Fuck the Super Game Boy (2010)

http://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction

by jmduke • 12 years ago

115 39 12 years ago

loveconquersallgam.es

vijayaggarwal• 12 years ago

Whoa, did Super Mario Bros have a palette of just four colors? Amazing!

TazeTSchnitzel2• 12 years ago

No, but each sprite did.

67726e2• 12 years ago

I can't speak for the GameBoy system, but I've spent years hacking on the NES. The way the color system breaks down is you have a palette of 4 colors. From there you can load 4 "background" palettes along with 4 "sprite" palettes at any time. The sprites are things like Mario or a Goomba while the background items are things like the ground blocks or tubes.

For an example of what the palette setup looks like in practice, take a glimpse at this video[0] - Disclaimer: I made this back when I was in highschool and I haven't watched it since, so I may wind up embarrassing myself here...

[0] http://youtu.be/_J5qI8BkENA?t=22s [1] -

acuozzo• 12 years ago

I can't speak for the GameBoy system, but I've spent years hacking on the NES.

Me too! Are you on the nesdev.com forum?

seivan• 12 years ago

I love reading about tech in games trivia!

My favourite is still the article about Star Craft 2 and pathfinding.

GotAnyMegadeth• 12 years ago

Do you have the link for that? Thanks

aatos• 12 years ago

I would guess he is referring this one: http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-h...

PetitPrince• 12 years ago

You probably already know Simon schreibt, but for the other that want other game tech tecnique, it's a great blog: http://simonschreibt.de/

TazeTSchnitzel2• 12 years ago

The best was Space Invaders, which was unique in that instead of colouring the Game Boy game, it uploaded a full SNES version of the game into RAM and executed it.

withad• 12 years ago

I recall the Game Boy Colour doing something similar, though it apparently had its own system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Color#Color_palettes_u....

And now I'm trying to remember what the Game Boy Tower in Pokemon Stadium made the games look like...

fuzzywalrus• 12 years ago

If I recall correctly the GameBoy Color could only assign sprites 3 colors.

What's interesting is Nintendo also made the GameCube GameBoy Advance attachment much later

madeofpalk• 12 years ago

That whole series was a great read. Having grown up after the SNES (I only have very vague memories of the N64 as a kid), I spent a good hour reading it and looking up wiki articles in between.

Those footnotes were annoying though. In-text they're numerical, but at the bottom of the page they're alphabetical. Wtf?

garrethv• 12 years ago

A bit off topic, but I've got to ask - why use the word "fuck"? It conveys arrogance, derisiveness, and a sense of link-baity-ness. I also don't see how it has anything to do with an analysis of the algorithm of the gameboy colors.

jgoney• 12 years ago

You'd have to read the whole series, it makes perfect sense at the end.

bane• 12 years ago

It has to do with Nintendo's supposed attitude towards the device and the many lost opportunities.

donatj2• 12 years ago

I once merely disagreed with Christina Love on twitter whereas she blocked me, sicked her followers on me, and went on a tirade about how awful I was - attacking things from my twitter bio that had nothing to do with my comment. Professional isn't a word I'd use to describe her.

Blackthorn• 12 years ago

I'm sure this is a completely fair characterization of the situation and not a one-sided rant that lacks in crucial information.

simias• 12 years ago

Pretty please, it's a perfectly nice hacking article, let's not turn that into a drama thread...

eropple3• 12 years ago

I've met Christine a couple times and while I don't agree with her on everything I respect her work and I am extremely suspicious of the way you describe your interaction with her. Something tells me you aren't telling the whole story.

Christine is emphatically not an unreasonable person, especially when you consider the shitflood of abuse she gets from the gaming community. I'd agree she isn't professional in all respects, but I think our definitions of "professional" differ. I say it because I had a minor beef with the way she handled the release of Hate Plus, it had OS X bugs she tried to refer up to Ren'Py rather than handling it herself and I felt like that wasn't cool. I have this sneaky feeling that most people who say it, though, just don't like what she says, and that's not "unprofessional", that's she's-right-and-I'm-wrong-and-feels.

donatj2• 12 years ago

My comment got down voted out of visibility but for the record my note of unprofessionalism was more around the personal attacks than the swearing. I can deal with swearing.

judk2• 12 years ago

Linkbait gets links. This is a link site. Occupational hazard. It's a free Internet, but this makes HN look bad and "mature" language turns away mature audiences.

Houshalter• 12 years ago

It's a blog title. They probably didn't expect the title to get posted on HN (considering it's 4 years old.)

kalleboo• 12 years ago

It's explained at the end of the last article[0] in the series.

[0] http://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2487450388/fuck-the-super-...

jordigh• 12 years ago

Specifically,

    Now, imagine you’re a Game Boy developer. You want to add the
    bullet point “Super Game Boy compatible!” to your box, because
    it’ll help sell a few more copies. But not many people own one. If
    you want to do something really neat, it’ll add entire days to the
    project, require changing some art resources, and doing extra
    testing on a completely different system. Going that extra
    distance is going to cost a lot of money, and won’t help that much
    because most people don’t own an SGB to see it. What are you going
    to say?

    Man, fuck the Super Game Boy!

LordHumungous• 12 years ago

I don't think the cartridge port is big enough.

xtracto• 12 years ago

Aaah super game boy. I think Nintendo has a chance of doing something similar with the DS and Wii U... that would be awesome for the Wii today.

Fuck the Super Game Boy (2010)

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