Thanks for the help! I was just surprised that it was in such good condition.
Nice pickup by the way! I just grabbed a Japanese copy of Dragon Quest 3 on GBC myself, after reading the new version of the game has very strange balancing - I won’t go into details here but the changes they’ve made for the sake of convenience seem to take away from the authenticity of the game.
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One thing I never noticed back when I played Donkey Kong Country on Game Boy Advance (and likely, the GBC version which I first played before it) was the effort Rare put in to make sure the game fit properly on the screen:
It looks like they re-rendered all the sprites from the original 3D model assets that went back to the mid-90s, one advantage to prerendered graphics that I had not thought of.
Other games using traditional pixel art, like Rayman, Rockman and Bass, Contra 3, often lifted the original sprites verbatim from the original game.
But because Game Boy Advance only had a 160 pixel tall screen (as opposed to SNES’s 224 pixels), it made for a zoomed in view that would effectively break the games in some places. I’m impressed they managed to avoid this!
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It actually came bundled woth the Gameboy! I can’t speak Japanese though, so it’s pretty much unplayable.
Picked this up in Japan last year and finally getting round to playing it - what a fantastic game indeed! No better feeling than clearing the border line score requirement by just 330 points.
The stage length is also perfectly pitched, can usually do a run in about 10 minutes, so great for travelling with.
So far have done worlds 1-4, with only worlds 1 and 4 having their border line score cleared.
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Just realised my Game Boy Color is on the same set of AA batteries purchased in October!
Which is pretty impressive given how much mileage it’s brought about: Lots of Game Boy Camera photography in Japan, Wario Land 3, Kirby’s Block Ball, Cave Noire, Little Magic…
But it raises the question: Have there been a lot of incremental advancements in AA batteries in the past 30 years or so?
According to this test a pair of bog standard Costco batteries will net 33 hours of play time on a Game Boy Color, enough to last half a year playing an hour a week!
What was the officially quoted battery life from Nintendo for a pair of AA Alkaline batteries back in 1998? I vaguely remember around 18 hours, but Nintendo Europe’s website quotes 10 hours, which seems far too low. There may have also been motherboard revisions that improved the power efficiency of the system, similar to GBA’s 18 pin revision.
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The answer is that modern batteries are far far better than those in the 80s/90s or even early 2000s. 2-3 times the capacity just for basic alkaline (2500mAH vs ~1000mAH in the early 90s), let alone the more expensive ‘Max’ variations or lithium.
I remember some ‘debunking the myths’ things a couple of years ago where people tested a Game gear and it lasted 5-6 hours or something. But it absolutely died in 2 hours back in the 90s. I remember my brother swapped his Game Boy for a friend’s Game Gear one weekend, six brand new Energisers were bought, and it was dead in two hours, there were tears.
Good to know! I couldn’t find a good source on this.
Still blown away by how good the screen is on the GBC. A lot of it comes down to the excellent viewing angles as much as the reflectivity. You can rotate the screen away from you to pick up light that’s not behind you, and still play just fine.
Case in point - didn’t have a light source behind me, but tilting the GBC so it is perpendicular to the floor worked a charm.
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Picked up some Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries (non rechargable) a couple months ago.
Since those Panasonic Evolta Neos I got in october are STILL going strong, decided to just cut to the chase, take them out, swap them round for the Ultimate Lithiums.
Have a timer going to see how long they’ll last, will report back when it runs out.
Am testing using a black cartridge game (Star Ocean: Blue Sphere) looping the title screen attract mode.
Edit: 26 hours later and it’s still going!
Edit 2: Passed the 30 hour mark!
Edit 3: 40 hours and counting…
Edit 4: 46 hours and the LED power light shows no sign of dimming…
Edit 5: 56 hours now…
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…So the test completed…and it’s somewhere between 62 and 68 hours. It died while I was sleeping. 62 hours is my last record. But at 62 hours the LED hadn’t quite gone dim yet, so not sure where it would lie!
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The GBC screen is great. In fact, the whole thing is great. Nice feel of the console, clear screen with no ghosting and it takes AA batteries.
Big improvement over the Pocket I had at the time but it was too soon to pick one up when they were out and I skipped straight to the GBA SP.
Nowadays though, I am most likely to pick up a Color over the GBA. Funny how that works.
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My GBASP (AGS-001) suddenly stopped outputting sound through the speaker.
Any ideas for a fix for this? It shortly started working again but then it stopped.
Wow, great to see the experiment actually done. You should have done a youtube video!
62 hours of a looping title screen and attract mode! 
Yeah but play it in time lapse with some hype synthwave music for the battery draining drama.
Top and tails it with a talking head with weird facial hair, a giant microphone, and a shelf full of video games behind them, a clickbait thumbnail (“it went HOW LONG???”), a thank you to the sponsors of this video Nord VPN, Honey, Squarespace, Raid Shadow Legends and you have yourself 2m views baby!
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That’s exactly the video the world needs!
Hahaha, I literally laughed out loud at the suggestion, definitely needs a face reaction next to “IT LASTED THIS LONG???”
Would have been nice to do a video, though, maybe with three GBCs and a grey cart, black cart, and clear cart game.
Just picked up a pair of Panasonic Evolta Neos so I’ll test those next when I find a moment!
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Yep, I feel so stupid for not returning to the GBC since, well, 2001! It was obviously rather good in hindsight, as kid me never had an issue with the screen, while I remember the GBA being a complete pain before the SP.
When I went back to “serious” original Game Boy gaming I picked up a Pocket instead. While a beautiful device, the shortcomings of the display are obvious.
Luckily a lot of grey cartridge games are designed around this (screen-by-screen scrolling etc) but even games like Kirby’s Block Ball and grey cart Wario Land 2 are just far more enjoyable to play on the Color’s screen.
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I would probably try to use my Pocket more often but my Everdrive doesn’t play well with it so I just grab the GBC instead.
Maybe I should test a pair of high quality AAA batteries to see what sort of mileage you can get from a Pocket…any grey cartridge games with good gameplay representative attract mode screens? I guess maybe Metroid II? I should know this!