Games Bought Thread 3

[A Black Falcon]

So I just directly compared playing a few of the same games on my original GB, GBP, and a GBC.

Blur - This is pretty bad on the original GB. You eventually get used to it, certainly, but it blurs a lot when anything moves. Blur is much less, but still noticeable, on the GBP. It's very low on GBC. I was surprised at how much the GBP screen blurs, I thought it'd be very similar to the GBC but it isn't; while it looks good, it does have definite noticeable blurring.

Screen visibility and clarity (being able to make things out) - poor on original GB. It gets better if you remove the screen protector and look directly at the LCD, but never matches the newer systems. You really need to get the angle right, to get light on the screen at the correct angles to be able to see well. Whenever I go back to using the original GB, my first reaction is 'this is so hard to see, how did I ever tolerate that? And I didn't even have a screen light!' (and still don't, in fact not for the original Game Boy), but then I start to get used to it. The GBP dramatically improves on this score, and has almost as much clarity as a GBC. It isn't as good, though -- the GBC screen is definitely smaller, but you have an even greater viewing angle in the same light than the GBP, and even better screen clarity. The GBC seems to reflect light the best of maybe any Game Boy model -- the GBA is much darker! On the GB and GBP you can adjust screen brightness with the contrast knob, but the GBC stays at a default which works very well. It's kind of neat to adjust this to make the screen brighter or darker depending on light conditions, but this isn't absolutely essential.

Screen size - similar 2.6" on GB and GBP. 2.3" on GBC, but the more reflective color screen helps make up for that. The larger screens are nice, and it's more noticeable on the Pocket because of its small size, though.

Sound - The original Game Boy has a significantly louder speaker than the GBP and GBC, which have somewhat similarly quiet ones. The larger size of the orignal system allows for a better speaker. Of course all are better with headphones, but I've never used headphones on a handheld with any regularity, so this does mater.

Buttons and comfort - the original GB's larger size makes my hands touch less while holding it, which I find more comfortable. It is quite a bit bigger, but with its larger buttons and d-pad it definitely has the best buttons of the bunch. All three are fine but I often do like larger controllers and this is no exception. There is a limit of course -- the Game Gear, for instance, is too big -- but the GB hits that balance well.

Build quality - This is an obvious one, the orignal GBs are legendary for how well they are built. They have one weak point, the screen -- over time the connection starts to mess up, and some lines on the screen will die. This is usually a fixable problem if you know what you're doing (though I have not tried to fix the two dead lines on my GB), but it's worth mentioning. Mostly the GB is really well built, though -- as a kid I remember dropping my GB onto a dirt road, and it didn't even reset! The game continue playing just fine. In contrast, the GBP started the new Nintendo era of okay but not amazing build quality. This coincides with when Nintendo moved production from Japan to China -- original GBs were made in Japan, GBPs and beyond China. It's a not nearly as durable system that would surely not survive the drop test very well; I don't want to try it! I have dropped GBCs before, and they didn't break but do turn off. As for durability, I have two original Game Boys, and both work fine, dead lines aside. I have three GBCs, and only one works right -- one is totally dead (first the screen failed, then the rest of it), and a second one has broken audio. The one I use is the third. This GBP works well.

Battery life - the GBP claims 10 hours on two AAAs. Original Game Boys are weird, an early GB manual seems to say 15 hours, but I'm pretty sure mine says 35 hours. The 'how long do handheld systems actually last' rabbit hole is deep and confusing, though -- here are a couple of pages for reference I was just looking at: https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/201...-line.html https://www.wired.com/2012/09/battery-test/ (note that for the original GB, the actual number is about double what this test says due to interference - see https://www.wired.com/2012/07/3ds-xl-rea...tery-test/ ) Sadly that second link test did not test the Pocket. Too bad. But by these sites, we see that thanks to using AAA batteries the GB Pocket gets very poor battery life. With normal alkaline AAAs, that 10 hour number is probably an upper bound. The Color can get up to 35 hours in ideal situations, but only in original GB games -- in GBC games, it drops probably to the ~12-15 hour estimate I believe I have often heard. GBC games use more power than original ones. As for the original GB, 20-31 hours looks like a good estimate, depending on situations, or maybe slightly better possibly. So yeah, with the Pocket you'll be switching batteries a lot more often than other systems. On a per-battery basis the Color and original may have similar battery lives (playing GBC games and such on the Color of course), but the original uses four batteries instead of two so you swap half as often. And that would match with my memories, that I had to swap batteries a lot more often with the Color. Even if you end up using the same number of batteries, it's pretty annoying. And then the Pocket is even worse than the Color, by a good margin in fact! Sure, I can buy rechargeable AAA batteries (I never have because I've only needed rechargeable AAs) and probably will, but still if I use this thing much I'll be swapping often, won't I. That's not great.

I do love that the kept the screen the same size as the original model. Frankly, I love everything about the pocket. However, the clearer screen does result in one compatibility issue.

In Link's Awakening, the game uses an odd effect to simulate "fading" It's used when you get the instruments, and it's used to blend the credits of the designers so they look like they're fading in and out. (This effect isn't used in the ending credits of the DX version.) The effect makes use of the characteristics of that original screen, where the pixels have a rather lengthy shift time compared to modern displays. So, it just sort of flashes the screen and credits back and forth, a "flicker". On the original model with it's slow pixels, this results in a smooth fade, but on newer screens, you can see behind the curtain, and the flicker's plain as day.

That said, I still prefer playing on newer screens. While my old Light Boy does it's duty in lighting things up, that blur hurts gameplay in pretty much all of those old games, since the slow pixels make any movement "smudge" the things on screen. So, I picked the tradeoff. I use newer screens to avoid blur even if LA's "blending" effect is ruined because of it.

Yeah, there are a few original GB games that use its blur/flicker in order to do visual tricks. One famous one for that is the Japanese-only (and expensive) shmup Chikyu Kaiho ZAS, which I don't have but would like to get sometime. I'm not sure if that is the same trick you're talking about or not, though... but are you saying that only the original GB can handle this LA blur-fade, and even the GBP's still-somewhat-blurry screen doesn't display things correctly? What do you mean by a "newer screen" -- anything newer than original GB, GBA, DS, or what? You're definitely right that if you play GB games which rely on flicker in an emulator the effect doesn't work at all, but I'd think it'd work on any of the older handhelds? I guess you're saying otherwise, though, and I guess I'm not sure...

Or see Nemesis and Gradius: The Interstellar Assault. In this playthrough, look at how horrible it looks with the bombs and shield and such flickering constantly! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMvbvav_zlY Needless to say it does not look like that at all on a Game Boy. The bombs, shield, and those stars moving past you in the intro sequence, and such all should look solid, not blinking, because the game uses the flicker to make them appear lighter in color. Trying it now with the original cartridge, any actual Game Boy -- up through the GBA SP -- displays this correctly, with a solid image. However, the Super Game Boy does NOT -- much like that emulator footage, on the TV the game's all flickery. That's pretty interesting. I can't easily check the Link's Awakening ending, so I don't know how that displays on the various models.

So yeah I'm not sure which the best model of Game Boy is, but I do know that the one I'e used the most in recent years i the GBA SP for everything. Having this GB Pocket is nice though, I finally have all of the models... except for the GB Light, but with its prices I doubt I'll be getting one of those anytime soon... I'd only want to pend that kind of money on something I really want/would find useful.