To top it off it had a practise mode like the SNES version and had an option for using lighter, less detailed backgrounds for more visibility. Stellar work. The digitized speech in the game is gonna blow you away. But it deserves special mention for its outstanding soundtrack, one of the very few for Game Boy made by demoscene composers. As much as I’d like to avoid including franchise cash-in games on this or any list, it’s hard to ignore Toy Story Racer. Unlike most platformers on the Gameboy, Wendy is more than just your standard running and jumping. Discover the games that gave each machine its personality. Faceball (known at first as MIDI Maze) originated on the Atari ST as a quirky and simple multiplayer deathmatch game featuring cartoon smiley faces. 20 yrs ago. This is pretty random, but happens more often than it doesn't, so give it a few tries. With parallax scrolling and wonderful special effects the game almost reaches Super NES quality. See Game In Action. The voice clips were crisp and clear — possibly the best examples of the technology on the Game Boy platform. But like many consoles past, the Game Boy’s true potential would remain obscured were it not for the efforts of the inventive software engineers who, like the demosceners before them, pushed the hardware to its maximum. 1. The latter was also, during its time, one of the larger games put be put on a Game Boy cartridge (2 MBit). Don’t be frightened — this won’t hurt a bit. Also worth noting: As far as file size goes, this game is huge. Each level is very vivid in detail and each enemy is very unique. But if you do happen upon a copy, you’ll agree that it’s certainly one heck of a trip watching a PSX-style FMV play on a Game Boy. It’s impressive seeing tons of complex sprite graphics and such, but Alone in the Dark totally goes off the deep end when it comes to the kinds of graphics we’re expecting to see on a Game Boy screen. Will have to explore some of the lesser known (to me) GBC games mentioned here. Free delivery and returns on eBay Plus items for Plus members. First released in Japan on June 14, 1989, Tetris was often bundled with the original Game Boy and went on to sell in excess of 35 million units worldwide. There were some wonderfully colorful GBC games released in 2000 and 2001, but Warlocked was one of the most skilled in using the limted color palette stragically to create different environments and adapt them to different factors. No mention about Densha de Go! Shop for Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare on Amazon.com, What Makes The Game Special: Mario Tennis has many vibrant colors and nice looking environments. The trees sometimes have leaves falling from them and other elements such as fire are very well-done. Game Boy Color Games. See Game In Action. These three Gameboy Color games are third person adventure games that have a similar style to the LucasArts PC adventure games of old. Anyone getting Dragonbourne? Shop for Wendy: Every Witch Way on Amazon.com. Even though, we wouldn’t see a really good port until the Game Boy Advance, who would have thought that Rare and Nintendo would be able to so closely replicate the look and feel of that ground-breaking game on the aging Gameboy Color platform. Action/Adventure (3) Sports (3) Family/Kids (2) Application (1) Casino & Cards (1) Platformer (1) Puzzle (1) Racing (1) Publisher . One obvious challenge is displaying and animating DKL’s character sprites, and to avoid excessive memory use, only one ‘Kong’ could be displayed at a time. Game credits for Laura (Game Boy Color) database containing game description & game shots, cover art, credits, groups, press, forums, reviews and more. Super Mario Bros 3: Fun Edition. Shop for Mario Tennis on eBay funny…I have warlocked, and the music does sound great! The fighter sprites are also not super-deformed like the popular SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millennium on the Neo-Geo Pocket, but do their best to recreate the arcade original, thereby keeping the Street Fighter purists happy. It still has some good animations and some really slimmed down 3D models. Shop for Toki Tori on Amazon.com, Release Date: 06/12/2000 Shantae is one of the most commonly cited examples of latter day technical amazement for the Game Boy Color. An obscure title arriving late in the console cycle, Project S-11 for the Game Boy Color is pretty average as far as shmups go. What Makes The Game Special: Shop for Oracle of Ages/Seasons on eBay Shop for Dragon’s Lair on Amazon.com, Release Date: 07/24/2000 The Game Boy portable system has a library of games, which were released in plastic ROM cartridges.The Game Boy first launched in Japan on April 21, 1989 with Super Mario Land, Alleyway, Baseball and Yakuman.For the North American launches, Tetris and Tennis were also featured, while Yakuman was never released outside of Japan. Shop for Donkey Kong Country on Amazon.com, Release Date: 07/16/2001 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. RELATED: The 5 Hardest To Find Game Boy Games (& The 5 Most Commonly Found) Succeeded by the Game Boy Color in 1998, Nintendo's 