How were 80s kids able to see shit on this thing?

>>11911170 (OP)
The units weren't 36 years old so the screens weren't degraded
Hell, not retro but DS and even some 3DS screens are starting to yellow

Was new and wasn't decades old.

>>11911181
My own ancient Game Boy is rather faded and gives me a bit of trouble, but even in that state it's still quite usable as long as I make sure the surrounding lighting conditions are good. It was pretty sharp back in the day. So yeah OP, you just needed a new one that still worked really well. It was always a crappy-looking screen, and even in its ideal state it had minor problems with blurred movement, I guess because the pixels couldn't change brightness instantly or something like that. The green-yellow color was always ugly and the four-shade palette was always super limited. But... it did look sharp and clear, with perfectly decent contrast. And the games were fun. Some of them, anyway.

>>11911181
>The units weren't 36 years old so the screens weren't degraded
lmao the screens were just as bad back in the day

you found the perfect angle between you and the light source and you didn't move

>>11911209
alternatively you got one of these and burned through batteries faster than your mom could restock them

>>11911170 (OP)
We played them outside because of the then novelty of portability.Typically struggled to play indoors unless there was an abundance of natural light. I usually played by my bedroom window or by my desk lamp because the illunination provided by the ceiling fitting was dogshit, no matter the bulb wattage. I never really used clip on lights. I bought three and they were all crap.

>>11911170 (OP)
adjust the contrast

>>11911209
that is just blatantly untrue. new, the screens were just fine. i never had any problems seeing my games as a kid under normal lighting conditions.

>>11911223
I'm sorry that you have replaced your true memories for manufactured ones based on nostalgia

>>11911226
I'm not sorry you weren't there.

>>11911223
You faggots trying to re-write history, so unsuspecting zoomers regurgitate your lies on their youtube channel and fool an entire generation make me fucking sick.
The Gameboy had an unacceptably bad screen, even when it launched.

Screenshot of how the DMG display looked when brand new.

>>11911231
>The Gameboy had an unacceptably bad screen, even when it launched.
if it was so unacceptable why was it so successful? Seems pretty accepted to me.

>>11911248
Because it was the best they had at the time. You also went through 4 AAs in 6 hours, entirely unacceptable by today's standards but people back then ate it up.

>>11911252
>today's standards
noone asked

It was fine as long as you had light. Also I don't remember ghosting being as bad as it is today.

>>11911252
Fuck off frog posting retard

>>11911252
>unacceptable by today's standards
lol
lmao

>>11911170 (OP)
>>11911074

Literally noone complained about it back then. The modern complainers remind me of the video fo that little girl trying to play the game boy thinking it has a touchscreen. They're probably not that far off in age.

>>11911265
>little girl trying to play the game boy thinking it has a touchscreen
I wonder how old that video is already
You have to remember that people born in 2007 are now 18

>>11911256
You (we) didn't care about the ghosting because, as another anon pointed out, it was sort of the best thing available at the time. Even school laptop monitors suffered the same problems.

>>11911268
>You have to remember that people born in 2007 are now 18

I don't need the reminder, they've already invaded /vr/ with their retarded shitposting that the mods do nothing about.

>>11911170 (OP)
from what i recall the original gb's screens had manufacturing issues that were so bad gunpei yokoi considered suicide over it.

>>11911248
>Slop is popular
>Therefore slop is good
I never understand these arguments?

The original GB is a steaming pile of shit that only sold as well as it did, because of the novelty, Pokemon and because its competition cost twice as much.

GBC and GBA were much better, but the original GB is a product of its time that got lucky.

>>11911238
imagine actually believing this

>>11911170 (OP)
Pretty easily. Love that fucker like you wouldn’t believe

>>11911286
Yup. LCD display was crisp under good light. All of them were at the time. Unless there was motion on screen, that is. Oh, can't forget about those viewing angles...

>>11911170 (OP)
you angled it very carefully

>>11911170 (OP)
Very carefully

>>11911280
Have you played handhelds made prior to GB?

>>11911170 (OP)
we couldn't.

>>11911248
It came with fucking Tetris.
Tetris that you could play anywhere.
And since the action was focused on big squares that fixed to a set grid, not being able to focus on the screen down to the pixel level was fine.

>>11911259
https://vocaroo.com/1iglofPXQmZM

>>11911209
They weren't that bad zoomer

>>11911170 (OP)
GBA was way, way worse
to this day I have no idea how anyone actually played the thing without some kind of third party accessory

>>11911170 (OP)
Glasses.

>>11911462
Same. A girl in highschool let me borrow her older brother's GBC (this was in like 2013) and that shit looked just fine.
The times I've seen a GBA in person i legit couldn't believe how smeary and dim the screen was

>>11911280
>The original GB is a steaming pile of shit that only sold as well as it did, because of the novelty, Pokemon

Pokémon came out 10 years after the GB's launch.

>>11911170 (OP)
People spent less time bitching on the internet and more time appreciating what they have.

>>11911181
>The units weren't 36 years old
Hey not all nintendo kids had weight problems.

