Not mine, but I always enjoy seeing these monstrosities.

    • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      20 days ago

      I had the GameBoy Color version of the magnifying glass/speaker/fake joystick combo. It ran the speakers and the light off of its own pair of batteries. The speakers were an upgrade (especially for the stereo sound) but everything else was a gimmick. The incandescent bulb was too dim and housing around the screen made it darker and even more difficult to see:

      Later on in early 2000s we got the worm light. LED and was powered from the link cable port. It was considerably brighter and hardly affected battery life from what I remember:

      We also eventually got magnifying glasses that didn’t have the housing around the screen to darken it:

      • PolydoreSmith@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        20 days ago

        Those worm lights were the first time I ever saw an LED. It was crazy to me that it was so bright it was blue.

        • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          20 days ago

          Same but I was 12 at the time so I didn’t think much about the bulb tech nor it’s color temperature. I was just like “wow that’s a bright bulb”.

          Later on around 2005 I got my first piece of tech with an OLED screen: a Kenwood car stereo. It wouldn’t be for nearly another 20 years when I finally got my first OLED TV.

      • Wahots@pawb.socialEnglish
        3·
        19 days ago

        I miss the worm lights. My cousin had one, and even though I had the Advance SP, I thought the worm LED was super neat.

  • Mycroft 🍊​🐰@meow.social
    19·
    20 days ago

    @The_Picard_Maneuver I had most of this monstrosity! No Action Replay because the Game Genie was enough, and no bottom set of speakers because the side speakers were enough. Not visible was the big heavy rechargable nicad battery that clipped onto the back.

    I also had a backup device, that only backed up the battery backed save data not the whole ROM. But it was useful for overwriting the save data from Pokemon Red over Blue, catching some Blue-exclusive mons, then writing the save data back onto Red. It had the same form factor as the AR shown.

    • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      9·
      20 days ago

      What a legend.

      I remember having a light, magnifying glass (but not this one), and a battery pack, but I can’t remember which attachments were for the original Gameboy vs the Gameboy Color.

    • Mycroft 🍊​🐰@meow.social
      6·
      20 days ago

      @The_Picard_Maneuver Oh and I remember those two little tabs on the top of the magnifying glass part were for a neck strap, as all these attachments nearly doubled the machine’s weight and made it really top-heavy. The strap was to help you hold its overall weight.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      20 days ago

      I also have most of this, sans the bottom speakers! I also have a GameShark. I do not have the watch.

      You can’t use the bottom speakers with the side speakers anyway, since both use the aux jack. If you plug in an aux splitter, the bottom speakers don’t fit on.

  • you_are_dust@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    20 days ago

    What would actually happen if you used an action replay and a game genie at the same time? Would it not even be able to boot up? Would it work and just one supercedes the other? I only ever had game genie so I couldn’t test it. Does anyone know?

    • Metype @pawb.socialEnglish
      4·
      20 days ago

      [EDIT]

      Based on further research (read: exactly one DDG query) It appears the Action Replay is actually significantly more complex than I had guessed and functions differently enough from the Game Genie that they quite often simply cannot operate in tandem like this and can cause serious issues.

      Read on if you’d like a cool story that has little to do with reality, or would like to imagine how chaining game genies might work if that was feasible :3

      [/EDIT]

      Based on my (admittedly not incredible) knowledge of how those devices both work, they intercept reads for specific memory addresses from the CPU and insert their own values. As long as they both weren’t set up with codes to modify the same address very little would happen, it would behave as you might expect.

      If the two both had codes that modified the same address the Game Genie would “win” here since it is physically closer to CPU in the chain. It would see the address matching one of its codes and spit back its value, neither the cartridge nor the Action Replay would see the memory read occur.

      • you_are_dust@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        20 days ago

        Thanks for that. Do you know would the serious issue be like hardware damage or just like corrupted gameplay? I’ve seen some videos of game corruption and I’m wondering if that’s something people could use or would it just fry the game or console.

        • Metype @pawb.socialEnglish
          2·
          20 days ago

          There’s always a chance for hardware damage chaining devices together that were not designed to be used as such. To keep your hardware safe don’t use it in ways that violate the manufacturer’s guides and recommendations.

          In this case? Probably just wouldn’t really work, might corrupt save game data.

    • Rolivers@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      19 days ago

      Can confirm. So far I’ve gotten an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, docking station and a stand for it so it can be used as a laptop as well while traveling.

      It certainly has issues but it’s an impressive device.

  • Deadeyegai@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    19 days ago

    This is the ideal Gameboy body. You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like (just be sure to have all the batteries nearby).