Nintendo plans wireless GBA adapter

Nintendo plans to launch a wireless link-up adapter for the Game Boy Advance and GBA SP next year, according to a press release from Motorola, who will be providing the wireless chipset.

The adapter is expected to be small enough "for convenient mobility", and will boast interference protection and low power consumption, which is obviously crucial for the GBA, whilst enabling link-up play for up to five players.

According to Motorola, the chip contains a 32-bit RISC architecture baseband processor and RF transceiver operating on the 2.4GHz spectrum, and will use the TDMA (time division multiple access, apparently) communication protocol for speedy data exchange. Whatever all that means. We just do Mechano.

Exactly when we can expect to get our hands on it over here is anyone's guess, but Motorola claims the adapter will launch in Japan with Nintendo's next GBA Pokemon games, translated as Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen.

Given the universal compatibility of the hardware, we can expect to see grey imports turn up sometime during the first half of 2004, inevitably followed by the usual round of legal threats from Nintendo of Europe.