>>11911217
Someone on neo-/vr/ actually owns real hardware and is able to male intelligent posts? No fucking way.

>>11911495
Don't be a disingenuous faggot.

60% of the total Gameboy sales in Japan were done so after Pokemon was released in 1996.
If you look at the world wide numbers, 40% of the total Gameboy sales were done after Pokemon was available in all markets.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/246545/gameboy-total-lt-sales-breakdown/1/

Niggas who bought GB before Pokemon was out were literally playing nothing but Tetris, Super Mario Land 1&2 and maybe Dr. Mario. Everything else on the system was shovelware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Game_Boy_video_games

>>11911550
Just as expected, another young retard with wikipedia knowledge who pretends like he knows what he's talking about

Just as expected, another young retard that lives in a LARP world and gets triggered when he's shown the numbers and facts

>>11911553
It's all neo-/vr/ is.
There's no point coming here anymore other than to laugh at retards.
It's sad because this used to be a decent board, but mods fullfilled their own desire of turning this board into a pure shitposting one

>>11911170 (OP)
Sunlight, wormlight, amplifier, good angles, etc.
Personally I had pic related.

>>11911550
>Niggas who bought GB before Pokemon was out were literally playing nothing but Tetris, Super Mario Land 1&2 and maybe Dr. Mario

I accept your point about GB sales rocketing after Pokemon, but in terms of the point you made here, so what? Lots of people bought the SNES for Street Fighter or Mario, bought the PSX for Tomb Raider, or MGS or GT, the Gensis for Sonic etc. Killer apps are killer apps. Some people dive into the wider library, and normies don't.

>>11911209
nta but the contrast does degrade over time, and just adjusting the contrast wheel isn't usually enough to compensate.
Blasting the contrast wheel with contact cleaner and reflowing the joints around the potentiometer can drastically improve visability, but even in perfect conditions, the screen was never fantastic to begin with. Hence the improved screen in the Pocket.

The real answer to OP's question is sunlight. Playing outside was the best way to actually see the screen, since the reflective backing works best with bright, ambient lighting. Direct lighting like this junk >>11911210 only casted a glare on the screen lens, and I never understood why people insisted on using them.
Alternatively, sitting under an 80W lightbulb with the screen tilted back.

People here don't want to hear it, but there's no reason not to install a backlight if you're still using a DMG. And I do mean a baclight, none of that screen replacement nonsense.

>>11911561
All I understand from reading this is that it confirms my suspicions: they don't have the manpower anymore since the attack and/or are afraid to get attacked again if they properly moderate, so the attitude is "I don't give a shit".

As for "don't break the rules" that's bullshit considering the amount of off-topic (let alone shit posting) /vr/ has been getting lately that they leave alone. It is my suspicion that whoever is left isn't even knowledgeable enough on the subject to tell if something like the DS is within the rules and they don't care to find out.

>>11911561
>neo-/vr/
Not even neo or nu
This is clearly shaped into /v/ jr.

>>11911640
This screenshot isn't from the doss attack, it's from back in 2020 when they changed the board rules to include 6th gen, despite the obvious resistance by old /vr/ regulars and the shameless shitposting from /v/ kids wanting to force 6th gen here.
As you can see, the mod was too busy ERPing to give a shit about a shitposting board like /vr/, as he says

I brought a chair into the kitchen and played under the big ceiling fluorescent light. Brightest spot in the house not dependent on sunlight.

>>11911209
No dipshit, it's been reported that this things do degrade with times which leads to more frame blending.

>>11911170 (OP)
lol it literally has a contrast control you stupid faggot
change your fucking batteries if its looking like that
dont play in the fucking sun, obviously

>>11911170 (OP)
>80s kids
Game Boy came out in ‘89 zoomer.

>>11911170 (OP)
Game Boy had one of the comfiest, most soulful game screens of any console ever. Wasn’t hard to look at at all.

>>11911695
the board was already shit back then with the endless SNES/Genesis and PS/N64 console war threads

>>11911550
These sales numbers are combining Game Boy and Game Boy Color sales, even though they're technically two different systems.

>>11912105
What decade is 1989? I give you one chance.

>>11912105
I was born in 82 and consider myself more of an 80s kid than a 90s kid despite being a millennial.

>>11912085
You can literally look at photographs of brand new Game Boys and compare them to ones now. No difference in 99% of cases.

Let me guess, the photos also "degraded"?

>>11911210
Since my family weren't poor white trash too stupid to plan for the future, my dad bought weird-smelling rechargeable batteries. I remember that they were very expensive at first but certainly cheaper in the long run (so long as none got lost lmao).
Why did rechargeable batteries in the late 80s/early 90s smell like that, anyway?

damn, look how degraded my gameboy is, woe is me

>>11912214
If you weren't poor then why didn't your dad buy you to official battery pack?

