I myself wanted one of those remote controlled air planes. I thought that’s the coolest thing ever. Once I grew up and had the money, I never bought it.
I myself wanted one of those remote controlled air planes. I thought that’s the coolest thing ever. Once I grew up and had the money, I never bought it.
I never got that Gameboy I wanted, but that’s OK, I’m made up for it using emulators years later.
Emulators were a godsend as a kid. I was lucky and had a cousin who was way into that stuff and set me up with several burned cd’s with zsnes and tons of ROMS when I was around 12. I experienced so many more games than I would’ve otherwise!
People talk about needing the CRT filters and blah blah to have a realistic experience, heck. Sharp pixels, Save states and Fast forwarding through unskippable stuff have been part of the experience for me for 25 years! Fanmade romhacks and expansions (like for chrono trigger, which I would never have experienced without emulation) are awesome!
Also: Rewind is the coolest feature. Even better than save states, it’s like you can undo every stupid mistake without having to plan ahead. It would have blown my mind as a kid.
Yeah I’ll admit I keep rewind active and do use it, but I do start feeling a little cheat-ish-ness when I abuse that one lol.
Definitely has let me experience more games more fully though. So I think it’s a good functionality.
Maybe I should think of it as retro gaming on easy mode
Same here. Got one a Miyoo Mini+ and put a community OS on it and a curated set of ROMs. 10 year old me would love it!
But turns out as an adult I just don’t have much use for it. The down side of being much more in control of how I spend my own time lol
i finally got the gameboy and the screen was so dim it was unusable, and the batteries 4x AA lasted maybe an hour.
If you really want to play games on the classic devices, consider checking out IPS screen mods that add a backlight to most models of gameboy. I’ve also seen rechargeable USB-C battery packs mods people install
Game Boy collecting is still a decent idea, because they made a zillion of them, and they’re nearly indestructible. I would not recommend an original DMG because the contrast is honestly just terrible. I don’t know how we put up with it, even as kids. The Pocket solved all its problems (but takes AAAs), but there’s no reason to buy one because the Game Boy Color is just that, for more games, with a fat butt. Flash carts cost as much as two or three games and still get twelve hours on a pair of AAs.
Or you could get the second model of GBA SP, with the proper backlight instead of a frontlight, and it’ll run the full fifteen-year library of everything labeled “Game Boy” games. Those flash carts are even cheaper, somehow, and the SP had a rechargeable battery as standard.
In either case the key to sensible collecting is to take whatever’s available. The universal experience was to have a few games you really wanted (and hopefully really liked), and then an equal number of cartridges with no idea where they came from or why you’d want them. Usually overlapping with friends in weird ways. I bought a handful of games circa 2006 when they were dirt cheap, and one happened to be my roommate’s favorite game from a decade prior. Apparently Nemesis was an early export title for Gradius.