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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 2, 2012 3:57:56 GMT -5
The good old monochrome GameBoy is a treasure trove of obscure little gems. AeroStar is a nifty vertical shmup with a twist: your "ship" is restricted to roads, in-game, and moving between them requires jumping/thrusting into the air. Though your hover time is limited, making for an exciting dynamic as you balance attacking enemies with moving around. www.hardcoregaming101.net/aerostar/aerostar.htmUNRELATED RAMBLE: We had a bit of a discussion in the staff forum about the best palette to use for GB games. At first the screens were black and white and in an odd resolution, so we took new shots at the correct aspect ratio, doubled them, and kept the brown palette of the emulator. Derboo then pointed out his work to retake some GB screens in older articles ( Ghosts & Goblins) with a more authentic colour palette. So using Corel Photo Paint I created a custom colour table and refiltered all the shots (I also doubled them). They definitely look better than the original brown and b/w shots, much warmer. On the other hand there are other articles where the shots feature a more yellow palette ( Mercenary Force), which I also quite like. What do you, the readers, think? We've always had a strong interest in visual fidelity, which is why we don't anti-aliasing filters with screenshots, but with the GB the debate over what screenshots should look like is a little more open to debate. |
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Post by Narushima on Apr 3, 2012 15:49:04 GMT -5
I guess maybe the Game Boy has seen hardware changes during its lifetime, therefore the games didn't all look the same. Also it depends on the game. Some were completely black and white and others more green or more brown.
I think it has to be judged on a game-by-game basis and taht needs to be done on a genuine GB.
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Post by ReyVGM on Apr 4, 2012 0:06:39 GMT -5
Even though the green is the one that reminds people more of the original game boy, the reality is Game Boy games weren't green, but black, grey & white.
If you put a gameboy game on a GB Pocket, GBA, Super Game Boy or GB Player, the games will not look green. The green was a product of the original GB screen, not the games.
I saw to leave them Black and White, because that's how the games really looked.
What if my nostalgia is with the GB Pocket? Which made the games look Grey, Grey and Greyer? I will probably not understand why the games look green unless I played with an original GB system.
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Post by derboo on Apr 4, 2012 1:35:51 GMT -5
Even though the green is the one that reminds people more of the original game boy, the reality is Game Boy games weren't green, but black, grey & white. If you put a gameboy game on a GB Pocket, GBA, Super Game Boy or GB Player, the games will not look green. The green was a product of the original GB screen, not the games. I saw to leave them Black and White, because that's how the games really looked. There is no "real" color to the games, only numerical values in the palette. Every color in every video game is a product of the graphics adapter and the screen. There are two factors to determine the most faithful colors: Either the way players saw them, or the way developers designed them. And for any game released before 1996 (or 1994 when it comes to games that support the Super Game Boy), the answer to both questions is green. What if my nostalgia is with the GB Pocket? Which made the games look Grey, Grey and Greyer? I will probably not understand why the games look green unless I played with an original GB system. Then, for all games that don't have intentional SGB/GBC palettes anyway, you've played the games on a decive they weren't originally designed for and thus experienced a tainted image of their graphics. Same as with the wrong palette for SG-1000 games on a Master System or shitty sound on a Genesis 2. |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 4, 2012 1:55:41 GMT -5
I'm sure the Super GB, GBA, and GB Player allowed you to choose variations of the palette. I know the Super GB did, you could choose absolutely any colour for each of the four. Some magazines even had recommendations for some games, like how to make Metroid II even more creepy.
I must say, I'm reluctant to have my own GB articles in pure b/w. The articles I've read like that feel very cold. I actually owned a Pocket GB and played it more than the old style GB. But there was an inherent electronic warmth to the screen, which I think is better conveyed in slightly tinted screenshots. Even on the GB Pocket, the "off" pixels were never pure white like in the b/w screenshots you see - the baseline colour was a kind of silvery grey. In which case even b/w images are incorrect.
For me I prefer the slightly yellow palette of MF, but I'd accept the green of AeroStar. I suppose we could have it based on an author's preference, though this would mean inconsistency across the site (which there is already).
I wish I still had my Super GB, GBA and GB Player, to check first hand. But I'm personally tempted to try to put together some kind of enormous comparison gallery, comparing various emulated palettes, alongside photos from actual hardware, and maybe even scans of magazine screens from back in the day (some attempted to photograph the GB itself, while others had devices to display it on a TV for photographing).