>>11911553
She's not wrong. I didn't have a Gameboy (yet somehow had pretty much every other handheld of the 90s, go figure) but everyone I knew with one before Pokemon had those same games he mentioned with a few extras between them all. One guy had Balloon Kid, which was fun af. Another had Boomer, which I also enjoyed. And another had some Jurassic Park game that played similarly to the Boomer one. But pretty much all of them had a fucktonne of unfun shovelware games like some Ren and Stimpy shit where they're on a space ship or whatever, any Simpsons game and that Spot game that wasn't actually Spot but fucking Othelo. Also GB versions of better games like DuckTales.
I guess the Addams Family one wasn't too bad. Seemed a bit janky, though

>>11912239
lol
I didn't even have a Gameboy at all. I'm >>11912249
I had Turbo Express, Lynx and Game Gear and as I mentioned in the other GB thread (GG v GB, rather), I had a battery pack that I could share between Lynx and GG.
Despite not actually owning GB, I played a lot of it, handing off one of my handhelds to other kids while I played their Gameboys.
No shade at GB, really, since the good games were very good but I was much happier with my Express than I would have been with a GB.

>>11912230
now in motion

>>11911181
This. they weren't even green originally.

Is it just me, or do incandescent bulbs light up GameBoy screens better than LED bulbs or CFL bulbs? Maybe it's just me, but I feel like I really struggle to get a clear view of the screen with these types of bulbs compared to what it was like using old incandescent lightbulbs

A good angle from the lamp / ceiling light and getting the contrast knob just right. Sure, the screens have degraded in 30+ years, but they were never good, always a blurry mess with abysmal ghosting, but you were lucky to have anything portable in those days.

> 80s kids

Um, it came out in 1989

>>11912415
>It doesn't count!

>>11912524
stop being a passive-aggressive little bitch you fucking FAGGOT

>>11911170 (OP)
There was a contrast knob you idiot.

Playing this shit in the car while the sun was blasting through the windows was impossible and it made me puke

>>11911170 (OP)
better genes, no microplastics, better diet, a more active life, in short people were just better in every way to zooms.

>>11912564
I beat Mega Man under those conditions on a 4 hours drive at the age of 11.

Sounds like you just needed to get good.

>>11912564
>wants to puke at the sun
is common for people with autism to feel nauseous at bright light

>>11912586
And I 2-all'd Castlevania: The Slow Adventure under those same conditions.

>>11912527
diff fag but holy shit youre a gay fucking niggerfaggot. stop bitching about gay shit you clearly dont even know about in the first place.
if you werent like 12 youd know the original gameboys, unlike the GBC, all had a contrast adjustment on the side. if you roll it all the way down, you get retarded b8 like in the OP pic. if you roll it all the way up it works great
just kys yourself
dont think about it, just do it™

>>11911217
Came here to post this. It had a fucking wheel on the side so you could adjust contrast. The one in OP is either turned up really light or the batteries are about to eat shit

>>11911206
>as long as I make sure the surrounding lighting conditions are good

Jesus, boomer gaming is something else.

>>11911231
>You faggots trying to re-write history, so unsuspecting zoomers regurgitate your lies on their youtube channel and fool an entire generation make me fucking sick.

>>11912564
>it made me puke
thats just carsickness. There was a point in time where i could play gameboy in the car but overtime that changed to no screens to I just get sick in cars now.

>>11912230
Good game, based.

>>11912629
Being too young to remember the Game Boy isn't the own you think it is.

>>11911231
How was it bad?

I have zoomer fatigue

>>11911561
Naemuti is literally a tranny kek
not even making this up

>>11911209
Fag. I played through Mario Land 1 on my original GB during a 45 minute walk home from work. Adjust your contrast dial, fugger.

>>11911231
OG gameboy and the pocket were terrible. My first was the GBC and it was pretty ok.

>>11911170 (OP)
We had to play under a lamp or at least with some good lighting in the room. In the car you could see it well with the window light until it got dark.
Then people started getting the little attachable lights too which helped.

>>11911231
Dead Internet Theory is a bitch, this board alone proves it being filled with bots and T-people with zoomies.

>>11912523
Man I loved my Game Boy Pocket so much

>>11912524
>it's a blurry mess in motion

kek

>>11913138
The ghosting is part of the soul
Games used it graphical effects also

>-oomerposters complaining about the board being ruined
the call is coming from inside the house

>>11913138
It does not count!

>>11912586
To my defense i was much younger than that probably 6 or 7

20th century humans didn't have their eyes looking at smartphones 24/7, so their sight was sharper than modern humans.
Anyway I doubt anyone on modern /vr/ played with a Game Boy IRL.

>>11911170 (OP)
I distinctly remember having trouble seeing shit on that old model when I borrowed one from a friend, but I never had any trouble with the pocket model onward.

Crazy how Gunpei Yokoi was able to invent a way to carry around pure soul in your pockets

>>11913226
And then he did it again with the WonderSwan.

>>11912209
>Let me guess, the photos also "degraded"?
Correct

>>11913179
This
Some games use the ghosting to create fake transparency by making things flicker. Modern emulators even have ghosting options for this exact reason

>>11911170 (OP)
>How were 80s kids able to see shit on this thing?
it was very difficult but in this photo it looks like the brightness is turned downed to just above minimum.

