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The Lowdown
Pros: Makes your Nintendo handheld a media hub with MP3 and MPEG4
support.
Cons: MPEG4 support requires converting your video files or DVDs with
Panasonic's Media Stage software.
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
 Purchase
at Lik-Sang
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Nintendo appeared adamant on having their systems do nothing but play
games. The Play-Yan
might be a major change in Nintendo's philosophy. This nifty add on looks like
a black GBA cartridge, but it's really a multimedia player. Gamers can
load up MP3s and MPEG4 movies on a SD card, plug the card in their Play-Yan
and get going.The package comes in a tiny box containing the
Play-Yan adapter, a Gamecube sized software disc with Panasonic's Media
Stage software and a tiny instruction manual. On the side of the
cartridge is a little slot for an SD card and the front of the cartridge
has a 1/8" standard headphone jack. If you have a Game Boy Advance SP
you'll be happy the headphone jack is there when you want to listen to
MP3s. DS owners can use either the Play-Yan's headphone jack or the
standard DS headphone jack.
When you start up the software you'll see a menu with options to
listen or watch. Choosing "listen" brings up a menu with a stick figure
character on stairs. Each stair you walk over represents a different
folder or song. If you're over a folder pressing A opens it up. If you're
standing over a song pressing A will start playback. You can fast
forward or rewind the song by pressing right or left on the D-pad,
respectively. This feature is a good addition when navigating through
long live sets. Pressing up or down on the D-pad allows you to change
the volume. Holding down the R button gives you to option to change the
bass level only. The Play-Yan has some playback options like repeat one
and play through an entire folder. You can't make custom play lists with
the software. This isn't a huge problem to overcome. If you want to make
a personal play list all you need to do is make a folder with the songs
you want.
Having a play list option would fix some of the navigation problems
the Play-Yan has. At the beginning of the staircase and at the end there
is a warp icon. Running into this teleports you back to the other warp
point, either at the end or beginning of your list. The warp addition
helps perusing through long lists a little bit, but the system is
designed for small lists. Having a huge list of MP3s in one folder would
be a pain to navigate through.
On top of playing MP3's Nintendo is releasing
"Garage
Games" on a weekly basis. These tiny downloadable titles are akin to
classic Game and Watch handhelds. The first game Nintendo released is
called Insect. In this game you control a ladybug and you have to climb
up the screen on vines. The second game Nintendo released is called Bat.
The goal of this game is to hit oncoming baseballs by pressing A at the
right time. From what we've seen so far the Garage Games aren't terrible
entertaining. Worse of all these games are played in a window of the DS
or GBA's screen. Playing a dull game that's hard to see just isn't fun.
It is likely that Nintendo added in Garage Games to compete with third
party GBA movie players that have the emulate NES roms. Although, this
hasty last minute add on to the Play-Yan doesn't cut it.
I haven't mentioned much about the Play-Yan's selling feature, it's
MPEG4 playback. I did this for good reason because I haven't been able
to get it to work. The first problem is that the MediaStage software
wouldn't install on any of the computers we tried. Probably because the
software is designed for a Japanese version of Windows XP. It appears to
install fine, but the program immidietly crashes when you try to run it.
If the Play-Yan could read any MPEG4 file this wouldn't be a problem. As
you know there are a bunch of different MPEG-4 video codecs including
XVid and the popular Divx formats. However, the Play-Yan can't play any
of your standard MPEG-4 movies. Instead you have to re-encode them for
handheld use.
Since we couldn't utilize the Play-Yan's packaged software we tried
using good old TMPGenc. This exceptional tool allows you to encode video
files in a variety of formats. If anything could be used to get around
the Panasonic problem it would be this. So I tried three different
MPEG-4 codecs in a variety of different resolutions. Unfortunatly, none
of these files would play on the system. It looks like the only way to
get video playback is to use the MediaStage software, which could be a
problem for importers.
Compared to other third party movie players the Play-Yan is a tough
sale. Some other players have all the features the Play-Yan offers on
top of eBook support and NES emulation. Supposedly the Play-Yan can play
higher resolution video files. The other advantage the Play-Yan has is
the front side headphone port, which is great for GBA SP owners.
The real question though is do you need or want a media player for
your handheld system? If you're just going to use this to play MP3s
there are smaller, sleeker and better MP3 players out there. If you want
to play movies you'll have to go through all the trouble to encode them
first. The Play-Yan also requires that you purchase an SD card, which
can run you an extra $40 or $50 depending on how much storage space you
want on the card. Owners will also need to have or purchase a SD
reader/writer to put files on the card for Play-Yan use. The package of
purchasing all of these items is pricey just to play files on your DS.
As a whole the Play-Yan is a cool toy, but the uphill battle to use it
means only gadget lovers will get the most out of it.
The MP3 and movie navigation supports English filenames and the menus
are really easy to navigate through. We've already mentioned the problem
with MediaStage, which will give importers headaches.
US Bound?
This item has limited distribution even in Japan, so a nationwide US
release is unlikely unless Japanese sales are high.
Overall
The Play-Yan does offer some neat features to the DS and GBA SP
hardware, but the upgrade to do this is rather pricey. This device is
really designed for technophiles.
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