Game Boy Games That Don't Look Like Game Boy Games

[@faenethlorhalien]

Let me point out one factual error: you said that the Game Boy Color can show more colors on screen than the SNES. That is not correct. Both have the same pallette of 32000ish colors, but the SNES can show up to 256 on screen at the same time, but the GBC can only show 56. You might have been thinking of the Game Boy Advance, which could display the same amount of colors on screen, but could even be more at times depending on graphics effects that could be applied.

[@faenethlorhalien]

Hence, the SNES should have been more than capable of showing GBC games on screen.

[@Smaxx]

@@faenethlorhalien Yep, but it lacked the hardware. GBC features such as colors use an expanded instruction set, something the original Game Boy CPU didn't understand (and one of these sits inside the SGB). As for the GBC palette, if I remember correctly, the lower palette limitation is due to the colors reserved for UI/borders, but never looked too deep into this.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

GBA does not need tricks. It has a hi color graphics mode ( no tiles ) where you can still use a limit memory for 256 color sprites

[@corsairegg]

​@@ArneChristianRosenfeldtThe true color mode only useful for still images, it's slow to fill the buffer

[@litjellyfish]

@@corsaireggI think he meant the 256 color bitmap mode that is very usable for games?

[@noaht2005]

some GB games like the Bug’s Life tie-in actually use the snes’ sound chip when IN SGB mode, leading to higher sound quality. So, while they may not look better, the certainly sound better

[@belstar1128]

too bad the game itself is not good

[@noaht2005]

@@belstar1128 yeah. All the effort in the wrong places. When the bootleg MD remake is better you know you’ve done something wrong

[@Larry]

If you ever do a video on Game Boy Games That Don't Sound Like Game Boy Games, Spot should definitely have to be on the list :)

[@jasonblalock4429]

I'd also nominate Faceball 2000, with its soundtrack that sounds more like C64 SID tunes. Probably because it was done by the great David Whittaker.

[@THEGREATMAX]

Hello, you. Good to see you in random comments again, Larry.

[@primateboogaloo]

Robocop is elite

[@pokepress]

Spot was a Follin-produced soundtrack, so not surprising it left the normal confines of GB sound design.

[@noisefilter637]

Wow, I'm blown away by the space invaders bit I never considered the game escaping the boundaries of it's intended system, this is so genius I wish more games would've made use of that

[@Fools_Requiem]

I love games that do stuff like what Space Invaders 94 for the GB did. Makes them feel like you picked up something truly special. A nice talking piece, too.

[@hotdoggington6962]

Wow, that ratio between “this has to be clickbait” and how well it was pulled off is crazy! Excellent video, easy sub

[@Sharopolis]

Appreciate it!

[@supmattboy]

Another isometric platformer on GB is "Otto Ottifanten: Baby's Bruno Nightmare". It had a late release (1998) but actually it's a remake of "The Adventures of Pinnochio", which was supposed to release in 1992-3 but was finally cancelled 😢 Both games were developed by the spanish studio Bit Managers and have an awesome soundtrack by Alberto Jose Gonzalez ✨️ (also known as "The Tim Follin of the GameBoy").

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for that! What a weird game, I probably would have put that in if I'd known about it.

[@fluent_styles6720]

I didn't expect such an in-depth video, but I highly appreciate that it is!

[@gblargg]

Yes, the technical dive about the isometric games was great.

[@andrewhorton-hall4863]

Skate or Die Bad N Rad for Game Boy is the pinnacle of skateboarding games because it's essentially Castlevania and Contra on a skateboard.

[@tarstarkusz]

I'm pretty sure Space Invaders II or Deluxe is also a cellophane color game. Space invaders though is one of those games where you absolutely have to play on an arcade cabinet. There is no home system that can reproduce the space invaders look even today. The Space Invaders monitor was not shown in the cabinet. You cannot really see the monitor, at least with the original releases. There is a double mirror in the cabinet. This effect combines the background drawing of the moon and, more importantly, creates see-through invaders that look almost like ghosts. The effect is very good. The closes a modern machine can come to reproducing it, which it really cannot, is by showing a video screen where the invaders have that ghostly appearance. I think one of the handheld companies just released a handheld version of space invaders that uses this trick in its cabinet. I hear it reproduces the effect fairly well.