8-bit handhelds would enjoy over a decade of success before being succeeded by the 16-bit Game Boy Advance in 2001. What Makes The Game Special: Programmers at RARE wanted to retain as much fluidity and detail from the SNES version’s graphics as possible and as a result, all three iterations of Donkey Kong Land had to work some serious magic to run smoothly on Nintendo’s 8-bit portable. Game Boy Color games to play on Super Game Boy? Syphon Filter for the Gameboy? In fact, this game is based off of the Super Famicom (the Japanese version of our SNES) incarnation of the game. In addition to the battle graphics, the towns all looked unique. There’s also some extremely elaborate sprite graphics, especially for the boss characters, which move surprisingly well despite their large size. Start playing by choosing a Pokemon Emulator game from the list below. To the average player, the most apparent limitations are found in the system’s graphics and sound. Since the core gameplay was so rudimentary, developers were left with plenty of room to include faux-3D animation effects as balls roll around and the pool cue circles the table. Shop for Toy Story Racer on Amazon.com, Release Date: 12/05/2000 I agree with Anon, Wacky Races looked really great on the GBC : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btd45BomdMo. It features Joe, a car battler, who must battle with others to get money for his car that he wants to improve. Shop with Afterpay on eligible items. See Game In Action. I didn’t enjoy the gameplay nearly as much as Metal Gear Solid, but the animation and large sprites definitely pushed the Gameboy Color’s extra power. With all of this graphical wonderment, it is no wonder the game takes up a 32 Meg cart. Impressive graphics for the GBC handheld. Wendy also has a  There are also three levels that are only available if played on a Game Boy Advance. The gameplay isn’t exactly cutting edge, but the experience is immensely pure and the onscreen result is immediately gratifying and you can’t ignore how good the game looks on the screen. In Antwerp, Belgium, Ilhan Ünal produces the largest Game Boy measuring 1.01 m tall, 0.62 m wide and 0.2 m deep. You’ll find lots of small yet very pleasing surprises all throughout the game. The graphics, too, are bright and well-stylized, even if the game itself is a fairly straightforward, “rail-oriented” platformer (it reminded me quite a bit of those Bart Simpson games for NES). The first two are Pulsewave channels, typically used for melodies and occasionally sound effects. Condition is "Good". There’s always plans Not sure where it fits in on priorities/schedules though . One of the first obvious choices for technically impressive Game Boy software, the Donkey Kong Land series began at the tail end of the original Game Boy’s lifespan. What Makes The Game Special: It would appear that Rare is attempting to make this one of the biggest Game Boy Color titles yet. hobie-wan, you are correct. Play Pokemon Games online in your browser. Specifically, when you stumble upon the fact that this game has a fully-rendered CGI cutscene animations, accompanied by an over-compressed 4-bit audio sampling of the series’ “theme song.”. Shop for Warlocked on eBay I never knew that Toki Tori was a GBC game. Things get much more interesting when you have the ability to reverse gravity on the fly. . But strangely, with the exception of Donkey Kong Land 3’s Japanese version, none of the games in this series were released for anything but the original B&W Game Boy. Why did the original Game boy have a Black And Green screen? See Game In Action, What Makes The Game Special: :Search for Nintendo Game Boy Color ROMs:. GBC Test Drive Off-Road 3 Ships. Decades later, countless console historians have credited the Game Boy as an impressive feat of engineering that championed the hardware of its time. Broaden your horizons by digging deeper into different types of games. The best-selling game on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color is Tetris. Shop For Ottifanten: Kommando Störtebeker on eBay, Shop for Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare on eBay, Shop for Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare on Amazon.com, Shop for Wendy: Every Witch Way on Amazon.com, Shop for Street Fighter Alpha on Amazon.com, Shop for Donkey Kong Country on Amazon.com, Shop for Dragon Warrior III on Amazon.com, Shop for Alice in Wonderland on Amazon.com, Shop for Oracle of Ages/Seasons on Amazon.