Number of Unlicensed North American Game Boy Color games

[Mario_Friend1982 149]

Exactly how many unlicensed Game Boy Color games are there in North America?

[fcgamer 3,713]

On 12/4/2020 at 8:22 AM, Mario_Friend1982 said:

Exactly how many unlicensed Game Boy Color games are there in North America?

I'd reckon that by now there's several hundred, all ones I had sent over to collectors and gamers.

[Shawn 31]

7 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I'd reckon that by now there's several hundred, all ones I had sent over to collectors and gamers.

 I think he means individual unique titles.

[fcgamer 3,713]

1 hour ago, Shawn said:

 I think he means individual unique titles.

I think so too

[fcgamer 3,713]

@Mario_Friend1982 : For a more serious reply, I'm not sure of any North American GBC unlicensed games, outside of the homebrew / indie stuff being made now?

I know the UK had some carts, and then there was the Wisdom Tree stuff, but the latter was for the b/W GB.

[RH 3,776]

4 hours ago, fcgamer said:

@Mario_Friend1982 : For a more serious reply, I'm not sure of any North American GBC unlicensed games, outside of the homebrew / indie stuff being made now?

I know the UK had some carts, and then there was the Wisdom Tree stuff, but the latter was for the b/W GB.

Yes, this is my observation as well. Technically, modern homebrew titles are unlicensed games just like the original Wisdom Tree games. GB or GBC, the Wisdom Tree games are the only ones I'm aware of that were ever distributed in the US. My guess is that over time, Nintendo must have dropped the barrier of entry significantly so that smaller gaming studios could more easily, officially develop games. In fact, I think the evidence for this is simply the low amount of shovelware for the GB, shovelware showing up on the GBC and by the time the GBA comes out it's "Shovelware, glorious shovleware for everyone!"

Edited December 5, 2020 by RH

[fcgamer 3,713]

It's an interesting situation.

The amount of unlicensed original games for Game Boy Color in Taiwan is huge. For people into unlicensed games, I'd recommend Famicom / NES, Sega Mega Drive / Genesis, and Game Boy Color. These three machines have tons of stuff on them. But, for the GBC, it was isolated pretty much to a single region.

[RH 3,776]

5 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

It's an interesting situation.

The amount of unlicensed original games for Game Boy Color in Taiwan is huge. For people into unlicensed games, I'd recommend Famicom / NES, Sega Mega Drive / Genesis, and Game Boy Color. These three machines have tons of stuff on them. But, for the GBC, it was isolated pretty much to a single region.

Are there any really good ones? Like, one or two that are practically blockbuster quality that were original works?

[fcgamer 3,713]

Just now, RH said:

Are there any really good ones? Like, one or two that are practically blockbuster quality that were original works?

For GBC or across all three of those machines? Either way, the answer is yes.

[RH 3,776]

1 minute ago, fcgamer said:

For GBC or across all three of those machines? Either way, the answer is yes.

Oh, that's cool. Color me interested. Any chance you could list some of the better ones?

I might be interested in hunting some of these down at some point.