>>11911181
i've had one since early 1990s. it's not too far off what it looks like battling against the sun to see the screen. the struggle was real.

>>11911209
>lmao the screens were just as bad back in the day
exactly right. and when batteries start to get flat, it just gets dimmer and dimmer until the entire thing just shuts off.

>>11911223
>>11911447
>>11912085
>>11912848
> zoomzoom go cry now because people born before it existed remember how shit it was
most embarrassing board on 4chan by far.

>>11913226
yokoi was an absolute genius. without him nintendo would have went bust years ago.

>batteries run out
>no spares
>let it sit for a day
>turn it on again
>it runs for 10 minutes

>>11912508
Incandescent bulbs were great in terms of light spectrum, the only downside was power waste on warm days. Maybe you are on to something.

I recently replaced front polarizers on both a gbc and a gbp, both looked much clearer afterwards, but the gbp screen had several lines go bad after the replacement, and I could not manage to fix it.

I tried one of these new screens from Ali, and really love how my pocket looks now. I might look for a gbc with a bad screen to replace too, but I’m not gonna replace the one I have with a good original screen.

>>11911170 (OP)
Get better eyesight, poindexter.

>>11911170 (OP)
Born in 90 here.

You just did. End of story.

We had better eyesight due to less fluoride and tranny estrogens in the water and food

you had to get a direct light source and angle the gb so glare wasn't overwhelming. gb was more of a portable inside kind of thing unless you had the noodle light, direct sunlight and low ambient light didn't work with the screen.
it was a pain in the ass but if you had access to any kind of direct light you could make do.

>>11912230
Anyone know what that shadowy part is supposed to be. I see it on a lot of old LCD screens. There a common way to remedy, short of display replacement?

>>11913532
...the reflection of the guy taking the picture?

>>11912624
Have you heard of reading words off of paper? It's actually difficult to do in the dark. We should permanently give it up, since it is too inconvenient in this modern time

>>11913532
You mean around the border? The screens are recessed like a quarter of an inch and front lit, of course there's going to be a shadow unless the light source is directly in front of it.

>>11913563
not that guy but a book is a dumb thing to bring up in this thread, would have loved to have been able to pull out my gb at any time outside morning noon twighlight and make it out perfectly

>>11911265
>Literally noone complained about it back then
Literally everyone did. We still played fucking thing... but yeah... no I fucking sat directly under a bright open bulb directly above the thing sitting on a washing machine just to see the fucking properly.
It wasn't great.... people were envious of fuck at the addon shit and mad that they were pricey and harder to find.
You gotta fiddle with that contrast knob and get the right lighting... but yeah... not great.
Color Gameboys were far better.

>>11913190
>I doubt anyone on modern /vr/ played with a Game Boy IRL.
See >>11912249/>>11912262
I played with a fucking Merlin. You're probably too young to even know what that is.

>>11913589
Like these. Oval/round-rect that's darker towards the edges. It's faint on the calculator, you can see the darker parts near the perimeter of the screen.

Though it usually appears from the center rather than hitting one side like in >>11912230 But I don't think it's a reflection/shadow of the owner as >>11913539 suggests.

>>11913190
>I doubt anyone on modern /vr/ played with a Game Boy IRL
gbs are not hard to get your hands on even if you're a zoomer, 99% of the people posting on /vr/ are millennials who grew up with the gb and probably still have theirs

the problem is that most people selectively remember that they had fun playing pokemon when they were 5 but forget how much it sucked trying to actually play the thing in the car, or in dim lighting, or in excessively bright lighting, or outdoors, or basically anywhere they couldn't sit down totally stationary with a shaded lamp at a 45 degree angle to the screen to minimize glare

It was always blurry you contrarians! I remember the first time I played a Gameboy in the early 90s and the first thought in my mind was how blurry the screen was every time I moved around in Link's Awakening.

Nevermind having it under a good light source.

>>11913623
Not sure if trolling or what. The shadow in the middle of the Game Boy photo is clearly a reflection, you can literally see the guy's receding hairline. The Game & Watch in your photo looks like the screen was pushed in and leaked liquid crystal. I'm not sure what you're referring to with the calculator. The slightly lighter part around the edge? The plastic directly over the display probably got slightly smoothed from decades of rubbing dust off it with his finger.

>>11911678
Shouldn't that be /v/ sr?

>>11913609
>>11913627
Well, allow me to distrust.
Also I'm not sure many millennials are still here. Late ones maybe, the ones born in the mid 90s.

>>11913738
I'd bet 35-45 is the primary age group here. Much older than that and you probably never got into 4chan, much younger than that and you don't care about retro games.