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btd45BomdMo, Color and animation on par with early GBA games, Interesting lighting and scaling effects used in a complimentary way, Masterpiece of a soundtrack that stood out from the crowd, Pseudo 3D graphics with first-person perspective, Lots of pre-rendered graphics add up to convincing environment, A masterpiece of scrolling parallax layers, Making use of extremely limited color palette to create useful textures, Impressive 3D environments with vector graphics, Using limited memory effiently to capture the essence of a groundbreaking SNES hit, Using multiple sprites to create large, detailed character models, Amazing conversion of a laserdisc classic considering the technical limitations, Using the Game Boy Color’s limited resources to create a full and rich RTS setup, Large maps filled with moving sprites scrolling smoothly, Using a limited color palette effectively to create engaging environments, Memorable soundtrack and crisp digitized speech, Larger ROM size for a GB cart, especially in 1991, Rich soundtrack and sound quality when played on real Game Boy Color hardware, Impressive soundtrack that makes the most of the GBC’s sound capabilities, Good use of sound chip for the soundtrack, Larger-than-average sprites with fluid animations, Pretty cool, but gimmicky pseudo 3D graphical effects, Used pre-rendered graphics effectively to create a Mario Kart-like experince to the GBC, Recreates the arcade experience surprisingly well for the GBC, Fit what it could in the GBC’s limited memory, Cool character perspective with smooth animation, Lots of wonderful color and animation to bring graphical adventure games to the GBC, Some of the best sprite work on both the GB and GBC, Nothing gimmicky, but well-rounded graphics and sound. Your email address will not be published. Its flawless, lag-free execution here on the Game Boy, however, is unparalleled. Discover the rarest and more valuable games of all time. Nostalgia.GBC is a high quality GBC emulator based on the most up-to-date revision of the famous gambatte. Game Boy Color GBC Game CASE ONLY - Pokemon Trading Card Game (AU) AU $13.50 + AU $9.50 shipping. Other Games. It is the single largest GBC game released. 2000 – Pokémon Gold and Silver (Game Boy Color) sold over 1.4 million units upon its first week of release in the United States. NO GAMES ARE INCLUDED IN THE APP! There must be like 5 minutes of it — pretty good for a Gameboy cart. Because of memory constraints, the main difference you will notice about the Gameboy version of Donkey Kong Country is that they don’t have both Donkey Kong and Diddy on the screen at once. Shop for Rayman on Amazon.com, Release Date: 09/12/2001 I’m still digging around more, so I just may find some more titles to add to this list. Perfect Dark probably has the best sound of any original Gameboy game. For graphics, the Game Boy renders sprites and backgrounds in a way very similar to the NES — a grid divides the screen into 8×8-pixel ‘blocks’ forming a total resolution of 160×144 pixels. The sprites themselves, oversized to preserve the detail of the CGI originals, were composed of multiple sprites stacked together and animated independently. What Makes The Game Special: Shop for Alice in Wonderland on eBay First let’s briefly glaze over some of the technical capabilities of the Game Boy hardware. Climan took a special Game Boy Color cartridge and loaded it with all the codes needed to control the Apple TV. Shop for Rayman on eBay You can see some early examples of parallax layer scrolling in Gradius: The Interstellar Assault and its prequel, Nemesis. Developers Paragon 5, a small studio founded heavily on the demoscene mantra of “more with less”, had the good fortune of having esteemed composers Jonne “Purple Motion” Valtonen and Aleksi “Heatbeat” Eeben on call. There is no jerky motion like the GB version of Street Fighter II. If you are talking about purely GB games with no GBC support. Nice article though. Technical wonders that creatively max out what each console's capability. The game actually does portray a creepy experience, but personally, I look at this title as more of a technical demo than a good form of entertainment. Also, good luck finding even one other person who owns this insanely obscure game. And let’s not forget the absolutely amazing soundtrack by legendary game composer Jake “Virt” Kaufman, an achievement in its own right. Nintendo Gameboy Color PRINCE OF PERSIA Video game FREE POSTAGE. I have it, and its graphics and sound are quite amazing, possibly better than the other title. Transport is provided for away games. Game Boy Advance GBA Game CASE ONLY - Donkey Kong Country (AU) AU $13.50 + AU $9.50 shipping. What Makes The Game Special: Strategy games are great on the go, but it’s hard to believe that developers could fit a Warcraft-like RTS experince on the Gameboy Color. This is the largest cart for the GBC. This late release is colorful and vibrart with a great cartooney look that makes good use of the Gameboy Color. I just noticed a old gameboy game from 1991 called Mysterium it may look primitive but i am absolutely sure there is not many games like that on gameboy the closest games i can think of like that are X and Faceball 2000 but they arent like Mysterium and generally more advanced ! Shop for Tomb Raider on Amazon.com, Release Date: 03/30/2001 Even though its not in 3D, the graphics in Perfect Dark are still a highlight, with some of the smoothest animation seen on the Gameboy. What was really neat about the animations was that every enemy had different animations, depending on what attack they performed, and they all were smooth and accuratly portrayed. Every little area is well-detailed, and many places