Unmodded GBCs juice the gamma or brightness or something way up when displaying images on screen which GBA doesn’t do. So I’d bet that same scene on a GBC would have a more pastel like colors and look a lot less dark.
Yeah, I had a helluva time trying to get a good shot of an unmodded GBC without glare. Here are a couple attempts that I didn’t bother posting originally since it looked so much better in person:
In the end, if I have decent lighting available, I agree with Peltz that the original screen looks the best for GBC-specific games. The lighting gods aren’t always kind, though, so I’m glad there are other options available.
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Sunlight is what’s needed. If that’s not an option, TV play with GB Player is best. I compromise on that for one reason or another but playing GBC on a bus ride or in my backyard in the summer is really great.
I’ve found that one of those LCD headband lamps is a nice, cheap, unobtrusive way to light up a GBC screen. Next best thing to sunlight. … This thread reminds me that I have a nice little overhead sconce in my bedroom. I should keep a GBC on my nightstand…
Fortunately, my favorite chair is right next to an oversized window that gets plenty of sunlight so I never have to worry about playing GBC games on the OG screen during the day.
But yea, it’s not worth struggling to angle it if you’re trying to play near a lamp or something in an otherwise dark room.
The original GBC screen is great for outdoor use and the train which is where I play most of my games nowadays. The NGPC is an even better non backlit screen but the GBC is perfectly fine IMO. Never seen the appeal of the backlight mods in my use cases tbh.
I noticed Pinball if the Dead looks leagues better on a non-lit screen. While the Game Boy Micro doesn’t oversaturate the colours it’s still too bright. I think games with prerendered graphics in general suffer from this on the GBA, where a backlit screen overbrightens the image.
I’ve been having a lot of fun playing around with shaders and masks in retroarch on the pc crt.
The GBA core has a desaturate option to use either GBC or GBA colours.
There’s a very noticeable difference to the raw, garish palette. It has a more pastel look which fits the art much better.
I have some better comparison photos of Samus, which I took on the SLR. I’ll post them when I can.
edit: Lag is not an issue with a raphnet controller adapter. I’m making as many wall jumps, and shine spark chains, as I would on the SP.
obligatory Wario 4 title screen reference
It’s just coming into spring here in Oz, so I’ll have some nice sunny spots to put some time into the unlit screens, under ideal conditions for reference.
Wario’s mini games don’t translate well to heavy CRTs which don’t rotate easily. 
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Maybe this is not the right place but I will ask it. I have installed the Mednafen emulator because it was the most rated GBC Emulator for those games. But after some time the emulator won’t start and if it starts can’t load the games. So my question is someone to suggest a good emulator for windows system to install and continue playing the games. I will appreciate it.
That’s exactly right. GBA is supposed to have very pastel colors that are kinda destroyed when backlit.
I remember hearing something about some rom hacks to actually adjust the colors to be used on back lit screens.
Yea, usually for the Super Mario Advance games so they could match the SNES versions. I’m not sure if others had it - although I’m not the most knowledgeable person about rom hacks.
it’s been mentioned before on this thread but I was just reminded that some games, post GB Player, had colour setting modes to correct their appearance for displaying on CRTs and monitors.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance had four options, I think. I wonder if some of them prevent the oversaturated look when playing on a DS Lite, which had a screen capable of displaying about 74% of the sRGB colour space: http://www.displaymate.com/psp_ds_shootout.htm
As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been uncovering more Game Boy games I missed out on back from the 90s, and one of the interesting things about those games’ visual makeup is how their background elements were designed with the low latency of the displays in mind.
I was reading this well-researched blog post about GBA titles, however, and because the GBA had control over its display a few developers also used flickering to interesting effect:
I thought the paragraphs about the Famicom games on GBA were most interesting, and how the developers used LCD persistence to simulate the higher Famicom vertical resolution that the GBA lacked.
I find this most noticeable in the case of the GBC, but yeah it’s interesting. Mods for the original screens remain the best lighting solution, imo, despite their destructive nature. It’s unfortunate but I’m just not convinced we’re ever going to see something that manages to retain the gist of the original while improving visibility.
I’m interested! Do you happen to have any good examples of GBC games that do it off the top of your head?
The GBC is one system I haven’t taken time to revisit both in software and hardware terms since the early 2000s, other than a very very small number of games through the 3DS.
that use the technical quirks of the screen, I’m not sure off the top of my head, but in terms of games have very distinct presentation on that screen compared to others, basically anything with fast moving sprites. I notice it in the gen 2 pokemon games on the bike, for instance, or when playing shmups. It’s less a “here’s a technique which makes use of the screen’s properties” and more a “these games were calibrated/designed with the screen’s properties in mind and thus look a bit off on other screens”.
I just received a copy of Famicom Mini Super Mario Bros. in the post, which is one of the few Famicom Mini games that uses flickering as a form of temporal antialiasing. Do you know what the easiest way to see this is? Do you need a camera with a fast shutter speed or something?
Edit: Filming it in slow motion does reveal it somewhat - you can see it for certain on the clouds and the bricks:
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Some more:
Camelot used it in the mode7-style areas of Golden Sun and Mario Golf to smoothen the image when the camera wasn’t moving:
The character shadow in FFI (but strangely, not II) uses flickering, probably the least surprising application
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I’m not sure what mode-7 style effect is being illustrated here.