[@ApatheticallyClowning]

You could almost certainly reproduce something similar with filters and overlays in something like retroarch. I dont think I've seen a cabinet in over a decade.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@ApatheticallyClowning No you cannot. There is a miniature cabinet that has this pepper's ghost effect. It cannot be reproduced without the right equipment. (the miniature has the right equipment) If you have ever seen a real ghost in a room in a special effect, that is what you are seeing. It involves a special type of mirror. The invaders are "ghosts" (in that you can see through them) on the original cabinet.

[@stevesrover]

Love these technical videos!

[@JMFSpike]

The Super Game Boy was amazing and in a way extended the SNES' life in the west to even beyond what it was in Japan. My sister and I made pretty heavy use of it up until the Game Boy Player was released, but even after that it was occasionally still used for a few more years. I just wish that it would have had a lot more pre-selected palettes programmed into it for games that were released before it existed. I believe it's pretty much just 1st party games that got that treatment, such as Metroid 2 and Alleyway.

[@coleshores]

Dang, no Faceball 2000? That was an absolute marvel on the Gameboy. It even offered 4 player portable deathmatch

[@JathraDH]

*Faceball lol. Assuming auto correct.

[@coleshores]

@@JathraDH damn good catch. I am changing it now

[@WILFORDCLUX]

Hey, were you still going to make a second video about the Nintendo DS? :)

[@gooeydude574]

The Wario Land series needs more love

[@bland9876]

I think it would have been interesting if Nintendo was announcing a bunch of Mario s*** and Wario burst through the Nintendo direct and basically hijacks it disses Mario and says he's making Super Wario All-star, then Nintendo shows a game that looks like a rip off of Super Mario All-Stars but with Wario stuff and then the actual games on the collection are warriorland 1 2 3 4 and the virtual boy one all in full color as if they were all remade for the Game boy color (including colorizing the vb one) I feel they would most likely not add Shake Demetion to this game.

[@gooeydude574]

@@bland9876 interesting would be an understatement

[@bland9876]

@@gooeydude574 yes definitely. I would give themy $60 for sure.

[@monolalia]

Whoa! I didn’t know Gameboy games could look so interesting and creative. Even my GBA collection is overwhelmingly “flat” (with V-Ralley, Iridion, and GBC Alone in the Dark among the exceptions). Makes sense to me that those 3D and isometric games came from developers with strong home computer roots. Odd ducks among all the cutesy tile-based top-down and side-on games that so often made console games of this early post-Atari school look so uninspiring, safe, and toyish to me compared to what was going on in computerland.

[@AnthonyFlack]

I have a Super Game Boy and a copy of Space Invaders but I never tried them together... I never would have known. I'll have to try that now. Donkey Kong is easily one of my top Game Boy games.

[@thezood]

I love when games show 200 mph but display a speed a bit slower than me riding a bike. It's cute some how

[@sanmeiwolf]

Like the M&Ms driving game which belted out the absurd "APPROACHING SOUND BARRIER!" announcement, even as the cars putter along at what looks like maaaaybe 30 MPH.

[@Mysda_]

This reminds me of the GBC. In Japan they got Shiren The Wanderer, and I still cannot believe how good the intro looks. The game is a dungeon crawler with quite a lot of content and on top of that it looks really great. But thats GBC

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

I still have my copy of Space Invaders for the game boy and it is still one of the most impressive and odd Game Boy cartridges, containing the Game Boy, Super Game Boy AND the Super Nintendo game in one cartridge. And the SNES version is my favorite of the three and it plays the best imho. And yes, god bless Argonaut. They helped Nintendo into the 3D era and their contribution can still be felt today.

[@uberDirk]

You forgot to mention that you can even change the border in space invaders! :)

[@Fuuntag]

9:31“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” Also with X they needed to sacrifice 1 of the frames per second to guarentee full compatibility with all revisions of the Game Boy (minor ones of the original monocrome released unit).

