Why is GBC underappreciated?

[Tanooki | 4,943]

Piggybacking what phart said with SUper Mario Land DX 1 and 2, there are others.  Originally it was that, then Dr Mario got a color tease, Kirby's Dream Land, and Metroid II too.  But now there are numerous others which really breath some nice colorful life into titles, you can find them all on romhacking too.

I feel bad now, I used to love Azure Dreams, I miss that game, but I'd like to find it locally, and save data commitment games I don't like doing on flash kits.  I'll say this too, Magical Chase on GBC is amazing, but it's also due to association of the PCE game toxic stupid, buy a bootleg, don't feed a shark.  Dragon Warrior Monster is utterly fantastic, don't think it some piss poor pokemon wannabe as it's not, love that little series of 3, barely exposed to the second but the first I own and the third I used to have an early boot of for GBA in english but it was poorly made so when the battery went it lost all the game data too.

[Tulpa | 3,525]

8 hours ago, Link said:

I do have those. I'll check out Burger Time Deluxe. I like the arcade/NES game.

Deluxe is like the arcade, but smoother playing, more varied levels, and better music. It's my preferred Burgertime game.

[Sumez | 2,970]

On 3/15/2023 at 2:11 AM, RegularGuyGamer said:

As someone who loves Gameboy games and consoles, the GBA wasn't a mind blowing leap from the GBC. The DS wasn't much of a mind blowing leap from the GBA either. Nintendo learned early on, immediately maybe, that there was one thing that trumped all else in the handheld space.

Battery life.

True to some extent, but if you're looking exclusively at the jump from GBC to GBA, the leap is honestly enormous. A larger resolution and a vastly bigger color palette allowed completely different sorts of games, adhering to much more traditional console game conventions, if only thanks to the more detailed graphics.

The GBA was basically SNES graphics hardware, but with a much more modern CPU backend, allowing for vastly more powerful games restricted only by the limitations of 2D graphics.

But the 2D graphics hardware was the primary thing that kept GBA from feeling like the contemporary system it was (compared to the GBC which still felt bound by 80s hardware). The primary reason it didn't feel like any sort of technological marvel was that no one was comparing it to the GBC - people were comparing it to the consoles of the time, which allowed details hi-res 3D graphics. I think it's remarkable, because the GBA fell down right into the era where 2D was the absolutely most neglected, and most people flat-out refused to play anything that wasn't 3D, while incompetent reviewers would completely slam anything 2D on home consoles.

Suddenly the GBA came around and allowed a safe space if you will for classic 2D games, without necessarily being a "retro" thing - simply because it was the only viable option on it. For people like myself (and I'm sure most people in here close to my age), the GBA was the very welcome potential second coming of the SNES!

Honestly it's too bad that the GBA too was short-lived (only given 3 years before being replaced by the DS), because it could easily have been the place for many more cool original games and hidden gems than it ultimately did manage to get. Most devs barely got over porting their SNES library before shifting focus to original releases on what would be the Nintendo DS instead.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Sumez

[Tanooki | 4,943]

Can't agree more with that last post.  Once I had my hands on it months before the US arrival back in earlier 2001 the GBA to me was a pocket SNES.  And then later when I started seeing games with far more sprites, rotation, scaling, and ultimately 3D (beyond the minimal Tony Hawk 2 models over isometric backgrounds) I used to quip it was the bastard child of the SNES and the Saturn.

When V-Rally 3 showed up, me at the time still with the hardware and game too, I noticed something.  The GBA was doing software 3D just like the Saturn would do software 3D as well roughly speaking.  More so, the same rendering flaws the Saturns quads had on Sega Rally did the same exact flaws on the 3D in V-Rally.  The terrain along the edges of the screen in both games would warble and warp the individual polygons and the textures too, kind of trippy.  The same kind of clipping of edges, low draw distance, it was all this spooky match.  V-Rally 3 made it kind of possible to me to take Sega Rally on the go, and go I did, damn good game, and still is today.  Yet you also have other Saturn-ish style 2D experiences with more sprites, bigger ones too like with the fighting games.  But largely many fell more into the moderate to higher end advanced SNES level capabilities so it was like peak 2D fun for on the go, and home, once GB Player dropped.

[G-type | 2,486]

It's kind of comparable to the DSi or the Genesis 32x... an incremental upgrade that merely tided people over until they got a proper next gen console.

[AirVillain | 490]

On 3/14/2023 at 7:48 PM, phart010 said:

Wasn’t the purple Gameboy Advance just the same as Gamecube purple ?

Yeah... exactly.  

On 3/14/2023 at 9:07 PM, RH said:

I can't agree with this purple hate.  Purple is the best color, whether a game system or not. 

Haha, sorry.... Purple....? Nah.... It doesn't match well with ANY colours in real life. Other than black and grey? 

So... The purple accent was fine on the SNES, but then entire thing being purple, like the Gamecube, just was weird. Too large and too colourful for me. 

Also... others have presented many good points regarding the actual conversation so there's nothing I can add there. 

[cj_robot | 545]

51 minutes ago, AirVillain said:

Haha, sorry.... Purple....? Nah.... It doesn't match well with ANY colours in real life. Other than black and grey? 