>>11913747
Last time there was an age mining thread it was all people in their 20s here.
I also find it weird because why the fuck would a zoomer want to be on such an old site that doesn't even have SNS connectivity? But it happens. Millennials might be here but more on lurking mode

>>11913751
[citation needed]

>>11913747
>>11913751
It's simple really. When you see an intelligent post who knows what he's talking about, you can bet he's above the age of 35. When you see retarded shitposting, 6th gen console warring, youtuber threads, off topic 7th gen (or above) discussion, people asking for more remakes/remasters, claiming "games were only hard because of rentals/to sell guides/etc", etc etc you can safely be sure it's a retarded 20 something years old. We have a lot of them these days because it's summer so they're on college vacation.

>>11913763
>When you see an intelligent post who knows what he's talking about, you can bet he's above the age of 35. When you see retarded shitposting, 6th gen console warring, youtuber threads, off topic 7th gen (or above) discussion, people asking for more remakes/remasters, claiming "games were only hard because of rentals/to sell guides/etc", etc etc you can safely be sure it's a retarded 20 something years old.
So yeah it's all 20 year olds here.

>>11913639
The Game Boy was shot straight on. And if it's so reflective that you can see the photographer's hairline, you should be able to see the camera as well as anything else in the room.

>>11913771
put your phone in front of your face, look into the mirror, and take a picture, see what you get

>>11913338
>Saves Nintendo
>Gets killed

>>11913639
And here's a WSC that had the same issue. I don't know how you're supposed to push on the LCD through the front lens. They didn't do fully laminated displays like they do with phones & tablets now.

>>11913332
You never touched a gameboy let alone played one fresh out the box.

>>11911170 (OP)
I had both a DMG and GB pocket back in the day. The DMG wasn't unplayable or anything, but I definitely preferred the Pocket for its superior screen-- at least, when I had any batteries for it (fuck AAAs). Either way, you needed a good light source for it to really be playable. Try playing in the back seat of a car, at night, illuminated by passing street lamps. You'll soon give up in frustration like I (and probably many others) did.

>>11913783
the fronts of all these devices are just plastic, you push on them and you deform the lcd screen underneath, push hard enough and they break and leak

did you never own a tiger handheld?

>>11913817
>Try playing in the back seat of a car, at night, illuminated by passing street lamps. You'll soon give up in frustration like I (and probably many others) did.

There was a /v/ meme comic showing this a long time ago

>>11911170 (OP)
I hate zoomers so much it’s unreal. I’m glad that their standard of life is so shit.

>>11913763
>claiming "games were only hard because of rentals/to sell guides/etc"
those are true though. are you denying that the gaming industry 30+ years ago wasn't completely different and had its own business models/incentives that are non-existent nowadays? now go ahead, ignore my question and call me a zoomer/normie because they're the only retorts you ever use on here.

>>11911170 (OP)
We had to. Also the squiggly light was a lifesaver during long road trips.

>>11914052
All you have to do is open one magazine, look at a single ad, or check players comment from the time period like old usenet posts and it's pretty obvious that games were hard because everyone wanted them to be hard. Challenge was THE definition of video games to the point that it was Sega's slogan and Nintendo used it in their marketing.

But naaah, it was all a conspiracy to make player's lives miserable to sell more! Because as everyone knows, doing things that your customers dislike is a sure way to sell more! Totally has nothing to do with the fact that I can't accept that games have become casualized and that I can't comprehend things ever being different!

>>11911170 (OP)
The capacitors were fresh, you can adjust the contrast, and you went and found a spot with good lighting.

>>11914148
one of the primary reasons games were difficult (at least on console) was because of tech limitations. go look up a longplay of a random 3rd/4th gen game. once you have them completely memorized, most of them (basically non-RPGs) can be beat in under 90 minutes. now if you bought a SNES game for an inflation-adjusted $120 and you beat it in part of an afternoon, you'd feel pretty fucking gipped wouldn't you? you can't make longer games so there's only one thing left to do: make them harder. with the dawn of the 5th gen came better tech that allowed developers greater expressiveness with the medium. as a result, shit changed; games got longer, games got easier, sometimes at the same time.

this is all pretty straightfoward stuff. nothing i said is controversial.

>Challenge was THE definition of video games to the point that it was Sega's slogan and Nintendo used it in their marketing.
that's just a convenient side effect of the reality of the industry. companies are going to exploit whatever bullshit angles they can to get an edge over the competition.
best example "sega does what nintendon't!" (the fuck does that even mean? doesn't matter, it's provocative and gets you talking)

>But naaah, it was all a conspiracy to make player's lives miserable to sell more! Because [didn't read rest]
never said/implied any of that. once again, you tards are shadowboxing with boogeymen in your heads.

>>11911209
No they weren't.

>>11911170 (OP)
Our eyes hadn't been zapped into the infrared realm by chink LEDs, so we could see all the minutia within the green spectrum like we are biologically supposed to.

>>11911260
Nintendo in 2025 is way below acceptable standards. It's absolute gaymeslop.

>>11914347
By looking at it through the angle of tool assisted playtimes (that's what "longplays" are), what you're doing is applying modern logic, the modern way to look at games, to old ones. People in the 30s didn't feel ripped-off when they went to see movies with an average runtime of 1h10 all because it was going tobe 1h45 80 years later. Players understood that action games would by definition have less content than an RPG and understood that the meat of the game was overcoming the challenge, not how long it takes for a TAS to showcase all the content.

