Console of the Month (March 2022): Game Boy & Game Boy Color

[alienjesus]

Over here in the UK it's just turned March 1st, and that means it's time for March's entry in the Console of the Month!

We've looked at 2 classic home consoles so far, so now it's time to take a look at the world of portable gaming. Where better to start then with the system that made portable gaming popular? This month, we'll be discussing Nintendo's Game Boy.

The Game Boy released in 1989, and despite it's lack of colour, no backlit screen and fairly meagre specs, it went on to be a huge success and fend off a whole multitude of competitors during it's decade long lifespan thanks to the quality of it's games and it's superior battery life.

The Game Boy was updated multiple times during it's life span. First came the Game Boy Pocket - a smaller version with a superior screen that ran off of 2 AAA batteries. Next game the Japan only Game Boy Light, which featured a backlit screen, and finally we got the Game Boy Color, which increased the meagre system specs and added colour support.

I was originally going to keep Game Boy Color games separate, but really the system is basically upgraded hardware and it's hard to find a clean line to divide the original and GBC stuff - so both the monochrome classic and the GBC are open for discussion this month!

Let's dive in and discuss the hardware, the software, our memories and opinions on this classic piece of gaming history!

[Nemoide]

Heck yeah! I was very late to the party with getting a Game Boy. I was a Sega kid and a Game Gear loyalist. I had a friend with one and definitely could appreciate Wario Land and Kirby's Dream Land, but for the most part I felt like the Game Gear was the better handheld in the 90s. When I was in high school (2000-2004) I was extremely into DOS games and in 2001 I saw there was a Commander Keen GBC game and I *had* to have it - THE FIRST COMMANDER KEEN GAME IN ALMOST A DECADE! So I got a GBC and shortly after Commander Keen. The GBC was my first piece of non-Sega gaming hardware that I bought new!
Well, the GBC Keen turned out to be a steaming pile, but at least I had something that could play Game Boy games! One of my first games I got as a gift: The Simpsons - Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror. I never beat it and seem to have lost the cart, but do have some fond memories of it. Early on I set out to get some Capcom games and got Metal Walker and Mega Man Xtreme. I thought Metal Walker was cool (it was very Pokemon inspired but I liked that it was based on robots and their data rather than Pokemon), but way too grindy and I never beat it. I had rented Mega Man games as a kid and fooled around with Mega Man X on an emulator, but Xtreme was my first actual Mega Man game. It's nothing too fancy, but it's a pretty decent 8-bit conversion of Mega Man X. Let me tell you: I'm kicking myself for never picking up Resident Evil Gaiden or Shantae. They just didn't seem like priority games. I did get some JRPGs that I had never heard of called Dragon Warrior I&II - two old school RPGs on one cart sounded like a deal! I also got Dragon Warrior III but wouldn't play it for some years later since I wanted to go through the series in order and DWII is a slog.

The GBC was pretty much dead at that point with the GBA having taken over so I never got too many more games. I was more concerned about getting things for other systems. Some time after graduating college, I started picking up the occasional Game Boy game. I got into chiptunes and felt the need to mod a DMG Game Boy so I ended up with two of those: one's modded and the other original. It was around this time that I finally got around to playing Dragon Warrior III - WOW, what a game! It instantly became my favorite 8-bit JRPG, easily overtaking the original Phantasy Star. It's probably still my favorite game for Game Boy hardware and is the title that turned me into a hardcore Dragon Quest fan.

But I never felt like I was exploring the Game Boy library all that deeply until the past few years. Listening to the Retronauts podcast exposed me to a bunch of games I wasn't familiar with, especially by watching the host Jeremy Parish's Game Boy Works series. It got me curious to explore monochrome Game Boy more - only being exposed to games other kids had led me to have massive blindspots about the strength of the system. While when it came to converting popular 16-bit games to handheld, the Game Gear was better. The Game Boy excelled at being the home for quirky puzzle games and slower paced fare. The best GB games are the kinds of games you want to play for 15 minutes at a time but then lose track of time and end up playing for an hour. Tetris is really the best example.

Now I have a pretty sizeable collection of monochrome Game Boy games and an Analogue Pocket to play them on. I love Game Boy now more than ever! I could keep rambling on, but it's just a very cool little system with a very cool, very expansive library! While everyone knows the big first-party games, the Game Boy library feels like a vast uncharted jungle. You never know when you pick up a cheapo cart of a game you've never heard of that you might find a hidden gem! I think it's one of the very few systems where that's true and considering it's one of the most popular gaming platforms of all time, that's pretty astounding!

[Markies]

I only played a few games for the Gameboy/Gameboy Color back in the day. I played Tetris and Link's Awakening. Later on, I played Pokemon and Dr. Mario. They were two separate occasions and I think I only did both of them for about 3 months a piece.

When I beat my Backlog in a few short months, I am going to do a deep dive into the Gameboy and Gameboy Color. I don't know much of it right now, but I hope to learn more about it in the future.

[alienjesus]

Like I imagine a lot of people around my age did, I got a Game Boy specifically to play Pokémon. I bought myself a transparent Game Boy Pocket, but unfortunately the game was out of stock at the time so I chose to by a bundle which came with Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2, as well as a carry case. I did eventually get Pokémon 2 months later when it was finally back in stock, which is why I ended up with Red instead of Blue version too - it was the only one available!

Although I had a handful of other games, at the time my Game Boy was pretty much a Pokémon machine. At one point my console and games were stolen, and I went without it for a while until I bought a purple Game Boy Colour off of a friend, which I still have. The GBC was still a Pokémon machine, but also became a means to play Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, which I'd picked up after loving Ocarina of Time which I played around the same time. Other

Games I had when the system was current include Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold and Crystal, Donkey Kong Country, Pokémon Trading Card Game, Zelda: Oracle of Ages, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Pokémon Pinball.

My cousins had a Game Boy collection given to them for free, so I played and experienced lots of the original Game Boy games that way. I remember playing Mario & Yoshi, Fortress of Fear, Castlevania: The Adventure, Wario Land, Adventure Island, Kirby's Pinball Land, Crash Test Dummies and Revenge of the Gator this way as well as some real duds like Swamp Thing, although there were probably others too! Some of these are games I still don't own myself actually!

The Game Boy was a system I didn't have a big library for back when it was relevant, but I've since got into in a big way. My Game Boy & Game Boy colour collection is one of my biggest, and as a system I think it's wonderful to explore as it has so many one-off unique titles, as well as all sorts of unexpected ports and side games thanks to it's really long lifespan. Definitely one of my favourite systems - I'll post my collection at some point when I have time to take photos.

[Anapan]

My family got one in 1990, and my brother and I played it constantly while my family went on frequent road trips and camping trips. I've probably clocked almost as many hours on the DMG Gameboy as I have on Playstation. Both have some of my favorite RPGs. I fully played through the first two Final Fantasy Legend games and Pokemon Red. Tons of great platformers too.

I just last week finally did a bivert hex RGB backlight mod (set to lime green) with prosound audio and a new shell with a glass lense - all original looking. I wish I had before and after pics of the gameboy I started with; It was nearly completely destroyed on the outside, given to me by my friend in elementary school and sat in a closet ever since. As any reddit thread about the bivert mod will mention, the difference you see in the screen IRL from stock is completely amazing.

[Ziggy]

I got my first Gameboy for Christmas one year. It was the DMG Tetris bundle. I can't tell you how many hours I clocked in Tetris. I never owned that many games for the GB, and I've yet to really dig deep into it's library. I got the first Super Mario Land, and I always rather enjoyed it. But I never knew how much of an improvement the sequel was, being pre-internet days, so I never picked that one up. I remember getting Golf for free at some point, and I definitely played that one for a decent amount of time. There were a couple of games I got as presents that ended up being horrible. One was Hook. I loved the SNES game, so someone got my the GB game. It's just a horrible game. And I remember asking for Mortal Kombat II at some point, and someone got it for me. Hook and MKII I definitely traded to Funco Land. There might have been one or two other games I had back then, I can't remember. When the Super Gameboy came out, my brother and I were super stoked to get it. Which looking back, I'm not sure why because we didn't have that many GB games. I suppose it was just the novelty of it.

Then I got Pokemon Red. At the time I got it, the N64 was out. I did my Gameboy playing during the SNES era. So by the time the N64 was in full swing, I sort of just assumed the Gameboy was old news. But Pokemon Red/Blue came out in late 1998. A friend introduced me to it, and I thought it was an old game (from the GB I knew in the SNES era). Well I got hooked pretty fast, and I ended up getting a used copy from Blockbuster and giving it to my fried. I kept his copy because it had my save on it. I played the hell out of Pokemon Red, on that crappy DMG screen. I can remember playing it all hours into the night, having to hold it at the right angle to catch the light from my bedroom lamp. But then my arms would go numb from holding it in that position, but you couldn't move or else you wouldn't be able to see the screen lol. Oh, kids today don't know how good they have it!

After the GB was completely a retro machine, and in the early days of eBay when you could get retro games at cheap prices, I picked up a few GB games to try and explore the library more. I got the first Castlevania, which is kind of a slog to play. I got Super Mario Land 2 and 3 (AKA Wario Land). Later I got Kirby 1 and 2. The Donkey Kong Land trilogy. And maybe a few more that I can't remember. But nothing ever really clicked with me. These days I have an Everdrive GB X5, but I still have yet to really dig into the library.

I still have my original DMG. I still love the way it feels, but it's really impossible to use these days with the unlit screen. I'd like to do a screen mod to it, and probably an audio mod too, I just haven't gotten around to it. The original DMG still feels the best to hold, IMO. My go-to for playing GB right now has actually been a GBA SP. I have a few front lit models, and one backlit model. I also have a front lit mod original GBA. Since they're 100% backward compatible with the original GB, this makes it my only real good way to play GB right now. Until I get around to modding the DMG, at least. I'll still play the handheld, but to be honest I really like using the Super Gameboy. Especially for Pokemon Red and Blue, since you get the color enhancements (the only other way to get them is in Pokemon Stadium).

I've have to take a look at the GB essentials and see if there's anything I'd really like to play this month. There might have been a few games I've already put on my mental to-play list, I just can't recall any right now. I might play some Pokemon Red/Blue. I've played through Red a few times over the years. But I finally got a copy of Blue, and a few years ago I thought it would be fun to actually try and catch em all. So I started up a new save file in Red and was playing through Blue in tandem so I could trade between them. I left off somewhere about halfway through both games.

[SpaceBooger]

I never really got into the GB(C) when it first came out. I ended up getting a GameBoy Pocket with Tetris, Link's Awakening, and Super Mario Land 2.
After adding an IPS LCD screen to a GameBoy Color I bought here from one of our Charity Auctions I played through Dragon Warrior 1-3. I loved playing RPGs on a handheld. Unfortunately, there are not too many GB RPGs to play, but I love this system so much that I bought the Epilog Operator that allows me to flash games over bootleg GB carts.
I still use my GB Pocket to play Tetris and Mario, but most everything else is played on my GBC.

PXL_20210706_013838901.jpg (2.12 MiB) Viewed 8644 times

[Ziggy]

So what's the current best choice (or choices) for a screen mod for the original DMG ?

[nickfil]

I was a kid who just absolutely never got the right handheld. Everyone around me had gameboys and my brother and sister and I had the lynx and the game gear. I didn't give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt until I pre-ordered the DS. I also didn't completely learn my lesson and went for the vita instead of the 3ds the generation after!

Because of that the gigantic Gameboy/GBC library is a HUGE blindspot for me with gaming. I just recently played through Kirby's adventures in dreamland 2 on stream and really enjoyed it.

I've actually started to get into the baby steps of retro game repair and modding with the gameboy. It is a really great system to learn on.

I'm currently trying to revive a DMG that is on my table right now so I'm going to take this as a sign that I'm on the right track. It wasn't booting to the nintendo logo screen. No bar. No nothing. The power regulator board was fried so I replaced it. It is booting now, but I'm still having problems with it. Weird/no voltages coming to the pins for the second screen/control board. Troubleshooting that now!

[nickfil]

So what's the current best choice (or choices) for a screen mod for the original DMG ?

Not sure which is the best- but I don't think you can go wrong with any of the options. It'll be a huge improvement over the original DMG.

Hell, it'll be a huge improvement over the backlite/bivert mod kit of the dmg.