Enter Game Boy Advance. The portable will be able to hook up with GameCube for optimal interactivity. Recently in a speech given by Peter Main, Nintendo of America's Vice President of Sales, he stated Game Boy Advance would be an "integral part of GameCube" and that "...clearly you're going to see an interface between the Game Boy Advance and GameCube that is more than happenstance and doesn't require a mechanical device." 

GameCube will connect directly to the GBA in a plug-and-play manner. For instance, users will potentially be able to use GBA to build character experience and then transfer the character into full its full 3D counterpart on GameCube.
 

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At Spaceworld 2001 Shigeru Miyamoto spent approximately ten minutes showing off a few of Nintendo's ideas for creating games that will incorporate the Game Boy Advance with the GameCube through the use of the specialized link cable.

In the presentation, Miyamoto opened up with a version of Koro Koro Kirby on the GameCube. He showed the audience that a pink cartridge was inserted in the Game Boy Advance -- the cartridge itself contained the same motion sensor chip that's implemented in the Game Boy Color game of the same name. By tipping the system every which way, Miyamoto controlled a fully polygonal Kirby on the GameCube in a level that looked completely ripped out of the GBC edition. 

After maneuvering Kirby up, down, and around a flat level, he sent Kirby down a gutter and into a new part of the level -- Kirby ended up off-screen, and an icon popped up informing the player to look down at the Game Boy Advance screen to continue play. After sending Kirby on a tilt-n-tumble on the Game Boy Advance, Kirby was shot up out of the Game Boy Advance and back onto the GameCube for the level's next portion. This flipflopping went back and forth at least three times, showing that both systems are necessary in getting through the game's worlds.

Later Miyamoto revealed that the cartridge doesn't actually have the game program on it. Instead, it's an almost completely blank cartridge, only containing a good amount blank RAM, and the GameCube actually sends the program over to the system via the link cable. He mentioned that, since the Game Boy Advance has very limited internal memory for the single cartridge multiplayer link and the system connectivity, the Koro Koro Kirby cartridge could be used by other developers in their games if they wanted to use it.

The game, when complete in 2002 will probably be marketed as a GameCube/Game Boy Advance game, since the game can't work without either system in place. In a chat with Perrin Kaplan (VP of Corporate Affairs at Nintendo of America), she revealed that the company hasn't finalized the company's plans for marketing such a package yet.

For the next link demonstration, Miyamoto pulled up Animal Forest Plus for GameCube. When the Game Boy Advance is connected, players can send the character to a secret island that will take place on the portable system. Contrary to what we first thought, a Game Boy Advance cartridge is not needed to unlock these extra features. The GBA acts almost like a key to open up the GCN version's hidden goodies. It wasn't exactly clear what could be done in the GBA mode, but Miyamoto showed off that custom textures can be designed in a simple Mario Paint interface...which can be sent back to the GameCube game and utilized wherever these custom textures can be used (clothing, signs, wallpaper). In the demo, Miyamoto created a flat four-color Mario face on the Game Boy Advance, and then placed the face all over the game...the character's clothes, all over a room's walls, and on a sign in front of the character's house.

The GameCube actually sends a tiny program to the GBA that players can take with them...disconnecting from the GameCube entirely. The tiny game fits completely into GBA system memory, and the system can be put into "sleep mode" so that gamers won't waste their batteries when they want to take a break. The unfortunate thing is, if a player wants to play a different GBA game, it will flush the system memory, and anything performed on the miniprogram will be lost...unless all the changes were sent back to the GameCube prior to the deletion.

Miyamoto hinted at other uses for the Game Boy Advance to GameCube connectivity, but these were the only two games that he used to demonstrate the potential. All in all, the possibilities are incredible, and we can't wait to see what else the two systems can do together.