Why Isn't There a More Prominent Game Boy Scene?

[ninjainspandex]

Slight change of subject:

Just how hard is it to see the screen on a GBC? I have never actually owned one...

it is great, as long as the room is bright. But it is beautiful outside in direct sunlight, that is one thing I miss about the older handhelds. Modern handhelds are pretty much impossible to see outside in bright sunlight, I miss being able to float around by the dock in the lake while playing my GBA

[marlowe221]

Slight change of subject:

Just how hard is it to see the screen on a GBC? I have never actually owned one...

it is great, as long as the room is bright. But it is beautiful outside in direct sunlight, that is one thing I miss about the older handhelds. Modern handhelds are pretty much impossible to see outside in bright sunlight, I miss being able to float around by the dock in the lake while playing my GBA

Let's say the room is not so bright...

[ninjainspandex]

then the screen will be not so good...

[casterofdreams]

I quite like the GBA. I have a few games for it: Pokemon mostly as well as a couple of others.

I don't know if anyone remembers but I remember a few years ago I jokingly caught flak on here for hoarding GBA Micros. I still got 'em!

But all kidding aside, I play every one in awhile. Sometimes during longer periods. Currently playing Golden Sun and looking for the second game to purchase.

[irixith]

I quite like the GBA. I have a few games for it: Pokemon mostly as well as a couple of others.

I don't know if anyone remembers but I remember a few years ago I jokingly caught flak on here for hoarding GBA Micros. I still got 'em!

But all kidding aside, I play every one in awhile. Sometimes during longer periods. Currently playing Golden Sun and looking for the second game to purchase.

If you're hoarding them to sell them, I think the bottom has dropped out on demand for them. Most people get one, try and play a few games on it, realize the screen (though beautiful) is too small to seriously play on, and then move on. If you've got some of the special ones (like the Mother one, not the 20th Anniversary one), you're laughing.

Golden Sun...oh Golden Sun. It was such a darling back when it was released, and commonly cited as one of the must-own/must-play titles. Except playing it goes a little something like this:

NPC 1: Hey, did you see what happened over by the river today? [press a]
NPC 2: No, I didn't see what happened over by the river today, what happened over by [press a] the river today? [press a]
NPC 3: Did I hear someone say that something happened over by the river [press a] today? What happened over the river? [press a]
NPC 1: Look, down there, by the bridge. [press a]
NPC 2: I'm looking down there by the bridge, is that a troll under it? [press a]
NPC 3: What's this about a troll under the bridge? [press a]
NPC 1: I didn't say there was a troll under the bridge. [press a]
NPC 4: Who says there's a troll under the bridge? [press a]

AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

As much as I love the GBA, I think I'd rather grind the first 20h of FF 13 (you know, the part before it gets to the serviceably good part) than tackle any of the Golden Sun titles ever again.

[casterofdreams]

Yeah it's a 20th Anni's that I have but the JPN ones. Nope not hoarding but more preserving for future play and such.

And yeah I like Golden Sun enough to overlook the chatty characters.

[jmbarnes101]

I like Golden Sun as well. Except when you screw up in the last dungeon and get stuck with no where to go and didn't realize you screwed up until you've overwritten your game. I did this prior to the last boss battle. It was not a fun time. Beyond that I still adore this game.

[Gunstar Green]

I've been thinking about some of the Game Boy knock-offs that have (probably deservedly) been forgotten. I guess that was one of the problems with being built with inexpensive old technology, though Nintendo showed it was important to use that tech well. Also Nintendo showed how important it was to have strong software development.

The two most prominent contemporary ones seem to be the Watara Supervision and the Gamate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watara_Supervision

Ack even wrote a 101 for this thing: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/obscure- ... ners-guide

I actually remember Supervision from when I was a kid. A classmate of mine had it. Being that this was the age that I could be entertained by a Tiger Electronics game I actually thought it was pretty cool at the time.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamate



Neither are fantastic, I think the Gameate is maybe slightly better though it's also the more obscure one. They both have the old DMG's ghosting issues, if not worse, and they both have inferior sound hardware.

They're interesting budget competitors to Nintendo's juggernaut though, not worth hunting down but worth experimenting with through ROMs if you can find them. They're no where near as important as the bigger guns like the Game Gear, the Lynx and the Turbo Express but a neat footnote in handheld history nevertheless.

[Nintendork666]

Golden Sun has one hell of an OST as well.

[Purkeynator]

Add me to your ranks of Gameboy superfans. I've gone through many of the same phases as you guys. Bought one original brick with my own money I earned from pulling weeds one summer back when I was maybe 11 years old or so. I played many of the all-time greats such as Mario Land 2, Link's Awakening, Final Fantasy Adventure, Final Fantasy Legend 3, Tetris and Dr. Mario. Later for my first Christmas with my wife in 1998 she bought me a GameBoy Color. I was blown away by seeing actual color on a new crisp screen. Years later, I bought a lot of stuff to play my games on. I imported a GBA from Japan before they came in the U.S. and amazed my friends with a portable Super NES! Next came a Gameboy Player along with Gamecube Component cable to play my games on the big screen with gorgeous detail and color.

I picked up a GBA SP with the backlit screen at my town's Toys R Us on a "going out of business" sale and promptly modded it with the decals from a broken NES themed SP that I found on ebay. I got an Anniversary Micro from Best Buy on clearance before they disappeared from store shelves forever. I got the Kong Feng model for $20 when I saw the original thread here and enjoyed it quite a bit with my GB Everdrive I bought at launch to enjoy such classics as Trip World that I will never be able to afford.

Lately my latest thing has been finding GB game mods on romhacking.net and applying them to GB games played on my Retron 5. There are some very cool mods like adding color to Metroid 2 or translating Japanese games we never got such as Last Bible 2. Oh yeah, I was going to mention that I found a good way to display GB and GBA games using some golf ball display cabinets that I bought at the craft store Michaels for around $20 each. They are the perfect height to display these games. There was a thread on here somewhere that had my pictures of my collection displayed in them.