look better than a lot of what has been seen on the SNES. The Game Boy has 4 audio channels of stereo sound and each has a unique role. If you thought that Pokemon Crystal was expensive, just wait until you get a load of its older brother. You won’t see really much of any facial expression on the fighters, but there are a surprising number of frames per character. It is the successor to the original Game Boy, but it precedes the Game Boy Advance (which is backwards compatible with GB and GBC games). The most noticeable similarity is the camera perspective, which is from a 45-degree view. Considering memory limits, the mere fact that a good majority of this game runs so well off a cartridge is worthy of praise. Sent with Standard Parcel Delivery. The Game Boy Color port of Cannon Fodder is another journey into “What The Hell, How Did They Do That” territory. Jurassic Park: The Lost World Nintendo gameboy color colour game GBC Oz30. The original and Pocket run with just 8kiB of RAM, whereas the Game Color bumps the number up to 32 KiB. We’ll see how developers used this minimalist setup to great effect in just a bit. This will initially throw of many Donkey Kong Country veterans, but its an acceptable trade-off to keep a smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience. In the 1980’s, a loose international culture of computer graphics artists and musicians formed what is now known as the demoscene. Very interesting. Looking at WIki, assuming it is correct, it doesn’t appear to just be a KB/MB mixup, so I’m not sure what’s correct. Required fields are marked *, Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Understandibly, the little 8hz processor gets a bit strained and shows some slowdown, but it’s amazing how efficiently Warlocked uses the Game Boy Color’s limited resources. A lot of effort was taken by Camelot to make Mario Tennis game look good on the Gameboy, and it paid off . All Rights Reserved. The best example is shown when flying to the Island Open as you can see the ocean and various islands. Either way, I’m sure you will find some times below that are quite impressive for this little 8-device. Game Boy and Game Boy Color games are made available from the 3DS' online shop. Considering that 90% of Game Boy soundtracks are comprised of vanilla-sounding software instruments and half-cocked melodies, Kaufman’s is one of the few that should be regarded as a masterpiece, seamlessly blending middle eastern modes into insanely complex hip-hop and rock arrangements. See Game In Action. Nintendo Game Boy GB and Game Boy Color GBC video game carts - various titles! As usual, Nintendo packaged a wonderful combination of graphics and music in this late entry of its landmark series for the Game Boy Color. Features - Modern, cool-looking & user friendly interface - Highly customizable virtual controller! When you’re working on a game about something as simple as billiards, it’s in your best interests to throw in some sort of gimmick. - Copy your own GBC game files to SD card or Internal Memory. The season is played over an 8-week period. /sdcard/GBC/) - Please search games again after copy new GBC game files. It is also worth mentionning that the opening scene where Ortega battle the Demon Lord is the most beautiful cinematic scene that you will ever see on the GBC, and even topples most of them on the SNES’ RPGs. See Game In Action, What Makes The Game Special: AU $9.95 + AU $9.95 shipping. While most of the games that we cover in this piece are only playable on the more powerful Gameboy Color (The processor is twice as fast as a Game Boy’s, and has three times as much memory), there will be some mentions of some games that were primirily for the original Gameboy. The use of color on Alone in the Dark is outstanding and the the backgrounds look like paintings specially colored for the Gameboy Color. Your email address will not be published. Those that have played X often describe it as “Star Fox for the Game Boy”. There’s also a CGI animated Rayman that dances before the game’s start screen, just because they could. Ottifanten: Kommando Störtebeker is another obscure ‘soundtrack’ pick that has a couple of other things going for it as well. Despite the simple textures and abysmal (by today’s standards) draw distances that resulted, the team at Xanth Software somehow managed to do it. These artists, many of whom went on to make games themselves, engaged in programming contests, creating increasingly impressive audiovisual demonstrations that pushed the physical limits of the hardware they used. Of particular note are the intensely shaded environments, rendered as faithfully as possible from the the console version. However, due to the limitations of such a small screen, some areas come across as too busy, with the developers obviously trying to cram in as much detail as possible. But the rest of the graphics are nothing to scoff at either, and the game as whole stands as a decent port of the PC original. However, there is more than visuals that make Wendy worthy of this list. Shop for Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS on eBay, Release