Arcade Classic 4 - Super GameBoy - Advent Countdown - Day 21
0I hope you are all healthy and safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.
I thought I'd do a countdown to Christmas 2022 with a GameBoy Cartridge themed advent calendar. I'd hoped to make the videos a little more slick but this is a rough and ready proof of concept really to see if anyone wants to countdown to Xmas with 24 different GameBoy games - one each day!
The footage is genuine cartridges running on a SNES via the Super GameBoy. As a Xmas gift feel free to use the footage in your own videos (just give credit or link to my channel)
This is Arcade Classics 4. There were 4 games in this series with each pulling together a couple of classic vintage arcade game ports to the GameBoy.
Arcade Classics 1 was Asteroids & Missle Command
Arcade Classics 2 was Centipede & Millipede
Arcade Classics 3 was Galaga & Galaxian
There was also a non-numbered entry which was Super BreakOut & Battlezone.
And this one - Arcade Classics 4 - was Defender & Joust.
Defender was a hugely influential twitch shooter with a looping playfield, super fast gameplay and a sense of "just one more go". Joust sees you riding an Ostrich and trying to land on the other riders from above in order to eliminate them. I'm terrible at both games but hopefully you get a feel for them here.
In terms of the games they are fairly bare bones ports although the Super GameBoy does add nice custom borders for each machine. Other than high scores there isn't much else here & it does feel a little cheap to only have two games on the cartridge when other compilations pulled together more (and newer/bigger games at that). Still - it does what it says on the tin!
The Super GameBoy has always fascinated me and fans of my channel will know I love it when portable games can be played on the big screen! It still has the limitation of the GameBoy in that 4 shades can be used as the games need to be compatible and playable on the console - however some clever palette switching and game design means you can show more colours on screen by defining different palettes for different areas of the screen.
I play it here through the Super GameBoy in order to show the game a little clearer. For some reason my capture card always seems to struggle with the SNES (and therefore the Super GameBoy) not sure why as everything else pretty much works fine through it.
I'm also thinking of doing a series of videos on specially enhanced Super GameBoy compatible games - including the very clever game and programming designed to maximise the use of colour while remaining compatible with the original monochrome handheld, multiplayer modes, enhanced sound and even a hidden game. Let me know if you'd like to see this sort of thing.
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware in this case a SNES & Super GameBoy peripheral (one day I'll get a GBA Consoliser or Analogue Pocket!!!!) I do have my old GBA De Advance which was a mod to allow GBA games on TV so perhaps I'll use that to capture games too? Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox