Table of Contents
Rare Console: Dockable Entertainment featuring Game Boy Advance
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In the Game Boy Advance console family, there was one extremely rare and interesting device that few have heard of.
If you ask an average person about the rarest version of the Game Boy Advance console, they will probably remember some limited edition, such as the extremely rare Game Boy Advance SP with a gold case. But only true collectors know about the existence of a licensed version of the console called Dockable Entertainment featuring Game Boy Advance.
This is a DVD player that was installed in a car and had full hardware support for Game Boy Advance games. But this device was not permanently embedded in the car; it was installed in a special dock and could be carried around like a small laptop.
The price of the device was $1299! That's almost 40,000 rubles as of 2006. However, for that money, you got a huge set.
The top box contained the device itself. The three middle boxes contained wireless headphones, a wireless controller, and a mobile charger (which you could carry with you, as the dock only had automatic charging)! For 2006, these were simply space-age technologies! And the bottom box contained the docking station for installation in the car.
History of the Device.
On one hand, this device appeared out of nowhere; at the CES 2006 exhibition, two companies (Nintendo and Visteon) announced that such a device would be produced and even showed its prototype immediately. On the other hand, the history of this device is the story of two different devices that merged into one.
Back in 2001, Nintendo released the new Game Boy Advance console. And in 2005, Visteon released a device called the Dockable Family Entertainment System (Visteon XV101), which was an ordinary, almost unremarkable DVD player.
The main feature of this player was the ability to easily remove it from the dock and, accordingly, carry the DVD player with you.
If you try to compare the "Dockable Family Entertainment System" and the "Dockable Entertainment featuring Game Boy Advance," you won't find many differences even if you try hard:
First is a photo of the Visteon XV101, followed by a photo of the Visteon GameBoy Advance.
The only difference between them was that the device's lid had a slot for Game Boy Advance cartridges:
And it came with an additional wireless (!) controller:
Note the number of "A" buttons (there used to be even more!).
The first presentation of the Dockable Entertainment featuring Game Boy Advance took place at the CES 2006 exhibition, where the collaboration between Nintendo and Visteon was announced, and a ready prototype of the device was brought to the exhibition, so it's obvious that the development of this device started at the end of 2005.
And in general, the only interesting point (besides the fact of the release of such a device) was the presence of a strange controller for this console. There were 7 action buttons, 5 buttons on the front:
A + B + C + D + Select and 2 buttons on the back: L + R.
Moreover, the 5 front buttons were three A buttons and two B buttons.
This device also had 2 problems:
1. The game image was stretched to fit the entire screen, causing distortion. In the release version, this problem was fixed, and the games simply had black borders.
2. When the device was inserted into the docking station, all the button labels were upside down, making them inconvenient to read. And this problem was not fixed (and it couldn't be fixed in any accessible way).
Epilogue
All Nintendo consoles had some incredible features or variations. And this device became an extremely interesting idea. At least, it is known that 4 versions of this console were planned! And two of them were even released.
The one described above and in 2008, a version of the console was released that was embedded in a car headrest.
It is known for sure that versions with the Nintendo DS and the Wii console were planned, but for some reason, the idea died. Perhaps it was somehow related to the release of the first iPhone, which completely changed the mobile market.