[@andiewand9452]

Dude, like... Everythings on point.. But your way of voicing gives me pain. Reminds me of "dude where is my car", but on alkohol and lemmy vibes...

[@matthewrease2376]

I have the SNES Space Invaders on my Wii (virtual console). I never knew it had such a wild backstory.

[@Smaxx]

Neat, didn't expect to be surprised, but didn't know about the Space Invaders port. That's neat. Too bad that's (together with extra hardware in cartridges) something we'll probably never see returning that way (if you ignore stuff like next-gen patches on newer consoles).

[@Sinistar1983]

If you ever do a future homebrew episode on gameboy color games. Look at Eternal Memory as that game pushes the GBC far beyond what was thought possible.

[@Barcrest]

Always good to see a new video from you sir.

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks!

[@TheJadeFist]

There's also a japanese version of the Space Invaders game as a Super Famicom cart. It has the same art as the splash screen for the arcade mode on the cover. I don't have it, but I've seen it, I think it's the same game, without the extra step of the Super Gameboy in between. Because I know the Super Gameboy version, works because there's just a full rom for it hiding on the gameboy cart.

[@TweeterMan287]

Awesome channel!

[@RightNowMan]

You're awesome, very enjoyable content.😁

[@arashikou6661]

Yes! Donkey Kong ‘94!! One of my favorite games to this day. A really brilliant little puzzle-platformer that defied a lot of common Mario conventions. Such a pity people often mistake it for just a bland port. (Though, TBF, the game’s prologue pretending it’s a port before subverting the ending of Donkey Kong and revealing its true scope is brilliant.) I just replayed it recently, and the gameplay still holds up. It deserves way more attention than it gets, rather than always being forgotten in favor of Mario vs. Donkey Kong instead.

[@The_Zeta_Male]

hey dawg, love your channel. can you make a video on Gamecube games that really pushed the hardware like you did with the PS2?

[@Sharopolis]

Working on that right now!

[@therunawaykid6523]

I would say Mario sunshine that game imo still has some of the best looking water and water effects I’ve seen in a game even today - it also had reflective surfaces in the game world like those big mirrors you had to ground stomp those enemies off of

[@incognitiosaystransrights]

19:10 its not the only game that ran code on the snes. the super gameboy version of animaniacs has an enhanced soundtrack on the super gameboy

[@stevethepocket]

Is "cellophane mode" in _Space Invaders_ the first instance of a game trying to recreate the look of a retro platform and going overboard with it? Because there's no way the tinting on the original cabinet screen was _that_ visible in the black space.

[@Sharopolis]

Yes, I was lucky enough to play on an original Space Invaders cab not long ago and it's not that bad in real life.

[@daviddyer3543]

Now you're playing with POCKET POWER!!!

[@tarstarkusz]

7:40 The Lynx version is OK, so I hear. One of the few machines at the time suitable to the game.

[@corncobjohnsonreal]

I think it's cool that your voice sounds like Popeye the sailor man's

[@Betapvnk]

Donkey Kong Land series

[@Fools_Requiem]

Look into V-Rally. The regular GB version didn’t get a US release, but the GBC version did. V-Rally looks like they used the same kind of tricks to make a racing game as Top Gear Rally for the GBA.

[@MrMegaManFan]

Another deep dive from Sharopolis? This is how you make Mondays good!

[@rosebudding235]

Hey what song did you use at 8:10 it's not in the description

[@gustavgnoettgen]

The first one already reminds me of that Austin Powers game, a weird little compilation games with different design styles. It also doesnt always feel like a gb game.

[@geminielectro]

OK, I'll have to dig out my Super Game Boy and my games... I'm going to love rediscovering my Game Boy games.

[@Mordecrox]

What about games that do not FEEL like Game Boy? One day I'm using my legitimately acquired backups and suddenly the controller is vibrating on an old monochrome GB game and assuming my controller is borked. Turns out this ancient game did had rumble support.

