Singapore Airlines passengers get emulated GBC games
by David Hinkle 
{ Sep 28th 2007 at 10:00PM }
While riding the friendly skies with Singapore Airlines, one of the crew over at Siliconera found themselves in for a treat. Well, kind of. See, the airline offers emulated Game Boy Color games for use during your flight, to help you stab that foul beast called boredom directly in its disgusting, black heart. While a nice gesture, it turns out the emulation software has some issues.First of all, there are only two categories of play: Pokemon and Adventure. Also, the titles under the Adventure category suffer from choppy frame rates and overall sluggish play. As far as the Pokemon games go, there is no save feature, hardly making an effort to actually progress in the game a meaningless one.
Other flights, however, featured different titles. Some flights featured The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Wario Land 3. Others even had Picross 2. All in all, seems like a good idea executed somewhat poorly.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
BPM (FDF - Hypno-Toad) @ Sep 28th 2007 11:21PM
Pokémon's a bad idea for this. Actually, any game that requires deep involvement is bad. Once you land down, it's game over for good, ya know?
Wario may not be that bad of a choice, though. While it had a lot of levels, it wasn't THAT involving (unless you were striving for perfection, I guess).
And why not a GBA emulator?
rvancleave @ Sep 28th 2007 11:53PM
I flew Singapore Airlines from LA to Mumbai and back last year and saw this on the "Video on Demand" consoles. Not only was the selection of games kinda crummy, but the interface with the "phone/remote/controller" attached to your chair was clunky. I just pulled my DS out of my carry-on and played Phoenix Wright when I wasn't watching movies.
Adv2k1 @ Sep 29th 2007 12:37AM
wtf??
Author X @ Sep 29th 2007 4:49AM
Bwuh...? What the hell's the point of emulating portable games on an airplane?
They used to have SNES games! SNES! I mean, we're talking Super Bonk, and Kirby's Dream Course!
Why did they take such a huge step back here?
aka_ak @ Sep 29th 2007 5:18AM
I got to play on that on the way to Australia.
I must say, it was actually a pretty good way to spend the flight. I played Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for GBC. 8D
knocturnal @ Oct 4th 2007 11:47PM
If the emulation was done properly I would call it a great idea. Even old school NES gaming would be a blast if I didn't have a portable with me when I flew (which I definently would).
CyberTyrant @ Sep 29th 2007 4:56PM
God I love that airlines.
I flew with them to NY Christmas time. And even now I still remember that flight.
Played Panel de Pon (The ORIGINAL Tetris Attack) and Mega Man X.
Of course, GBC games like Pokemon are a bad move here.
deathwombat @ Sep 30th 2007 5:01AM
well technically they still have SNES games on some of the flights (on the 747's I believe) but they've had emulated games for at least 10 years now
deathwombat @ Sep 30th 2007 5:04AM
also it's not like you can save the games or anything, which would be cool if you could get a memory card for the games on the inflight entertainment system
AgentESPIO7 @ Sep 30th 2007 6:32AM
i wonder if 10-15 more years they'll have emulated gamecube or xbox games or something on planes... that would be preeeetty crazy.
but yeah, i've never been on a flight with the snes emulation on it but was reading about in a magazine and they said you could play multiplayer with other passengers on board. is that true?
iofthestorm @ Sep 30th 2007 8:41PM
I've played the SNES games on many airlines before, although I think it was either Malaysian or Cathay Pacific that had them. Those inflight entertainment systems are really buggy though, and not worth playing. I would have brought my DS but I don't have an international charger so I just left it at home and slept through the flight.
ZeroEx @ Oct 6th 2007 3:45AM
I flew SIA before... was playing Super Mario World and Zelda... the rest I forgotten... seems like a step back to go back to GBC games isnt it? How abt GBA for a change eh? Theres tons of emulator out there already.. how difficult is that???
spacesooner @ Oct 8th 2007 9:15PM
I just had a couple of 12+ hr flights on Singapore Air in the last month with other non-short flights on either side of them, and thought this was pretty cool.
I've played a couple of the Pokemon games before, but hadn't done the GBC ones, so it was a good chance to look at the beginning of the story. I
can see how it also might hit new audiences who had never picked up a Pokemon game (or any GameBoy game) before.
The *really* cool thing was that on the 777, there was also a US power outlet on the arm rest of each seat so I could charge the DS in-flight.