>bullshit angles

It's funny how it never matters how much proof I show that players and reviewers enjoyed the challenge and disliked when games were too easy, people like you always dismiss it like it was just "marketing bullshit". What you're doing is dismissing proof and twisting things so that they can fit your pre-determined take.

>>11911206
I found my old GBP from when I was a kid in the late 90s, and after replacing the dead batteries with acid crust on them, the thing booted up like it always did. Very slightly faint, but not enough to be a problem. Also my old Pokémon Blue, which regrettably has a dry battery, but hey, I can just emulate or get a flashcart if I get a real hankering again.

What I really want to find is the old "32-in-1" pirate cart (actually like 8, but hey, still good value) which I got at Tenerife back in like 1998 or so, and my brother's example, as neither exact examples are documented on that one website.

>>11911217
Yep, adjust it for the lighting conditions.
Aging capacitors will make the screen fade some, but if that gets bad enough you really can just replace them and they'll be good as new.

>>11911231
Literally cope, zoomer.

>>11911252
The DMG runs like 28 hours on 4 AA batteries, you trolling faggot.

>>11911280
Handhelds before the Game Boy were borderline unplayable shit, the Game Boy, meanwhile, offered portability but with games which were roughly comparable to what you found in an NES game in scope and gameplay.
That was fucking HUGE at the time, and nobody else had that kind of product. Adjusting the contrast and finding a spot with good lighting was literally completely fine.

Also, Game Boy was fucking old and dated by the time Pokémon hit, Game Boy had already had its big fucking sales and was actually fading until it got that as a colossal second wind.

>>11914438
>tool assisted playtimes (that's what "longplays" are)
...no they're not. you're thinking of tool-assisted speedruns (TAS). i'm talking about having complete mastery over the game and beating it casually in one sitting. that's what most "longplays" on youtube are. i don't know where you got adding in supplemental tools from.

> People in the 30s didn't feel ripped-off when they went to see movies with an average runtime of 1h10 all because
comparing apples and oranges. back then you were paying, what, ~$2 to see that 70 minute movie? weird analogy

you sound like you're still arguing with boogeymen in your head on top of just not being very bright to begin with so i have nothing else to say to you.

>>11911170 (OP)
Its not that bad, let it warm up for 5 minutes and it gets better. Early laptops and PDA's had much blurrier screens.

>>11911576
It was always a little blurry even with magazines mentioning it, with mine it appears exactly as when it was new. I remember when I first saw a GBP and I said to someone that the screen looks much less blurry when scrolling.

>>11913738
I rarely post here these days but I'm early 80s, kiddo. I'm the guy with the Merlin. Also, a VTech Talking Pinball Wizard.
>game over! need more practice.
I used to play that motherfucker almost as much as my actual handheld consoles. Loved that thing.

>>11911576
>Direct lighting like this junk >>11911210 # only casted a glare on the screen lens, and I never understood why people insisted on using them.
Agree, always wondered what the point was, if you shine a lamp straight at the screen like that you can't see it all, it's the least optimal way to light it.

>>11914512
> i'm talking about having complete mastery over the game and beating it casually in one sitting. that's what most "longplays" on youtube are
Well, that last one depends. Channels such as World Of Longplays will sometimes do segmented runs or even TAS, though they'll usually declare it in the description.

>>11912230
OP's anus will never recover from this, and that's saying something given what OP likes doing on the regular.
It's just completely stretched out and flappy now.

>>11914574
It doesn't count, okay?

>>11912564
Skill issue.

>>11914578
I'm sorry OP, but is just no longer a virgin, he can't wear a white dress and veil for his gay wedding after this thread.

>>11913190
Oh please, I have atrocious eyesight and I still see my old Game Boy's screen just fine. Aside from the slight ghosting (which was commonly used to create transparancy effects), that display is simply fucking crisp.

>>11912230
>contrast dialed in just right
>lighting just right
>screen cover removed to avoid glare
>perfect head-on shot
I don't think anyone is arguing that the screen can't be made to look acceptable under perfect conditions. Also >>11912415 the ghosting is honestly the biggest issue with these early LCDs.

>>11913738
I'm 33 and I've been a regular on the board since it opened. Mine still works and looks fine.

My old GB I got back in the 90s. Looks fine, I don't notice any degradation as other anons were claiming. It's all about adjusting the contrast.

>>11913747
There's younger people than that here with a more serious interest in older games. Most people here are in their 30s or higher, though.

>>11914578
Flap flap flap.

>>11914616
dayum those are some good stats

>>11912527
Okay, FUCK YOU you homosexual faggot!!!

>>11913623
This is the polarizer being burned by UV. You can replace it without replacing the whole screen, but it’s damn hard to clean up the old dried glue. Check YouTube videos about replacing the polarizer.
If you search for used gameboy pockets, more than half will have this problem.

>>11914616
>sharp square pixels

Delete this, it goes against the CRTfags' agendas.

