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Thread: Playing original Game Boy cartridges in 2019

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    Default Playing original Game Boy cartridges in 2019

    If you are still playing cartridges originally intended for the DMG or Pocket Game Boy, what are you playing them on and what palette do you use?

    I'm using a front lit SP with the black and white palette but the color seems a little washed out. I have to say though that the games look beautiful when on my Super Game Boy when upscaled from RGB. I usually will go with either B&W or the green look of the original DMG with standard black border. Sometimes I use the outdoors border as well

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    I noticed while playing DK Land on the Super Game Boy, Id set it to B&W but then when Id go back to the overworld, itd change back to the special color palette. Wonder if there is a way to disable that

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    I play them on my backlit GBA SP. I just use the default palettes. I've never cared about customizing the palettes, and the defaults always make things clear and easy to make out.

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    I play on a Gamecube Game Boy Player using component cables. I don't really mess with the colors much and the games look reasonably good. I've tried 3 or 4 different controllers and never found one I was in love with though.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Spartacus View Post
    I play on a Gamecube Game Boy Player using component cables. I don't really mess with the colors much and the games look reasonably good. I've tried 3 or 4 different controllers and never found one I was in love with though.
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    Like most here, I usually play them on a GBA SP, unless I want to play them on a TV, which I have various options for (Super Game Boy, GC Game Boy Player, Retron 5). As much as I played it when it was current, I find the OG Game Boy screen pretty much unusable today. No matter what I'm using, though, I pretty much always set the color scheme to B&W, even if it's a game that has a special color palette. It just seems right.
    Dan B.

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    As I'm rebuilding my collection, I have the Super Gameboy and a Gameboy Advance (original).

    I'd like to do one of two things (or both)...
    Add a backlit screen to my GBA
    Get a Gameboy Player

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    Quote Originally Posted by mkenyon2 View Post
    As I'm rebuilding my collection, I have the Super Gameboy and a Gameboy Advance (original).

    I'd like to do one of two things (or both)...
    Add a backlit screen to my GBA
    Get a Gameboy Player
    Any of the Game Boys without a lit screen along with the Game Boy Light are essentially worthless to me. The best solution back then was the Vic Tokai magnifier light and then the worm light. But I could never see going back to that now

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    The original GBA was rough, with how the colors were so dang dark. I couldn't play unless I was sitting next to a lamp and holding it at just the right angle, which was pretty uncomfortable. But the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Color were good for their time. I originally skipped straight from original Game Boy to Game Boy Color, and I was in awe of the clarity. Then in the early 2000s, I used a Game Boy Pocket a lot for b/w games until the SP was out and I could borrow a frontlit SP and then get my own SP when the backlit models were out. I even remember playing Belmont's Revenge on my Game Boy Pocket at the courthouse when I was stuck there all day for jury duty. So it wasn't too hard to see even without a built-in light or accessory.

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    I used an SP until last year when I finally picked up an original GBA modded with an AGS-101 backlight. It was $90 well spent IMO and I sold my SP immediately after. Even with my average-sized hands, I found the wide layout much more comfortable. Technically mine used a reproduction case and buttons but it feels perfect to me.

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    Same as most others, either a Super Game Boy (I don't have a Gameboy Player... yet) or a backlight-modded original GBA.

    I USUALLY don't modify the pallet, but there are some games I can't stand the look of the default pallet on the GBA... Kirby's Dream LAnd for example just seems effing ugly to me by default, so I use the one pallet that makes it look like the original gameboy. On Super Gameboy, I hate it whenever the default is one of those extreme orange/yellow/brown palletes (I think Wizards and Warriors: Fortress of Fear is such a case) so again I try to make it look more like the regular Gameboy green hues.

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    Power to anybody who uses the Game Boy Player. The d-pad on the SP isn't exactly fantastic either, but the GameCube d-pad is just garbage in my opinion, so I can't stand playing Game Boy games that way.

    Though, for me, portable is more of a pro than a con. I'm much better able at squeezing portable gaming into my life than console gaming at this point, so I'm not very inclined to play any of my handheld games on a home console anyway. I like the Super Game Boy, and the SNES controller is solid of course, but I very rarely find myself using it. Usually I'd only bother out of curiosity if the game is Super Game Boy-enhanced. Metroid II gets a pretty nice default palette on Super Game Boy, so I'd switch back and forth between the SP and Super Game Boy with that one.

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