Fuck the Super Game Boy (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Fuck the Super Game Boy (2010)

loveconquersallgam.es

115 pointsjmduke39 comments

The best was Space Invaders, which was unique in that instead of colouring the Game Boy game, it uploaded a full SNES version of the game into RAM and executed it.

I recall the Game Boy Colour doing something similar, though it apparently had its own system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Color#Color_palettes_u....

And now I'm trying to remember what the Game Boy Tower in Pokemon Stadium made the games look like...

If I recall correctly the GameBoy Color could only assign sprites 3 colors.

What's interesting is Nintendo also made the GameCube GameBoy Advance attachment much later

That whole series was a great read. Having grown up after the SNES (I only have very vague memories of the N64 as a kid), I spent a good hour reading it and looking up wiki articles in between.

Those footnotes were annoying though. In-text they're numerical, but at the bottom of the page they're alphabetical. Wtf?

Whoa, did Super Mario Bros have a palette of just four colors? Amazing!

No, but each sprite did.

I can't speak for the GameBoy system, but I've spent years hacking on the NES. The way the color system breaks down is you have a palette of 4 colors. From there you can load 4 "background" palettes along with 4 "sprite" palettes at any time. The sprites are things like Mario or a Goomba while the background items are things like the ground blocks or tubes.

For an example of what the palette setup looks like in practice, take a glimpse at this video[0] - Disclaimer: I made this back when I was in highschool and I haven't watched it since, so I may wind up embarrassing myself here...

[0] - http://youtu.be/_J5qI8BkENA?t=22s [1] -

> I can't speak for the GameBoy system, but I've spent years hacking on the NES.

Me too! Are you on the nesdev.com forum?

Yes and no. I've used the forums a bit having asked and answered questions. Most of my hobby was in modifying the games and hardware, eventually dabbling in homebrew development. My name there is the same as it is here, but I haven't used it in years as my career has kept me busy.

I love reading about tech in games trivia!

My favourite is still the article about Star Craft 2 and pathfinding.

Do you have the link for that? Thanks

I would guess he is referring this one: http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-h...

You probably already know Simon schreibt, but for the other that want other game tech tecnique, it's a great blog: http://simonschreibt.de/

Aaah super game boy. I think Nintendo has a chance of doing something similar with the DS and Wii U... that would be awesome for the Wii today.

A bit off topic, but I've got to ask - why use the word "fuck"? It conveys arrogance, derisiveness, and a sense of link-baity-ness. I also don't see how it has anything to do with an analysis of the algorithm of the gameboy colors.

You'd have to read the whole series, it makes perfect sense at the end.

It has to do with Nintendo's supposed attitude towards the device and the many lost opportunities.

I once merely disagreed with Christina Love on twitter whereas she blocked me, sicked her followers on me, and went on a tirade about how awful I was - attacking things from my twitter bio that had nothing to do with my comment. Professional isn't a word I'd use to describe her.

I'm sure this is a completely fair characterization of the situation and not a one-sided rant that lacks in crucial information.

Trust me, she's definitely unprofessional. And her games aren't very good unless you're an SJW.

I had a whole list of links to post, but I'll just leave it at this:

https://twitter.com/christinelove/status/483834786885038081

Paraphrased, "People who think my games are bad are homophobic"

You've got to read pretty deeply into that tweet to come away with that perception. Why not just include the tweet, instead of paraphrase it:

"People who claim to be feminists but then shit on queer girls just for liking games that represent them ARE THE FUCKING GROSSEST"

He thinks "SJW" is a for-serious pejorative. What were you expecting?

Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story are badass and y'all should play them. (Digital is free.) Hate Plus is interesting and a bit experimental; I don't think it works perfectly but it sure ain't bad.

(edit: ooh, downvotes! Sorry, fellow straight white dudes, people saying things that make us uncomfortable doesn't make them "social justice warriors". Gonna have to learn to deal, guys.)

Please don't bring "SJW" here. If you can't say what you mean without a slur, even if it would cost 8 or 12 more words, maybe it doesn't belong here.

I don't agree with the parent comment bringing some random unrelated twitter drama into this thread, but c'mon, "SJW" is not a "slur".

I had no idea what you were referencing; for those playing the home game:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SJW

"A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation."

I don't know whether or not that applies, but you learn something new everyday. I should go post about this on the kiktweet the kids are using these days.

Nope. I'm not a SJW (and seriously, you're not helping the conversation by bringing that in here), and I've loved all of her games. Not that it's relevant here - turns out this article is about the Game Boy, not Christine Love, not her games. This is totally unnecessary.

You're right, and I apologise. Regardless of my personal opinions on Christine Love, what I said was an unnecessary and personal attack, and a diversion from what this thread should have been about: an interesting look at the technical aspects of the Super Game Boy.

Pretty please, it's a perfectly nice hacking article, let's not turn that into a drama thread...

Yes please. Another request for the meta-department's box, can people stop posting (and upvoting) comments whose content is solely a criticism of the tone or language of the submission (or another comment)?

I've met Christine a couple times and while I don't agree with her on everything I respect her work and I am extremely suspicious of the way you describe your interaction with her. Something tells me you aren't telling the whole story.

Christine is emphatically not an unreasonable person, especially when you consider the shitflood of abuse she gets from the gaming community. I'd agree she isn't professional in all respects, but I think our definitions of "professional" differ. I say it because I had a minor beef with the way she handled the release of Hate Plus, it had OS X bugs she tried to refer up to Ren'Py rather than handling it herself and I felt like that wasn't cool. I have this sneaky feeling that most people who say it, though, just don't like what she says, and that's not "unprofessional", that's she's-right-and-I'm-wrong-and-feels.

My comment got down voted out of visibility but for the record my note of unprofessionalism was more around the personal attacks than the swearing. I can deal with swearing.

Link to the tweet?

Because I'm guessing it's not as straightforward as you portray it in context.

EDIT: Oh look. I found it[1]. And I was right.

[1] - https://twitter.com/donatj/status/441687625154691072

You're barging into a conversation around a charity thing for a (great) guy facing close to the most dire of personal calamities to start beating your political drum about which nobody gives a shit...and you think Christine is to blame here? And don't pretend you didn't mean to[2], you were being "positive and affirming" about the sad reality that a sick guy had to pass the hat amongst his also-pretty-broke friends to maybe be able to not destroy his family. And to claim you meant anything otherwise is either a lie or a sign of disconnect from basic humanity.

Christine didn't "sic her followers on you", it was a public tweet and a lot of people like and respect Brandon and you decided to piss in the pool. There's a time and a place even for your brand of politics and you chose not to pick an appropriate one. You earned that ire by being an asshole. It might not have been "professional" to take umbrage with it, but it was human and it was moral and it was right.

While I'm at it: you also are crowing about having Christine's "army"[3] after you. Have some perspective: no such thing exists. Heck, I'm not a friend of hers, I don't even follow her on Twitter because honestly her feed is kind of annoying, but she is a decent person and I can muster a little outrage on her behalf when you want to pretend being an entitled prick didn't bring down that very minor fracas upon you.

So stop it.

[2] - https://twitter.com/donatj/status/484431783442665472

[3] - https://twitter.com/donatj/status/484430791296823297

Hear hear.

Linkbait gets links. This is a link site. Occupational hazard. It's a free Internet, but this makes HN look bad and "mature" language turns away mature audiences.

It's a blog title. They probably didn't expect the title to get posted on HN (considering it's 4 years old.)

It's almost as if HN's policy of obstinately replacing user-submitted titles with original site titles is sometimes misguided...

It's explained at the end of the last article[0] in the series.

[0] http://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2487450388/fuck-the-super-...

Specifically,

    Now, imagine you’re a Game Boy developer. You want to add the
    bullet point “Super Game Boy compatible!” to your box, because
    it’ll help sell a few more copies. But not many people own one. If
    you want to do something really neat, it’ll add entire days to the
    project, require changing some art resources, and doing extra
    testing on a completely different system. Going that extra
    distance is going to cost a lot of money, and won’t help that much
    because most people don’t own an SGB to see it. What are you going
    to say?

    Man, fuck the Super Game Boy!

I don't think the cartridge port is big enough.

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