The time is right. Game Boy deserves Frank the Fruit Fly.

I've begun working on a Game Boy version of Frank the Fruit Fly. I made a Pokemon Mini version, which turned out to be the second-largest Pokemon Mini homebrew game ever made. But it had problems. I couldn't get it to save anything, so I had to resort to passwords. Second, the tiny screen didn't allow for more elaborate things, like, say, quotes.

To talk to a thing that can be talked to, go up to it and press B. There are only two things that you can talk to in level 1. Here, Andy the Ant is telling you a hint: to go inside the cat's head to pass through that screen. You use A to do everything else: push switches and eating a banana are the things you can do in level 1.

And the save function. It took all night yesterday night to get that working. But I eventually got it to save the health number and level number. So the game automatically saves your progress at the end of a level. Pretty cool, no? Then you can turn it off. And when you go back to play some more, you can go to the "continue" option on the title screen to leave off where you last saved.

There are some limitiations even with Game Boy though. For starters, each level won't be very big. I have to draw each thing as I come up to it, and it's often the whole screen needing to be drawn, and that takes a lot of space to save data for a whole screen to draw. Right now I'm using a "MBC 5" with battery. It allows for eight banks. Bank 0 is where the title screen is, and bank 1 is almost full of things for level 1. The music takes up some room, but I don't know why it takes at least 2 minutes to compile the game.

Since the game saves the progress, I'd need a battery if the game ever got released. I don't know how hard it would be to make a homebrew Game Boy game with a battery. I don't know if there are ANY homebrew Game Boy games with a battery.

Now I'm at a spot where I can begin working on the second level. That will be tomorrow. I need to play the Pokemon Mini version for ideas of what the second level will be like. I have a doctor's office visit in 4 hours, and I need to fast in case the doc wants to check my blood. I'm so hungry! But I don't want to go BACK there just for a blood test. Either way, I'd have to not eat anything for 12 hours, so I might as well just do it now. And at the same time, we're experiencing a heat wave where highs routinely get to about 100 F. I sleep during the day to avoid most of it, but I have to go to the doctor's at 11 AM so I need to be up today for it.