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History of the Wireless Adapter for Game Boy Advance
It would seem, what could playing games during work hours lead to? What if an entire department of your company is doing it?! The first thing that comes to mind is the dismissal of all department employees. But in this case, the opposite happened – Masato Kuwahara was promoted and appointed head of the department for creating wireless features for the Nintendo DS.
The Wireless Adapter for Game Boy Advance, released in January 2004, made Kuwahara the lead developer of the Nintendo DS and DSi for many years.
History
It all started with a widespread fascination with the game Diablo 2. Being an ordinary employee of the "Nintendo Research and Engineering" department, Masato Kuwahara, like the rest of the employees along with the department head, often played Diablo 2 online.
As he later recounted at the GDC 2009 exhibition: all these games during work hours were solely to gather new ideas for their developments.
Masato Kuwahara speaking at GDC2009 with the presentation "The Inspiration Behind Nintendo DSi Development"
And, oddly enough, it worked. He came up with the idea to make a wireless adapter for the Game Boy Advance.
Kuwahara began developing and creating a prototype. He assembled the entire structure with wires and used a wireless adapter from a mobile phone. Initially, this device was intended for sending emails. Masato Kuwahara didn't know about the CRC mechanism, which was responsible for checking the integrity of the message, so the sent data was often corrupted. But overall, the device worked.
Nintendo's management liked this idea, and a budget and staff were allocated to create the Wireless Adapter. Initially, the developers planned that the device would work using Bluetooth, but they encountered problems and decided to create their own technology.
And here was the catch. If you've never used a Wireless Adapter, you might think that it's a wireless module that replaces the standard network cable: like with a Wi-Fi router. After all, in principle, there's no difference whether you connect to the router via a network or do the same thing with a network cable.
But that's not the case at all. Games that could be played over a network cable were not suitable for this device. New network capabilities had to be added separately to each game.
When Shigeru Miyamoto saw this project, he immediately wanted the wireless adapter to work with Four Swords Adventures, but the game was in its final stages and wasn't reworked. This almost killed the entire device.
The lifecycle of the Game Boy Advance console was coming to an end. The Nintendo DS was soon to be released. And so, releasing the Wireless Adapter without any clear ideas that could affect sales would have been strange.
Satoru Iwata saved the situation by negotiating with GameFreak to bundle the device with the new Pokémon games (Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green). And this really saved the Wireless Adapter, which sold 10 million units.
Release of the Wireless Adapter
On January 26, 2003, Satoru Iwata, speaking at the "Tokyo Game Show 2003," presented the Wireless Adapter.
From what he said, two things can be highlighted: the adapter used Motorola's wireless technology, and in the future, special base stations connected to the internet were supposed to appear. These stations would distribute additional content for Pokémon and much more.
And so, on January 29, 2004, the new Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green appeared on store shelves, and in their package were the first Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapters.
The problem was that, essentially, no other game besides Pokémon supported the Wireless Adapter. But Nintendo didn't stop there. As Satoru Iwata said, access points called JoySpot Service began to open throughout Japan.
JoySpot Service
On March 11, 2004, Nintendo announced the opening of a new service called "JoySpot Service." In stores selling consoles and games, a special zone was to be opened where you could connect to the JoySpot access point using the adapter and either receive a mysterious gift or participate in the Pokémon JoySpot Challenge Battle tournament.
What did it look like?
You had to find a store with the JoySpot logo.
You needed to have a Game Boy Advance and a Wireless Adapter with you. Then you could connect to a special device that looked like this:
Apparently, these were Game Boy Advance consoles with a Wireless Adapter and a special cartridge. But what exactly was inside remains a mystery. This device had the number JSP-001 and was powered by the Game Boy Advance AC adapter (AGB-009). Perhaps there was some kind of analog to the Nintendo Zone Box. I hope that someone will find this device later, and we will find out what was inside.
That wasn't all. There were also special monitors displaying the top players.
What's inside these boxes is also unknown.
But the biggest mystery of these devices is how they interacted with each other. Let's figure out how it worked.
In the usual case, if you had a Pokémon game and a Wireless Adapter, you could enter the Union Room. Up to 40 people could be there! Here you could chat and battle each other.
All these are not computer characters, but real players (except for the character in the top left corner).
When you came to a store with JoySpot Service, you could also enter this room, but there were not players, but a computer character (with yellow hair on the left).
Her name was Etsuko (エツコ). She had two level 30 Pokémon, and you could battle her.
This wasn't just a battle: you could make it to the top players list. In the store, the results were displayed on a special screen.
From left to right: Rank in the top, player's nickname, player's ID, number of attempts, and number of wins.
Moreover, if in stores this ranking was local, in the Pokémon Center, general information was collected. Sometimes you could see the top players from all stores on the monitors.
The JoySpot Service didn't last very long: from March 25, 2004, to July 8, 2005. Despite the quick closure of JoySpot Service, this technology didn't disappear; later it was adapted for the Nintendo DS Download Station.
The main problem was with the Wireless Adapter itself. Both old and many new games only supported cable connections and didn't use the new capabilities. Mostly, the Wireless Adapter was used only to distribute some bonuses for games. For example, many mythical Pokémon were distributed this way. And as you understand, this significantly reduced the value of the device.
But the Wireless Adapter still turned out to be quite popular. 10 million units sold is a lot. So much so that on May 15, 2004, a limited edition in Famicom colors was released, distributed through the Nintendo Club.
And on the same day, the Wireless Adapter began to be sold separately.
You can see more details in the article: "Photos of the Japanese version of the Wireless Adapter for Game Boy Advance."
Epilogue
It seems that using their own developments in wireless connectivity was not a very optimal solution. Apparently, integrating this technology into their game turned out to be difficult. I can't explain otherwise why all developers ignored this opportunity.
Unfortunately, despite the huge potential of the Wireless Adapter, the games that support it can be counted on the fingers of both hands. At the same time, more than a thousand games were released. Therefore, the Wireless Adapter remains an extremely niche device, mainly needed only by Pokémon enthusiasts.
