My first concern about the Mobile Monitor 5.4 was whether it'd sit flush on top of the GameCube...thankfully, that's not a problem. The plastic frame section fits over the little round humps on the GC's sides, just over the vents. And, much to my relief, the monitor is as easy to remove as it is to put on.

To be honest, this product has some of the best construction I've seen in a third-party peripheral. The whole thing feels very sturdy and solid, especially when you snap it onto the system.

The small stereo speakers put out surprisingly good sound, with positive results with everything from Melee to Rogue Leader to Tony Hawk 3. They seem to deal with both high and low notes quite well. You can also plug in headphones...haven't tried that yet, but I was delighted to find that InterAct includes a headphone jack splitter so you and player-two can both listen in the car or whatnot.

There's also a car adapter included...and yes, it powers both the monitor AND the GameCube itself. My poor alternator!

Now, time for the most important part...how's the picture? Results vary. I first tried it with Smash Bros. Melee...suffice it to say that everything afterwards has been much better. Melee is just too fast, too colorful, and too zoomed-out for this type of screen to handle. The colors bleed profusely, and small items like capsules can be hard to see on some stages. The action is also clearly too much for the screen's refresh rate, so there's a lot of annoying blur. Is Melee playable on the Mobile Monitor? Yes, but barely. I played a whole Adventure on Very Easy and did okay, but I definitely took some damage from unseen objects and other problems caused directly by the screen. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you not try to play four-player mode on this screen...not just because of the screen's size, but simply because everything is too small and moves too fast on that screen.

Luckily, every other game I've tried has been MUCH better on the LCD. Tony Hawk 3, for some reason, looks practically flawless on the small screen. The colors don't bleed, there are no tiny visual details to mess you up, and the refresh rate seems to have no problem keeping up. The only problem is that text can sometimes be hard to read, but I found this to be the case across all the games I played...in part because small text is usually displayed in bright colors, which bleed, which makes the letters hard to distinguish from each other.

I wasn't expecting much from Rogue Leader, but the screen surprised me again. I had no problem picking off TIEs, despite testing several different environment styles. From Hoth to space to Kothlis to even Bespin, Rogue Leader looks surprisingly great on the LCD, and I experienced no gameplay detriments from the screen. Go figure!

Super Monkey Ball has a lot of bright colors to bleed, like Melee, but unlike Melee, the graphics are simple and slow, so here the monitor doesn't adversely affect your performance. The bleeding colors may be distracting, but they don't hide any important information on the screen.

Just a few notes on the screen in general, regardless of which game you play... There are small whitish blotches in each corner of the display; they're not very noticeable when you're actually using the screen to play something, but they'll catch your attention during a loading sequence or whatever. The brightness control is pretty useful, but you'll probably want to adjust it differently for each game. Too bad there's no automatic brightness or something. While the LCD screen is turned on, it seems incapable of displaying pure black; instead, you get a dark gray with a weird "smoky" pattern...it's hard to explain, but very odd and noticeable as the GameCube loads up and during other periods of inactivity.

Before sitting down to write my impressions, I had to put the Mobile Monitor to just one more test...an external device. I hooked up my VCR and watched about three hours of the PGC E3 2001 Video, which I had not gotten to watch until today. (The video is pretty good, by the way. Not enough footage of me though. ;-) The screen worked perfectly with the VCR, and setup was pretty simple. Video quality here was never a problem, but then again, I was watching VHS footage taken from a handheld camera. You can be sure that I'll be testing the screen with my DVD player before I write a full review, as picture quality will definitely be a concern there.

To sum up these very long impressions: the Mobile Monitor seems to do everything it promises. I can't really recommend it if you plan to primarily play Smash Bros. Melee, but with most other games and with external devices it works extremely well...and the portability simply cannot be understated. Today I watched the PGC E3 video...AT WORK. (Okay, I work a desk job in my dorm, but it was still wicked cool.) Check back soon for my final verdict on this pricey but quite impressive peripheral from InterAct.