 

Mother Nature would like a word with you.

[AirVillain | 490]

11 minutes ago, cj_robot said:

Mother Nature would like a word with you.

Pardon me. I stand corrected. 

When I said "real life", I meant "practical real life" as in clothes, cars, house paint.... electronics. Things like Nature and Art would be excluded from this "hatred" of purple. And food... Grape Gaterade is A+ 

If I bought a purple car because of some insane cheap value, I would consider painting it as part of the purchase price. I worked with a guy once who painted his truck, a GIANT one, purple. He had trouble selling it, haha. 

Also, You really have to know what you're doing to pull off purple house paint in your house. 

So for the conversation, the purple GBA and Gamecube looked like shit. 

Edited March 17, 2023 by AirVillain
Punctuation and clarification.

[phart010 | 1,708]

Purple contrasts good with bright neon green

[phart010 | 1,708]

Edited March 17, 2023 by phart010

[TDIRunner | 2,747]

Purple certainly has its place, but in general I usually don't care for the color.  I was never a fan of any of the purple Nintendo consoles.  I also don't care for purple as a color for any automobile.  I remember when the Plymouth Prowler came out and purple was the only available color at first.  I loved that car, but I remember thinking how much better it looked once other colors became available.  

[Tulpa | 3,525]

5 hours ago, AirVillain said:

Yeah... exactly.  

Haha, sorry.... Purple....? Nah.... It doesn't match well with ANY colours in real life. Other than black and grey? 
 

Purple is the color of royalty, you peasant!

[MagusSmurf | 577]

no love for the most important purple character of all?

Spoiler

 

[Link | 2,715]

On 3/17/2023 at 1:33 PM, phart010 said:

On 3/17/2023 at 1:12 PM, phart010 said:

Purple contrasts good with bright neon green

‍ Many of your examples have no green or very little. I wouldn't call any of the greens that are there neon. 

[Tanooki | 4,943]

Mmm it's overdue for me to appreciate something new on GBC, and then, I got Mario Tennis.  I really need to get people to stop distracting me so I can fire up RPG mode on that.

[phart010 | 1,708]

5 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Mmm it's overdue for me to appreciate something new on GBC, and then, I got Mario Tennis.  I really need to get people to stop distracting me so I can fire up RPG mode on that.

How bout some Mario Golf?

[Tanooki | 4,943]

19 minutes ago, phart010 said:

How bout some Mario Golf?

I've held onto that one since it came out.  That game at the time was a turning point.  Up until then, Tetris was 100% of the time my dust cover/insta-go to game to play when I just wanted to do something, not specifically something.  Mario Golf dethroned it.  I played the hell out of that one finding every hidden thing in the land around the courses/castle/clubhouse leveled up like crazy and did every course taking first.  Then I went and did the transfer pak thing and popped that one into my N64 cart and back from that to get the added data too.

I never owned Mario Tennis on anything, this one is a first and most appropriate to start there as odds are like Golf, it was a slow downhill slide from there since Camelot put some extensive loving care into their RPG work on those.  There's a reason everyone really outside of for reals golf went to Camelot and HOT SHOTS (which is Mario Golf) for their needs, as they were unmatched, much like in arcade Neo Turf Masters is the basic go to.

[AirVillain | 490]

On 3/17/2023 at 3:26 PM, Tulpa said:

Purple is the color of royalty, you peasant!

Forgot to respond. 

Haha, exactly!! I'm just a peasant, I can't be galavanting around pretending!

[DarkTone | 987]

Some say too little, too late. Nintendo made the light, took the light away and added color. Still no idea why. 

[Tanooki | 4,943]

I have the Light and totally appreciate it.  Had Nintendo learned their lessons earlier about doing a global launch vs waiting a year plus that would and should have come to the US.  It's a brilliant handheld with a POCKET quality LCD that just pops when it's on like a late 90s Timex Indiglo watch.  On rare occasion so it doesn't just rot from utter disuse I will pop it out of my display case and give it a gentle game of something I know won't be an issue.

[cartman | 195]

10 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I have the Light and totally appreciate it.  Had Nintendo learned their lessons earlier about doing a global launch vs waiting a year plus that would and should have come to the US.  It's a brilliant handheld with a POCKET quality LCD that just pops when it's on like a late 90s Timex Indiglo watch.  On rare occasion so it doesn't just rot from utter disuse I will pop it out of my display case and give it a gentle game of something I know won't be an issue.

My experience is that all first gen GB's suffer from lack of shading on the Greenish-black & white display (so that in a game like Donkey Kong Land you will have hard time to see wtf is going on) along with blur when there is high speed, and Light is no exception. The backlight itself however should've been utilized afterwards instead of missing on the GBC and GBA.

It's really not until GBC that Game Boy games became fully functional and could reach their intended potential. Compare the B&W palette on the GBC to that of the GBP or GBL and you will see clearly.

On top of that there is it's own unique colorscheme for GB games alongside the other single colored palettes and those aren't just a gimmick, they do add great value. 

So yeah, GBC sidekicks as the definitive first gen. Game Boy version too even though that by definition it ofcourse isn't.