Date: 05/29/1992 ... Nintendo Game Boy GB and Game Boy Color GBC video game carts - various titles! Miraculously, for better or worse, all three games look and play similarly to their SNES counterparts, low pixel counts and limited color palette notwithstanding. Sure, they’re messy and kind of ugly in some cases. Joanna is rendered fairly large walks very naturally. The Alone in the dark link leads to a video of the cancelled resident evil game on GBC rather than alone in the dark. This article will touch on a few examples of notable Game Boy software that resulted from such efforts. This leads to smooth animation, which in turn, leads to better gameplay. Shop for Project S-11 on eBay The Color did have 32kiB, however. The graphics in Dragon Warrior III are vastly improved over the NES version. But the Game Boy Color port  of this survival horror classic is pulling some serious stunts to simulate the ambience of its PC and home console counterparts. Fortunately, this isn’t an issue when playing on the actual GBC hardware, although the music remains at least partially obscured by the constant sound of bullet fire (Remember, like the NES the Game Boy has to occasionally surrender some of its audio channels to play back sound effects). Get a nice roundup of new retro gaming content once or twice a month. Due in part to its Game Boy Color-only status, the screen is overflowing with vibrant colors. Even though it look better than Donkey Kong Land for the original DMG-01, it didn’t push the GBC hardware quite as hard. Sound: Shop for Donkey Kong Country on eBay There’s a lot of graphics packed in here in general, more than the average GBC game. Thank you this was the most interesting video game related article I’ve read all week. Reply. (I wonder how it would turn out if they used the Faceball 2000 engine instead). The Rayman series has always been known for its great character animations, and this version didn’t use the GBC’s 8-bit restrictions as an excuse to break that trend. Despite that there was only room enough for 10 simplistic tracks, whatever programmers Disney hired to make this definitely had their work cut out for them. https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/best-game-boy-color-games Other than that, this article is absolute gold. Students must arrive 30 minutes prior to game time for a warm up and team talk on home game days. Shop with Afterpay on eligible items. You might want to turn the sound off though — as nice as some of the graphics are, the soundtrack is painfully underdeveloped and really quite annoying. One of the biggest rivals was the Sega Game Gear but it was ended in 1997. If you look at everything going on, it’ll be hard to believe the GB Color can handle this, With 4 players, all with a high amount of detail on them, you would think this would get hard on your eyes, but there isn’t even a single flicker. It was not the multi-colored housing, but a color screen! 1200 in 1. I’m pretty sure Faceball 2000 uses a very simple ray casting engine, much like Wolfenstein and other early “3D” first person games. Shop for Shantae on Amazon.com. Shop for Donkey Kong Land on eBay It’s a damn shame I can’t find a copy of The Fish Files anywhere…, Woah, this was a huge read, and a good reminder of just how deep the Game Boy library can go. 2? See Game In Action. The third is WAV, a powerful custom waveform channel which is capable of making much more complex sounds than the Pulsewaves, but has far less volume control. Humble Bundle gives people a good chance to try Pokemon Crystal, the longest story in a Pokemon game ever with 16 gyms and two different Elite Fours. Shop for Faceball 2000 on Amazon.com, Release Date: 12/18/1992 Modeled closely off the design of the NES, it miniaturized Nintendo’s already successful formula for computer entertainment in a compact form factor, igniting the portable gaming market as we know it today. What Makes The Game Special: Yeah I’m pretty sure Syphon Filter was never a Game Boy game. David Whittaker, 280 other games Ben Gunstone, 35 other games Matthew Shepcar, 28 other games Ian J. Bowden, 25 other games Shop for Toy Story Racer on eBay ( Homebrew GB game). Shop for Dragon Warrior III on eBay I had no idea how fantastic cannon fodder looked on GBS, and I’m very interested in getting my hands on as many of these beauties as I can. The backgrounds of the arcade version are duplicated pretty well, and some even feature animation. In addition to the pre-rendered still images used in its cutscenes, the Game Boy Color version of Tomb Raider is noteworthy for its great use of sprites and graphic-intensive background work. While it’s upsetting that a majority of early Game Boy composers didn’t fully utilize these capabilities, we’ll be hearing some surprising exceptions that loaded their unfettered virtuosity into the cartridge memory. HardcoreGaming101 criticizes this decision, calling the results “a blurry, unplayable mess.”, Of course, this is somewhat alleviated when loaded onto a Super Game Boy or Game Boy Color. I’d also offer Killer Instinct as an impressive achievement on the original Game Boy.