[@KaitouKaiju]

Yeah there's games which had a rumble in the cartridge Drill Dozer on GBA is one of my favorite examples

[@johnsimon8457]

Thanks for the video ram views of monster max. I read about how much of a pain the game was to develop but never realized “No that’s completely against how a gameboy game is intended to be programmed.” I played a lot of ‘head over heels’ as a kid and this feels a lot like an expanded version of that. Someone described the Monster Max character on the cover as Knuckles slovenly middle aged dad who still knows how to rock.

[@johnsimon8457]

very nice job cross referencing the credits of the spectrum ports of Hard Drivin’. Nothing happens in a vacuum, people make these games and expertise in one platform sometimes translates to another

[@xenwarrior572]

What's the space shooter at 0:06? And the one at 0:14?

[@jasonblalock4429]

10:00 Not to mention, it's likely one of the few GB games where the smeary screen *helped* by smoothing over graphical flaws.

[@joshuahensley9395]

Is monster max made with a similar technique as the 3d sonic game for the genisis?

[@therunawaykid6523]

Well they both have an isometric view so possibly

[@lucidu4euh]

Faceball 2000 should be here as well 🙂

[@Tatulak]

a lot of cool information! thank you so much

[@Fools_Requiem]

The 1994 Space Invaders port will never not be an interesting bit of video game trivia.

[@Eigengrau608]

That occlusion is really impressive

[@Dwedit]

Whoops, I see you accidentally referred to the Super Game Boy as the "Game Boy Player" once...

[@keaton718]

At least 85% of what makes Shar's videos so interesting is how he talks. I can watch his long videos start to finish, but if someone else voices the exact same videos I would have turned it off.

[@JanoschNr1]

Monsert Max is just a copy of the Elephant and the mouse gameboy game ... or was it the other way around?

[@therealsimdan]

If I recall correctly, one of the GameBoy Madden football games actually supported two players on the Super GameBoy.

[@pokepress]

Wario Blast pulled a similar trick.

[@Controllerhead]

> SGB1 runs games at a better framerate Well, a faster framerate yes, but it won't lead to better performance in games. It's just running the entire system in lockstep, including the sound, 2.4% faster than the original Gameboy (4.295 MHz instead of 4.194 MHz) because it uses the SNES clock signal divided by 5. If you compare audio rips side by side you can hear that the songs are sped up and pitched up a bit! The SGB2 fixes this by having its own independent clock signal in the cartridge.

[@therunawaykid6523]

That first game is super impressive for a gameboy game the isometric style works really well, I honestly thought it was only possible to make 2d games on the system I think that style could have worked well for a platformer I would have loved to see a Mario platformer with that isometric style

[@siskodefiant4275]

Donkey Kong 94 was absolutely phenomenal. I played the crap out of it back in the day.

[@rionthemagnificent2971]

Its a shame that other Arcade classic GB games didn't include this little easter egg like space invaders. Especially the pac-man games. "The ghosts are hiding in your SNES! Help Pac-man get rid of them."

[@stevethefishdotnet]

I bought the Japanese Space Invaders for Game Boy and it's just a straight port. It does not feature the special Super Game Boy interface.

[@tarstarkusz]

For Gameboy games, the Super Gameboy is really the best way to play them. Even the best gameboy screen cannot compete with a CRT TV. Anyone who was playing with a gameboy in the late eighties / early nineties is now old enough so that a 2.5" screen that is massively subject to motion blur is more trouble than its worth to play the games. The lack of a backlight really sucks too. I was 19 or 20 when the Gameboy came out and I hated the screen then.

[@old8ox]

Never seen Days of Thunder before. I‘m actually impressed.

[@PinBBro]

HOW DOES THE RACE DRIVING GAME BOY PORT LOOK AND MOVE BETTER THAN THE SNES ONE I JJDNSND. WHAT

[@Controllerhead]

Look up the SA-1 Romhack of Race Drivin, it improves the framerate a decent bit!