>>11914512
>...no they're not.

>>11914512
> i'm talking about having complete mastery over the game and beating it casually in one sitting.

Even if we dismiss the fact that you're unaware that most longplays are TAS; nobody was going "Ninja Gaiden sucks because it only takes me 28 minutes to go through now that I've mastered it!", they were going "Ninja Gaiden rules because it took me 15 hours to beat it and I still feel like I have a lot to master!"

>comparing apples and oranges
The point (that you missed) is that different time periods have different standards.
Nobody was looking at the runtime it takes a master player to go through a game to judge the quality of the game, that's a pure modern way to look at things from a time where all challenge is gone so all that matters is the "content" and how long it takes to see it all.
Nobody was complaining that action games were too short UNLESS said game was too easy, which is why games were designed to be challenging, because everyone liked them that way, not to "artificially" extend the playtime like it wasn't something players wanted or to "sell strategy guides" like the modern retarded gamer believes.

>>11911514
Based

>>11911550
>everything else was shovelware
Reductionist zoomie faggot

gba sp changed everything

>>11911170 (OP)
In hindsight, I'm not sure why I was fine with this and the Game Boy Color, but had to have a dongle light plugged in just to play Castlevania CoTM on my GBA.

>>11916469
CotM was particularly dark game. Which is why HoD was made so bright and have the halo around the protag

>>11916395
No agenda about it, Game Boy games were made for dot matrix dmg screens. They also look good on a Super Game Boy though.
This myth that people didn't know about individual pixels is an anti-crt lie.

>>11912230
This is pretty how the screen always looks under good light and with the contrast set properly. It's OK but not great.

>>11916469
Because you had no choice?
Be it the best consumer technology had to offer, or mom wasn't going to buy you another system. Especially not one that cost twice as much, even if it did do color.

>>11916515
>This myth that people didn't know about individual pixels is an anti-crt lie.

I've seen posters on this board claim that square pixels didn't exist until the 00's.

>>11916515
That PAL stretch gives me eye cancer.

>>11916539
Post the archive

Imagine how awesome it would have been to get a Super Game Boy in 1994. Things came full circle and you could then play the exclusive hand held games on your TV at home.

>>11916540
Yeah, it's really bad.
>>11916395
Modern LCD/LED displays still won't display pixels the way a DMG screen does, though. People try to emulate the DMG look on modern screens with shaders.

>>11916545
I got one, it was indeed awesome!
Also the custom color palettes, borders, and the mario paint-like drawing function.

>>11911170 (OP)
>tfw us Game Gear CHADs didn't have this problem.

>>11916545
My dad bought one but I got in trouble in school the day he got it so I couldn't play it for a while and was just allowed to watch him play. Great strategy, I must say. lel

>>11917008
Based! I wish it had better games
I had both, but I got a GG first.
GG>Master System btw

>>11916451
Zoomers don't know what shovelware actually means, they use it to mean something they just think is kinda bad, then they get angry and uppity when you correct them.

>>11916469
Early GBA games didn't always account properly for the screen, and COTM was such a title.
It was tougher to see than my Game Boy Pocket screen, because there was no (non-hidden) contrast dial, and the graphics themselves did not have the same kind of sharp and clean contrast, as now it was 32-bit and they went for all kind of detail, shading, and color.

Looked good, but also demanded much more precise and ideal lighting than the old 8-bit ones. I remember I looked for a while in my grandparents's house to find a spot, but when I did, it was crystal clear.
HOD was conscious of this, as said, and overcompensated, they went hard on the contrast and saturation to be more easily readable.
When you emulate or play with a lit screen, this ends up looking rather garish, but this actually grew on me a lot, it's a bit of a surreal and almost dreamlike aesthetic. Some people want to use a patch to tone the palettes down, and I could see why, but I don't want that, I like the overpowered colors, they make me think of old comic books, and schlocky Italohorror like Suspiria.

>>11913352
I have two GBCs, one is my old clear purple one from BITD that's in sorta rough shape (which is somewhere in the house, and needs a new speaker), and a yellow one I got from Japan 10+ years ago. The yellow one is in great shape, but has a single dead pixel which bugs the hell out of me. I might do a screen swap with my old GBC since I do not recall it having any dead pixels.

>>11913563
Books and video games are two different things.

>>11913602
>no I fucking sat directly under a bright open bulb directly above the thing sitting on a washing machine just to see the fucking properly.

Are you from Boston, perhaps?

Potentially interesting thread ruined by grown ups getting their feelings hurt
Classic /vr/

>>11917371
The thread's ok. OP, being a faggot as always, tries to downplay something about a time before his, some anons proved him wrong, and shitposting ensuing. Classic /vr/ indeed but there's far worse.

>>11911170 (OP)
Crank the contrast dial

>>11917371
Flap flap flap.

