Have one to sell?

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the Author

Jonathan S. Harbour

Programming the Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide 1st Edition

by Jonathan S. Harbour (Author)

10 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$5.00

—

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 3 million more titles $5.00 to buy

Develop your own games for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance! Now you can write, compile, and run Game Boy programs right on your Windows desktop! "Programming the Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide" will show you how you can use the free HAM SDK to create your own games for the Game Boy Advance. When you?re ready to take the game off of your desktop and run it on a real Game Boy, you?ll get plenty of coverage on your options with multi-link cables and flash linkers as well as details for purchasing either. Staying focused as a true console programming book, "Programming the Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide" gives you the tips and skills that you need to develop a career as a console game programmer. All you need to get started is experience programming with C and professional game programming aspirations.

ISBN-10

1931841780
ISBN-13

978-1931841788
Edition

1st
Publisher

Course Technology PTR
Publication date

December 1, 2003
Language

English
Print length

440 pages
See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jonathan S. Harbour has been an avid gamer and programmer for many years and holds a degree in Computer Information Systems. He has written many books on the subject of game programming, including Microsoft Visual Basic Game Programming with DirectX®, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Beginner?s Guide to DarkBASIC Game Programming, and Game Programming All In One, 2nd Edition.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Course Technology PTR; 1st edition (December 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 440 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1931841780
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1931841788
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.5 pounds

Customer Reviews:
10 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jonathan S. Harbour

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Jonathan S. Harbour holds a Master's in Information Systems, with a focus in software project management. He spent five years as a college professor where he taught computer science, and has written extensively on game development. His background and fascination with AI and human behavior and physics fuels his fiction and he worked for years on database and web development while writing in his spare time.

Customer reviews

5 star		84%
4 star		8%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		8%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Calin Galeriu

Excellent introductory textbook

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 21, 2009

A very clear exposition of the basics of GBA programming. After reading this book you will be able to use the more advanced TONC book. At the first reading I thought that Harbour's book is a little bit repetitive, with code sometimes no optimized, but after reading the other GBA programming tutorials I have to admit that Harbour's book is by far the best introduction to the topic. Thanks for giving it away for free!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

David Koontz

Nintendo doesn't want this book published

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2003

This book is taking a long time to come out because the publisher is under pressure from Nintendo not to publish it. Nintendo feels that the section on using a flash cable and flash cart (obtained from Lik-sang) will be used by people pirating games. This is of course rediculous since there is lots of information about this on the Internet that's accessible right now. If you want to see this book published please pre-order it right now so the publisher can see the high level of interest.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Lonnie Jones

The only book for programming the Gameboy Advance.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 2, 2006

The book is unavailable because Nintendo doesn't want it released and probably threatened to sue the publishing company. The company no longer covers the book.

It starts out with basic C++ programming techniques and goes through all the basics of creating games. I would recommend it for an intermediate programmer. You can get the book for free off of the Authors website. You can also buy a CD version. GREAT BUY!

It covers video, audio, and very basic structural programming. Not for programmers afraid to do some math and memory address memorization. I absolutely love it.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Wonderdog

The Answer:-

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2003

According to premier press, Nintendo are putting pressure on them (the publisher) to keep the book off of shelves. They are however endevouring to get it out, so hold on, its coming!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

厄災ガノンの史家

Be very CAUTIOUS with this book.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 19, 2013

This is your warning. STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK AND IT'S AUTHOR.

There are many unfortunate errors in this book, which is a shame since this is the only book available to the public for GBA programming, and many of the people wanting to learn GBA programming are fairly new to programming. Pay close attention and here's why you should...

Some mistakes in this book are simple and harmless, such as the statement regarding the sound system of the GBA "The Gameboy Advance comprises four FM synthesis channels", which isn't true. As a songwriter producer and synth engineer, it would be irresponsible of me to let this slide. Correction, the GBA comprises two pulse wave generators, one sample channel, and one pseudo noise generator, these are NOT FM channels, not even close. Now such an error is minor and will have no effect on the aspiring programmer. However be warned, that this book is littered with mistakes that you'll find yourself struggling to unlearn later on down the road when it's too late (bad programming habits, untruths about the GBA's accepted data types, very inefficient code).

More importantly, more information regarding the problems with this book, a full annotation can be found by googling "TONC programming the gameboy advance annotations" it's the first listing that shows up on the search engine results. This annotation is carefully written by a physicist, professional programmer and GBA enthusiast. He has his own GBA programming tutorials, and can get you started on the right track and teach you efficient programming in the same token... just know that he uses DevKitARM (DevKitPro, a free and highly standard GBA programming library in the GBA programming community) instead of HAM, which is what the author here uses. You'll want to look for the TONC tutorials there at that website as well, all tutorials and libs are free of charge as well, and not to mention, is more accurate.

As for this book and it's author, I'm simply not impressed. I've been scouring the internet for information on getting started on Gameboy Advance programming. And this guy and TONC are pretty much the only ways to really get into it without too much trouble (dealing with ASM and all that) Here's the real kicker... the errors with this book have been pointed out to the author in the past, and he blew it all off, calling those who pointed out the errors "w-nkers". This is highly rude and says alot about the author's ability to handle feedback, take responsibility, and correct mistakes. My personal opinion, is that it's fairly greedy to irresponsibly publish false information (especially for money!) without verifying the accuracy of all information first.

To conclude, I won't change my review or rating unless this problem is fixed, and I would advise and repeat myself one more time, for everyone to steer clear of this book and it's author until the issues mentioned here and in the annotated guide, have been corrected. Good day to you. Remember, go for the TONC GBA tutorials. The guy even wrote his own toolset libraries for GBA dev'ing for godsake.

~Cory

13 people found this helpful

Helpful