[@whitetiana3022]

i have "race drivin'" on the game boy. i got it from a bargain bin in the mid to late 90s. it was a terribly unfun game. (fun story: i also got the japanese version of "Bonk's Adventure" in the same bargain bin, which i didn't know what it was called till about 20 years later because i couldn't read japanese. no idea what a japanese copy of bonk was doing being sold in switzerland in the mid to late 90's but there you have it.)

[@teddyaldridge7871]

Donkey kong country on the game boy was a huge use of the game boys power and no mistake

[@SNESTestberichte]

Altered Space and Monster Max look quite astonishing for GB standards...

[@AlessandroCussino]

Nice work !!

[@bland9876]

When I first found out about the super Game boy I was kind of mad that the Game boy player doesn't let you do that. I mean sure you can have rumble in certain games but you can't have the awesome borders or anything even on Super Game boy games.

[@stevethepocket]

The big surprise here is that it's faster to render black and white bitmap graphics with aggressive use of dithering to recreate the two shades of gray than to just use actual gray pixels in huge solid blocks. Someday I'd like someone like Retro Game Mechnics Explained to dig into that one.

[@Sharopolis]

It's because of the bit plane memory layout, the Game Boy wasn't the only classic system to do it that way. I'd like to see Retro Game Mechanics do that one too, because I'm sure he could explain it better than I could!

[@DELTARYZ]

if you have an image that is only comprised of black or white, each pixel's color can be represented with a single binary digit (1 or 0). To include the other two shades of gray for the full 4 colors of the game boy, you have to include another digit, so each pixel is therefore represented by 00, 01, 10, or 11 depending on its shade. That is double the amount of memory required per each pixel.

[@stevethepocket]

@@DELTARYZ I guess it would depend on how this would be spit out onto the screen. Internally you would still have to process and store the dithered parts as two additional "colors", plus you have the additional overhead of generating the patterns from that. Externally... well, I don't know if the Game Boy has a dedicated 1-bit-color mode or not. If it does, then yes, you can save a lot of time and probably memory by using that. If not, it depends on how tile data is stored. If each row is one byte for all the low bits followed by a byte for all the high bits-and black and white both have the high bit clear-then you could just set all the odd bytes to 0x00 and leave them that way for the rest of the game, only needing to write new data into the even bytes.

[@RydiasRevenge]

Monster Max reminds me a lot of Mystic Towers on PC.

[@johneygd]

To me donkeykong land 1 and 3 and supermarioland 2 an asterix and smurfs hardly looked like a gameboy since they do contain a chockful of details including flued animated sprites and asterix en battle toads even do show parallax scrolling or do show a multi scrolling background,it’s something very uncommon on the gameboy, About the supergameboy,it’s amezing what can be done on supergameboy but too bad a high colorpallet can only be shown on static screens while lower colorized levels can scroll, Also despite those old gameboy games were NEVER designed for the gameboycolor,but since the gameboycolor do have a costumized colorpallet for many old gameboy games including supermario land 1. 2,wario land and donkeykong land 1.2.3 etc,,, they do look more colorful,so good in fact that you will start to wonder if they were only originally ment for the old gray brick gameboy.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Frisky Tom on SGB looks more like an Apple II game or a Spectrum port to CPC.

[@0Akeldama0]

where in britain does this accent come from?

[@kyotokid]

Impressive coding techniques, cheers for the video!

[@SweetStevieAaron]

Horrah! New vid :)

[@trapez77]

You should show the games with the original olive colors. They look like shot in black and white

[@sentienttrees]

Donkey Kong on the Super GameBoy was the best!

[@JaseNeverSleeps]

I can indeed confirm, every one of these games definitely look like they belong on the gameboy

[@thecunninlynguist]

Monster Max and Altered Space look incredible. Been playing Legends via NSO, and without the SGB enhancements, feels/looks like a GB game. DK 94 has always been amazing...can't wait for the M v DK remake in a few weeks.

[@linkthehero8431]

Yeah, I wish Nintendo would add the SGB feature set to the NSO app. They seem to love ignoring the thing.

