Game Boy and Game Boy Color
RetroXR treats the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color as two machines, not one with a setting. Each has its own tile in the spawn menu and its own folder:
roms/gb/ original Game Boy games (.gb)roms/gbc/ Game Boy Color games (.gbc)Both are still clean procedural stand-ins rather than modeled shells. See contributing if you would like to change that.
Two accessories have pages of their own:
- Game Boy Camera: a cartridge with a lens on top that photographs the room you are standing in.
- Game Boy Printer: prints from any game that supports it, onto paper you tear off and keep.
Which machine a game runs as
Section titled “Which machine a game runs as”As of v0.11.1 each machine runs as the hardware it is, whichever cartridge is in it:
- An original Game Boy is an original Game Boy. Its screen is drawn as the green dot-matrix LCD, in the DMG’s four shades, rather than in whatever colors the core would otherwise pick.
- A Game Boy Color colors original Game Boy games itself, from the per-game palettes built into its boot ROM. That is why Tetris or Link’s Awakening looked different on a Color than on the gray brick.
- An original Game Boy takes Game Boy Color cartridges. A dual-mode game (the black cartridges, such as Pokémon Gold, Silver and plenty of others) plays in four shades of green, as it did on the real thing. A Color-only game puts up its own “this game is for Game Boy Color” screen, which is also what it did on the real thing.
Two cores run these machines: Gambatte and mGBA. Either works; the Game Boy Camera is the one cartridge that always runs on mGBA, because it is the only one of the two that supports it.
Cartridges in the right plastic
Section titled “Cartridges in the right plastic”As of v0.9.0 a Game Boy cartridge is a modeled shell, and its color is read off the ROM’s own header, never guessed from the filename:
| Cartridge | Shell |
|---|---|
| Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow (outside Japan) | red, blue, yellow |
| Pokémon Red, Green, Blue, Pikachu (Japan) | standard gray, as they were |
| Pokémon Gold and Silver | gold and silver |
| The Donkey Kong Land series | yellow |
| Dual-mode games (run on both machines) | black |
| Game Boy Color-only games | the clear Game Boy Color cartridge |
| Pokémon Crystal | clear, with Crystal’s glitter |
| Everything else | gray |
The scraped label is printed on the sticker, if you have one. See box art and scraping.
To pick a color yourself, hold the game for a second in the spawn menu instead of tapping it. That opens the cartridge options: a Body row (Auto, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Camera) and the colors that body comes in, plus a custom color picker. More on this in cartridges and discs.
Link leads
Section titled “Link leads”The Game Boy family has three link leads, and they do not all fit everything, because on the real hardware the Pocket and the Color shrank the plug:
| Lead | Plugs | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| DMG-04 | large at both ends | two original Game Boys |
| CGB-003 | small at both ends | two Game Boy Colors, a Color and a Game Boy Advance, and the Game Boy Printer |
| DMG-14 Universal Game Link Adapter | a dongle: large plug, small socket on the back | lets an original Game Boy take a small lead to a Color or to the Printer |
The Game Boy’s spawn card offers the DMG-04 and the adapter; the Color’s offers the CGB-003 and the adapter. Gambatte and mGBA speak the same link, so a Game Boy on one core and a Game Boy on the other link up happily. See link cables for how leads work in general.
Infrared, on the Game Boy Color
Section titled “Infrared, on the Game Boy Color”As of v0.10.0 the Game Boy Color’s infrared port works on both cores, for instance for Pokémon Gold and Silver’s Mystery Gift. There is no lead: two Colors link while each one’s IR window can see the other’s.
- Hold them within about 60 cm of each other, roughly facing, and keep them there for a moment. Once linked, they stay linked out to about 80 cm.
- There has to be a clear line of sight. A wall or a loose object between them breaks it; your hands do not.
- The IR window glows red while the link is live, meaning both machines are switched on and talking, not merely in view of each other.
- A machine with a link lead plugged into a partner is left out of infrared.
These distances are far more forgiving than the hardware’s, which wanted its partner a hand’s width away and nearly dead ahead.
Netplay
Section titled “Netplay”Both Game Boys support rollback netplay, and a linked pair plays over netplay too (see netplay). Everyone in the session needs to be on v0.11.1 or later for a link to cross the network.