Game Boy Camera

The Game Boy Camera was a cartridge with a ball on top: a lens that swiveled round to face you or the world. As of v0.10.0 it is a camera in RetroXR too, and what it photographs is the room you are standing in, from wherever the lens is pointing.

What you need

• The Game Boy Camera ROM, or Japan’s Pocket Camera, in roms/gb/. It is recognized by the cartridge type in its header, so the filename does not matter.
• The mGBA core. Gambatte refuses the camera cartridge outright, so whatever core the Game Boy normally runs on, a machine with the camera in it runs mGBA. Install mGBA from CORES if you have not already.

Taking a picture

1. Spawn a Game Boy (or a Game Boy Color, since the camera works in either) and the Game Boy Camera from your library. It spawns as the camera body, not as a flat cartridge.

2. Push it into the slot like any cartridge. The head and ball stand out of the top.

3. Switch the Game Boy on. The camera’s viewfinder now shows the room, live.

4. Turn the ball to aim. In VR, take the ball with the trigger and swivel it (grip takes the whole cartridge). On desktop, point at the ball, hold the button and roll the mouse wheel. The ball turns about its upright axle, from facing the way the label does (out of the back of the console, at the world) round to facing whoever is looking at the screen.

5. Take the picture with the game’s own shutter button, as on the real thing.

The picture is the room as it really is at that moment: the TV, the furniture, other players, the hardware on the table. It is drawn from a point just outside the lens, so the camera never photographs itself.

It is a 128 × 112 picture, in four shades

The game gets the room at the camera’s own resolution and does its own processing on it, exactly as it did with the real sensor. Do not expect a sharp photo. Expect a Game Boy Camera photo.

Where the photos go

Where they did on the hardware: on the cartridge, in its battery save. The camera’s album, its editing tools, the stamps and the minigames all work on what is saved there, and it follows the same rules as any other cartridge save (see game saves and backups).

To get a photo out of the room as an image file, print it: connect a Game Boy Printer, open a photo, press SELECT and choose print. The torn-off print is saved as a PNG.

Colors and the Pocket Camera

The camera was sold in several colors from one ROM, so the header cannot say which yours was; it spawns blue. The gold Legend of Zelda edition had a ROM of its own and spawns gold. Japan’s Pocket Camera has its own ROM too, and spawns red.

To pick another color, hold the game for a second in the spawn menu. The cartridge options open with the camera’s own colors (red, yellow, green, clear purple, gold and the rest) and a custom color picker. The Body row there can also force the camera body onto a game, or a plain cartridge body onto the camera’s ROM.

Performance

While a Game Boy Camera is switched on, RetroXR draws the room a second time from the lens. That happens for the viewfinder as well as the album, because the core keeps its camera on for as long as the game runs. It is rationed to a modest rate (a dozen pictures a second on a Quest), but if a standalone headset is struggling, switch the Game Boy off when you are not using the camera.