|
Post by gliptitude on Mar 11, 2013 18:41:30 GMT -5
Ok, so I have really gotten back into the original Game Boy, as a result of buying and installing a backlight kit. Next step for me will be a "biversion" backlight mod, which increases the contrast of the image. After that I will be attempting an external controller mod. All of this for me is leading up to a "tabletop Game Boy" rig that I have been dreaming of. ...
Anyway I am posting here because the Game Boy homebrew HARDWARE scene is the next best thing to the Vectrex homebrew scene!!!
There is very very little in the way of new Game Boy GAMES, almost nothing released in cartridge form. But hardware modding has spawned a plethora of small business merchants supporting a sizable community of modders...
The impetus for this is the "chiptune" music scene, which is only of modest interest to me. But the demands of these musicians have fueled a robust community of hardware modification products.
Mainly for me it's just about improving the display and adapting a 9-pin socket for modular external controls. But other mods include over-clocking, button lighting and pro-audio outputs.
Anybody else think this is awesome?
|
|
|
Post by VectorX on Mar 11, 2013 19:27:18 GMT -5
I don't have any kind of Game Boy (still want an Advance though), but I think it's pretty cool indeed Nice to hear there's a developing scene for it going on!
|
|
|
Post by TrekMD on Mar 12, 2013 7:23:40 GMT -5
The display is the one weakness of the GB's. Until the SP, these had no backlights. Even the SP, with its backlight, isn't as nice to look at as other handhelds. So any mods that make the image look better is nice.
|
|
|
Post by gliptitude on Mar 12, 2013 12:26:23 GMT -5
The display is the one weakness of the GB's. Until the SP, these had no backlights. Even the SP, with its backlight, isn't as nice to look at as other handhelds. So any mods that make the image look better is nice. Yeah this was exactly my opinion previously. I especially thought the Original Game Boy screen was pathetic! It was the new (for me) backlight prospect that brought this system back to my attention at all; but actually it also led me to some new appreciation for the original stock display... The monochrome graphics are really interesting to me and I can barely think of another monochrome raster graphics console at all, let alone one as elegant as this. Some of the graphics are really nice looking in these original Game Boy games. In it's best moments (Metroid, Gradius, Super Mario Land etc.) this system is a marvel of efficiency and compact design. The scale of it is just one of a kind, and almost perfect, (except for the lighting). The games are smaller than their non-handheld counterparts, but so are the pixels! You can do a lot more with newer versions, but I don't think they ever conceived of it as concisely and as essentially as they did with the original - truly a miniaturization of video gaming. The original wins out for me for similar reasons to why it beat the technologically superior rivals of its own day. ... As exciting as the backlight was for me, there are still some games that are difficult to look at with it, and possibly even easier to see on a non-backlit Game Boy, (with proper lighting conditions). I'm hoping the biversion mod remedies this, but in many games with dark backgrounds, it is difficult to distinguish the character sprites. Sprite hacks to lighten the backgrounds would be very welcome. ... I never realized how consistently inferior the screen lighting of Game Boys was because the first one I ever had was the extremely well lit Game Boy Micro, (perhaps the first properly lit Game Boy?)(unfortunately also the first one NOT backwards compatible with the original Game Boy games). The only one I haven't played yet is the SP, but it seems to me the first Game Boy was as good of a display system as any of them had until the Micro and the DS. I don't have any kind of Game Boy (still want an Advance though), but I think it's pretty cool indeed Nice to hear there's a developing scene for it going on! Yeah, as far as homebrew gaming goes, there does seem to be some going on for the Advance, which apparently is easier or more practical to program for, for some reason. It's not like Vectrex though, where the homebrew has surpassed the originals in most ways. ... The hardware modding of the old Game Boys on the other hand totally enables a new experience that IS superior to the original one. For GB Advance gaming I recommend the DS Lite, which is still backwards compatible with GBA. Nice screens and speakers, plus there are a small number of DS games that you must try. Even if you are turned off by the touch screen, there is a lot you can still do with out ever using it. ... I would say the Micro is the best system for you, except that i remember you having a hard time seeing the tiny graphics in Gravitrex.
|
|
|
Post by VectorX on Mar 12, 2013 12:39:52 GMT -5
Yeah, as far as homebrew gaming goes, there does seem to be some going on for the Advance, which apparently is easier or more practical to program for, for some reason. It's not like Vectrex though, where the homebrew has surpassed the originals in most ways. Well, the Vectrex was barely around at all, so its potential for decent games was barely tapped into at all, since it's not uncommon for launch games for a system to not be that great, since programmers are only just starting out with the hardware and are not totally familiar with what they can do with it and the like. The original Game Boy and its several follow-ups have been around for years now. I would say the Micro is the best system for you, except that i remember you having a hard time seeing the tiny graphics in Gravitrex. I couldn't say; I played the nephew's Game Boy Advance for a few months when he had it. Never seen or played a Micro.
|
|
|
Post by wyldephang on Mar 14, 2013 20:35:36 GMT -5
The monochrome graphics are really interesting to me and I can barely think of another monochrome raster graphics console at all, let alone one as elegant as this. There was the Virtual Boy and Game.com, but you're better off not thinking about them. The Game Boy made the best use of the monochrome configuration--its vast library of classic titles is a testament to that! My only complaint is that details are difficult to make out in poor lighting. The impetus for this is the "chiptune" music scene, which is only of modest interest to me. But the demands of these musicians have fueled a robust community of hardware modification products. If I understand correctly, most of the Game Boy-style chip tunes on YouTube are regular MIDI files patched through a program called GXSCC. As long as you can acquire a MIDI file from the Internet, you can make your own Game Boy tune and people will legitimately believe you spent a great deal of effort in making the conversion. Thus, non-musicians tend to gravitate toward GXSCC, and revel in the fan response to their non-compositions when they were minimally involved in any step of it. ;D Here's an example:
|
|
|
Post by gliptitude on Jun 17, 2013 23:09:36 GMT -5
The impetus for this is the "chiptune" music scene, which is only of modest interest to me. But the demands of these musicians have fueled a robust community of hardware modification products. If I understand correctly, most of the Game Boy-style chip tunes on YouTube are regular MIDI files patched through a program called GXSCC. As long as you can acquire a MIDI file from the Internet, you can make your own Game Boy tune and people will legitimately believe you spent a great deal of effort in making the conversion. Thus, non-musicians tend to gravitate toward GXSCC, and revel in the fan response to their non-compositions when they were minimally involved in any step of it. ;D Here's an example: Ha ha. I don't think i read this back when you wrote it. I haven't bothered to listen to other people's chiptunes, but i do know that the most popular programs, (LSDJ and Nanoloop, both available in cart form and both preferred for live play on an actual DMG Game Boy), are definitely COMPOSITION programs. I'm not sure what constitutes legitimacy in this sort of program, but I messed around a lot with Nanoloop in the summer of 2007, and I was greatly amused by some of the things I came up with. I converted them to mp3 and still have them on my iPod, (but not sure how to get them off of there). Usually people laugh out loud when they hear them, especially if they come up randomly in a shuffle. ... One of mine sounds very melodic and resembles the Beverly Hills Cop theme and another one sounds like R2D2 having a siezure. The rest of the ones i made (maybe 5 others) just sound like super mario dungeon music. ... It's a sequencer so it loops your composition endlessly. Mine were like 10 seconds long. The stuff I came up with was pretty cool and undoubtedly there are many users far more advanced than me. So i don't have any doubt that there is legitimate stuff out there.
|
|