I might play around with this later on. If I can find a decent, hi-res photograph of an active GB Pocket screen, I'll convert it into an optimised 4-colour palette and see what specific colours it leaves behind. Perhaps we can make a specialised palette which isn't green, but isn't icy cold pure greyscale.
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Post by Narushima on Apr 4, 2012 6:03:18 GMT -5
I don't really find the black and white to be particularly cold, actually. If anything I think it looks better than the heavily green screens.
But we could at least make the Aerostar ones a little less green, couldn't we ?
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Post by KeeperBvK on Apr 4, 2012 11:07:30 GMT -5
I actually like 'em that green...
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Post by ReyVGM on Apr 4, 2012 12:52:03 GMT -5
But we could at least make the Aerostar ones a little less green, couldn't we ? I actually like 'em that green... That's why I saw to leave them white, that's the original game's color. |
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Post by ReyVGM on Apr 4, 2012 12:55:32 GMT -5
If you want to see what Game Boy games really look like all you need is to use a Super Game Boy, since it doesn't rely on an external screen to influence the colors we see. BSNES emulates SGB perfectly. All Game Boy games will appear in black and white, except a few select titles that Nintendo pre-programed in the SGB to have a special color palette. And on that note, if you want to be "accurate", why don't you add the "washed out" effect for GB/GBC/GBA games or scanlines to all the consoles images?  |
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Post by derboo on Apr 4, 2012 13:32:08 GMT -5
If you want to see what Game Boy games really look like all you need is to use a Super Game Boy, since it doesn't rely on an external screen to influence the colors we see. Once again a "what the games really look like" doesn't exist, only numerical values that are eventually assigned to a particular shade on the screen, and that screen for all pre-SGB games had shades of green. That's what the developers had in mind and that was all you'd see at the time of its release. As to the degree of accuracy overall, I've always interpreted the guidelines at HG101 to draw the line at anything that causes permanent image information loss. Personally, I'd love to at least stretch screenshots to the correct aspect ratio (with the unmodified pixel perfect shot behind the image link.) |
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Post by ReyVGM on Apr 4, 2012 23:13:05 GMT -5
"and that screen for all pre-SGB games had shades of green"
No, the green you saw was from the GB LCD screen. In a GB Pocket, it would have been gray/dark gray. On a SGB, it would have been white/gray.
White, Black and Gray were the actual "colors/shades" GB games had. We saw them as green due to the brick GB LCD.
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Post by derboo on Apr 5, 2012 2:41:11 GMT -5
No, the green you saw was from the GB LCD screen. In a GB Pocket, it would have been gray/dark gray. On a SGB, it would have been white/gray. The SGB didn't exist before 1994 (and btw, it would have been all kinds of colors depending on which buttons you press on startup), the GB Pocket didn't exist before 1996. White, Black and Gray were the actual "colors/shades" GB games had. We saw them as green due to the brick GB LCD. You're being kinda thick-headed about this. I'm really hard-pressed to find ways to make this simple fact even more clear: Actual colors don't exist in software. Only numbers. Those numbers are interpreted by the graphics chip and the screen, and only then become represented as colors. |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 5, 2012 2:49:43 GMT -5
I'm going to say I agree with Derboo. If it's possible to claim there are "actual" colours for GB games, then they would be based upon the main hardware format that the developers were developing for. Some SGB games have specific unique palettes, such as Donkey Kong. In this case I would say screens should reflect this. Something like Mario bros, or Tetris, was developed with the green GB in mind, so I would say that's more representative of what developers were envisioning. Something developed during the GB Pocket era was probably envisioned with the newer, crisper screen. Here is a photo nfrom Flickr.This blog entry has several different GB filters since the screens were nabbed from various places. Although this photo is blurry, and tinted by background lighting, I think it's quite clear that when a developer was making a GB game, they would not have envisioned the lightest tone (an LCD pixel in the OFF state), as being pure white, like in monochrome screens, but rather a silvery hue.  |
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Post by Weasel on Apr 5, 2012 2:55:42 GMT -5
The SGB didn't exist before 1994 (and btw, it would have been all kinds of colors depending on which buttons you press on startup) I really don't want to seem like an opponent here, but this method applies only to GBC and GBA playing mono GB games - the Super Game Boy could change the colors to literally any palette the player desires (not just built-in ones) by having any plugged-in controller press both L and R buttons to invoke the menu system, where they become free to change the border, the palette, draw on the screen, or alter the button layout between A/B mode and B/Y mode (so games like Super Mario Land can control more like Super Mario World, for example). |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 5, 2012 9:48:50 GMT -5
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