>>11914616
Mine still looks good. One of the pixel columns was faint as was one of the rows, but working it over with a hot air station seems to have resolved the problems (one of the horizontal rows might possibly still be a tiny bit faint?).
I also have a minimally used Japanese GB that I got ~22 years ago. It had some dead columns, which again were pretty easily fixed. The LCD quality might be a touch better than the one in pic, not sure if that's due to lack of use or just variances in production quality.

>>11917869
I will say that the Pocket, which I got around the same time as my Japanese original GB, looks like ass, and as best I can recall, has always looked like ass. Bad banding effect emanating from dark pixels, and the screen refresh/motion blurring is probably worse than either of my original GBs. One of my GmaeGear screens has similar shittiness, and as best I can tell, some of the screens were just that way. My other GG screen looks quite a bit better with very minimal banding.

>>11911170 (OP)
Most of them had an IQ above 80 to figure that out.

>>11911170 (OP)
Because non-zoomers aren't defective spawn like you.

>>11917879

....zoo-zoomerbros? I thought the original Game Boy was supposed to have damaged screens? I thought the battery save on game boy games was supposed to be dead? what's going on? i feel rather bad...

>>11918132
Batteries do go bad, but it seems pretty sporadic. My Japanese Pocket Monsters Red battery died a while back, but my US Red that I got back in the day is still good, last I checked a week or two back (at which point I went ahead and dumped the save). My Japanese Kirby 2 battery has been dead for a very long time, perhaps as far back to the early/mid 2000s. Dumping saves is easy and replacing the battery takes maybe a minute, after which you can rewrite the save to the cart.

>>11918210
I remember digging out my original Pokémon Blue 10 years ago or so, finding the battery still worked, thought "Cool!" and then did a run. Good time.
Found it again earlier this year, and unfortunately the battery was dry.

That's +20 years of life for a Game Boy save battery, which I think is pretty decent. Maybe I'll have the battery replaced some day, perhaps the same time I'll have the clock and save battery on my Pokémon Ruby replaced as well. I'm pretty sure the save battery is still good on that one, but the clock battery stopped a long time ago now, and might as well get them both fixed.

>>11917879
I was the only boy in school with the brick stop calling it the "DMG" that shit's retarded, if you're not a zoomer its name is the brick, which you played alongside your PSX rather than your "PS1" because I was an avant-gardiste and the first to have one before that started a trend and everyone else got Pockets.
I can tell you that the I was jealous of the Pockets everyone else had because the screen was better. Unlike with the brick, kids could gather around another kid playing on a Pocket and actually see what's going on without sniffing the player's breath.

The only advantage I had with the brick over other kids is that, whenever the school's cook would see a kid playing on his GB, he'd pull out the cartridge to troll them. One time he tried it on my brick and of course it didn't work and I laughed at him.

>>11918670
Brick Dese Mega Gnuts.
Sorry.

>>11917940
>>11917869
>>11914616
That pure Dot Matrix beauty, it almost brings a tear to my eye.

>>11912230
Oh, I missed one. Crystal clear, just how I remember it.

I only play Game Boy as it was meant to be played - in a dark corner of the department store in a display kiosk illuminated by a single halogen bulb.

>>11918993
Get on my level

>>11918993
SOVL

>>11919001
I regret not getting one of those 15 years ago when they were still relatively attainable. To me that is the GameBoy.

>>11911170 (OP)
It was a piece of shit that was mostly used by people to play tetris aside from mario which got stale quite fast very few other games were ever played on it.

This is the truth. Nintendo robber the author of Tetris as well.


This youtiubbe video will explain the people who are fans of it very nicely. They are not into retro gaming much either. They are into a brand and being associated with it because reddit told them it was the reddit thing to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVmmYMwFj1I&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD

And because of this nintendo fanboys are the most hated people in or near gaming they are CUNTS.

>>11919027
wtf I stopped liking the Game Boy now

>>11919001
>>11919018
I would imagine it shouldn't be that hard to make one of these yourself.

>>11919027
as much as i wish it was 2009, it's not 2009, that 'youtiubbe' video is hilariously out of date
also, wave race is the only good game on the gameboy, tetris is commie puzzleslop

>>11919305
you can get nes carts that run gameboy games now a-la super gameboy. so it's very feasible.

>>11918993
I still remember playing Link's Awakening in one of those... it was glorious...

>>11919530
you can still do it, anon.
you kept your dmg, right?

>>11919305
The amount of time, effort, and cost to fabricate the casing, plus making the electronics to have direct CRT output from an actual GB (the insides contain a DemoVision for such a purpose, which apparently hasn't been reverse engineered), would easily exceed the cost of just buying one and in the end would just be a knockoff.

>>11919538
halogen bulbs are illegal now tho

I found my original from '91 recently. There's a bunch of battery corrosion and I don't care enough to clean it out, I lost most of the games, but I have NBA Jam right here and a few others in storage. Battery cover went missing like 30 years ago. I'll fix it someday, but GB games are better emulated IMO.
It was always difficult to see, but usually manageable.

>>11919530
I think that was how I first played LA as well. Can't recall if it were a different Toys R Us than that one that had a >>11919001, or if they just replaced it, or if they had both.