[@thecunninlynguist]

@@linkthehero8431 yeah. Would be cool to have that feature

[@PriddhasPengu]

@@linkthehero8431 It's like that ever since the 3DS Virtual Console days, Nintendo just actively pretends the Super Game Boy add-on doesn't even exist, even though they made it with their own hands in Japan. Most GB emulators out there at least acknowledge the mere existence of the Super Game Boy...

[@Dinosaur_News_Center]

I think the colors still give it away, but your explanation on the tech that makes the game possible helps people like me appreciate what I'm seeing. While I'm here, do you or anyone know whether the Triforce logo in Link to the Past made of actual polygons or just clever animation?

[@3rdalbum]

You referred to it consistently as the Game Boy, rather than the Garbage Bag or the Grinning Bear or the Gamma Beam.

[@ThomasSerruques]

nice to see some 3d graphics on old gb. i knew of X but not the others. thanx

[@JathraDH]

Was also Faceball which I never see mentioned anywhere. It even had a 1x1 (actually apparently up to 16 player) vs mode with the link cable. My friend and I played it a lot lol.

[@TDRR_Gamez]

Shocked Shantae isn't on this list. Maybe it doesn't look out of a better console outright, but it looks a LOT more impressive than anything I expected out of a GBC, particularly compared to the majority of the library. EDIT: wait it's just original GB games, but including ones that run on GBC. My bad! :p

[@Sharopolis]

Yeah, this was OG GB only. I've talked about Shantae in other videos. It's an amazing game!

[@weirddudehi]

NeoGeo can't make some of the Games showed on this vid.

[@R2Bl3nd]

The aspect ratio for all the game footage is slightly stretched out too wide for some reason.

15:14 Kong Cake

[@NexVoidGaming]

I know this is of no use to the commenters or the creator for ananlytics; but my canadian algorithm REALLY likes your accent. A hefty portion of my suggested videos have your same accent.

[@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli]

So like... Does the Space Invaders port suggest that developers could drop a data payload and literally run a SNES executable off a Game Boy from with the SGB as a bootloader? Was this a documented feature of the SNES/SGB SDK? Or did the Space Invaders developer essentially hack the device? LMFAO. How did this come to be? And why is there nothing else like it!?!?!?

[@Sharopolis]

It was a documented feature, its mentioned in the official Nintendo programming manual. I really wish I knew more, there's not much info out there.

[@7thangelad586]

Don’t forget Mysterium ;)

[@AfterBurnerTeirusu]

Toy Story is an another one with SNES music while using the super game boy. Too bad it's a Tiertex game...

[@IAmMarwood]

Great video as always but I think you meant Tim not Geoff/Jeff Follin!

[@IAmMarwood]

I take that back, didn't realise there was ANOTHER brother, I've learnt something today!

[@Sharopolis]

Yep there's three of them!

[@IAmMarwood]

@@Sharopolis Every day is a school day!

[@KBXband]

Game boy is pretty awesome!

[@phoenixmixgaming4625]

Gameboy advance games that don't look like gameboy advance games

[@AcornElectron]

I dunno, the green screen kind of gives it away.

[@jonathan2950]

10:51 😂😂😂

[@hallgeirhansen9124]

Game boy games dont look good with white background. Bring on the green filter please....

[@jarredkrum9894]

They looked like gameboy games to me lol some games just had more quality to them then others 🤷🏻‍♂️just like any console or handhelds.

[@AntonioBarba_TheKaneB]

whyyyy do youuu taaaalk like thiiiissss?

[@belstar1128]

because he is from the uk

[@AntonioBarba_TheKaneB]

@@belstar1128 that’s not how normal uk people talk, he sounds like an annoying news reporter

[@fuel-pcbox]

Fun fact about original Game Boy-compatible games that have both Super Game Boy AND Game Boy Color enhancements: Pokemon Gold and Silver fit in that category! No, really, they literally have custom borders for the Super Game Boy (that even differ between Gold and Silver), and a limited amount of color (though not NEARLY as much as running them on a Game Boy Color would get you :P)

[@That-Ninja]

I don't care tbh with U. I don't even like vode games in the first place.

[@JeffGoldblum64]

spoilers: it all looks like gameboy games