do it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, there were way more efficient ways to store video on the go in the 2000s, like MiniDVD players with tiny screens. The codec is in firmware and the video format and medium is standardized. It’s the easiest way to sell small, cheap gigabytes of storage if you need no quick random access. And the family might already have the more useful laptop-like portable DVD player with a full-sized drive and almost every home video title was available on those.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I had this and didn't hate it back in the day. I was happy.

[–] DashboTreeFrog 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Two games on one cartridge? Childhood me is sold!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

These are movies my friend.

[–] DashboTreeFrog 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I figured they were tie in games, these are movies?!

[–] OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe 7 points 1 year ago

Sweet sweet digitally compressed movies. Two of em, 64 mb total. The next best thing I can remember were PSP movies, l my parents of course never let me buy them, but my buddy had a copy of Final Fantasy Advent Children, a whole 1.8 gb (if two sided). Glorious handheld videos to watch during a bus ride home.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think I had this 0-0

[–] cm0002 4 points 1 year ago

I had a few of these as a kid, I think I still have one floating around lmao

The resolution is as terrible as it sounds lmfao, but when I was a kid it was the best you could do other than Video now which iirc was only marginally better and couldn't play games

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many colors does the Gameboy advance support? It can't be more than 256.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago