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Play GBA games (badly) on the Wii
While Nintendo is quick to tout the Wii's extensive backward-compatibility with all GameCube software, the sleek white system is a pretty bad fit for the Cube's Game Boy Player hardware add-on. Rather than leaving that clunky old Cube out in the entertainment center, Wii News recommends the Datel Advance Game Port, a sleek-looking accessory that plugs into the GameCube/Wii memory card slot and lets you play Game Boy Advance games on the big screen. What Wii News doesn't tell you is that the Datel Advance Game Port is a buggy mess. In our reviews of the discontinued hardware, games ran with inconsistent slowdown, laggy controls and audio problems. What's more, the port only plays Game Boy Advance games, unlike the official Game Boy Player, which works with games dating all the way back to the black-and-white classic portable. If you're really desperate for Game Boy games on your TV, spring for the Nintendo-approved solution and not this third-party knock-off. Or just sit around and wait for the oft-rumored addition of Game Boy support for the Virtual Console.
Great PC games without hardcore hardware
If you've got more important things to spend your hard-earned cash on than PC hardware, GameSpot has compiled a list of ten best selling games that can co-exist comfortably with outdated rigs. Both Athlon test systems were equipped with only 256MB of memory, but one system used an AGP Radeon 9250 video card, while the other had a PCI Express GeForce 6200 installed.Games that you would expect to see on a list of low-tech wonders (by today's standards) are here, such as StarCraft and Half-Life: Counter Strike. However, I was more than a little surprised to see resource hogs Heroes of Might and Magic V and Civilization IV included, even at lowered texture and shader settings. Indeed, the review team experienced framerate problems with Heroes V on the PCI Express system. Still, each game performed admirably on at least one of GameSpot's test configurations, and with entries like Sid Meier's Pirates! and GTA: San Andreas included on the list, there's something for everyone. We'd like to hear which PC games (ancient and current) you've been enjoying on older setups.
Buyer's Guide: Graphics cards compared
Choosing a new graphics card can involve a difficult and lengthy hunt for comparative benchmarks to work out where to put your cash. Fortunately, Tom's Hardware Guide have put together a handy interactive comparison chart which can help reduce this problem to the simple act of staring at a few graphs. It may be reasonably old, but it's useful, with a few caveats; not all of the cards were tested on identical systems, so some of the results are a little surprising -- clicking on the individual bars of the results reveals the relevant system specs. Also, although it is "updated on a regular basis", several cards are missing from the list. Still, if you're in the market for a new graphics card, this should help simplify your search. [via digg]
