Game Boy Camera retrospective: Selfie brick | Game Boy Works Gaiden #03
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 фев 2020
- By request of patron Joseph Wawzonek, this Gaiden episode dives into something that is neither game nor peripheral... it is both. And it is the best. It is... the Game Boy Camera. History's greatest video game gadget! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Video Works is funded through Patreon ( / gamespite ) - support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its RUclips debut, and even request your own episode topic! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week. 
Игры
"... it encourages users to treat their creations as precious: to carefully curate their library, rather than carelessly hoarding gigabytes of information the way we do on modern smartphones." Wow. I mean, I've always known that, but hearing it phrased like that seriously opened my eyes. I remember when my brother and I brought our GB Camera to a Hot Wheels convention with our Game Boy Pockets. We'd each agreed to only keep 3 photos each, so we had to find the best things to take pictures of and both agree on each other's 3 as well. The shots had to be amazing, perfect and unique. Good memories.
the advert of the guy shocking the crowd by sliding the floppy in aged me into dust
This morning I watched a ’70s Doctor Who episode where aliens exchanged data on the most sophisticated form of tech in the known galaxy: An audiotape cassette
An episode of Star Trek: The Original Series explains that the Enterprise's most highly advanced tech worthy of showing to a time travelling Abraham Lincoln (Don't ask) are the transporter, the automatic doors and music on tape.
@@JeremyParish I recall an episode of a 70's anime series, Gatchaman, where an audio cassette also was used for the same purpose in a 21st Century setting.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer In order from worst to best, clearly! :-P
@@argylega As tapes and the transporter both malfunction all the time, I agree.
My favorite feature was definitely Hot-Spot, which you briefly showed at 5:17. You could "program" clickable spots in photos to perform sound effects or transition to another photo. I used the feature to create my own makeshift point-and-click adventure game.
I did the same thing so many years ago. It seemed so clever. I bet my "adventure" is still on my Camera.
ALso same! I remember taking the GB Camera on vacation with me to Hawaii and I turned our trip to some lava flows into a point n' click.
I did that as well! By placing stickers and letters on the photos, I even made an extremely rudimentary HUD for some of those "games". My cartridge also still has a stop-motion animation of a teddy bear waving at the camera. I made that for my little sister 20 years ago.
I think the Hot-Spot is the reason I ended up in web development. My first experience creating hyperlinks.
"Game Boy Camera turns photography into--"
Me: "FUNtogra--"
"--a video game."
You had it right there
Nah
Was not expecting you here
Damn, you're everywhere.
I remember things like these were so 90's and amazing, as a kid, an accessory like this would make me really happy, I only played the Game Boy and Game Gear briefly back then, but both were a dream for me to have, I also remember seeing the printer add-on on magazines for GB, making something physical get out of games and even pictures from the camera, that would be something I'd show my mom, brothers, friends and enemies alike.
Those "Who are you running from?" screens scare the heck outta me.
I can totally see myself having nightmares of them as a kid. 😅
...I definitely did!
The skyline at 10:41 would be an excellent album cover.
NINTENDO AND THE GAME BOYS present "Sky Tree Heat Wave"
Or a backdrop for a game, for that matter.
Fantastic retrospective, Jeremy! Thank you very much for tackling this topic with so much passion
Thank you for the opportunity!
The positivity in Jeremy's voice for this nintendo add-on is similar to my own enjoyment and fondness for things like Virtual Boy, or Labo. Here's to celebrating all things Weird-Ninty.
I got the GameBoy Camera for Christmas the year it came out, and my 6-year old self did nothing for the rest of the night other then explore this wacky, weird, and often trippy cartridge. I took photos of my entire family the entire time the night went on, often asking my poor grandmother to retake the shot with me. The shooter game was great (and my first-ever shooter), and I distinctly remember being weirded out by the error messages. It's funny seeing chiptune artists use the GameBoy Camera to make music, because I've definitely annoyed my mom with all the beats I'd develop during car rides.
I forgot about my GameBoy Camera until moving for undergrad in 2009. My grandfather had died in 2000, and we were extremely close up until his passing. Well when finding my Camera and other GameBoy games upon moving, I booted it up and checked out some of my old photos (and playing another round of GameBoy Camera Galaga, or whatever we call it). Sure enough, there's a photo of my grandfather smiling from that Christmas 11 years ago. It gave me a closeness that no "normal" digital photo can touch - and I think it's for all the reasons laid out in this video, Jeremy. It was something I took and something that fascinated me as a kid, and my grandfather (who was a big fan of "Final Fantasy Legend") probably understood how much joy I was getting out of it.
I've listened to Retronauts for a couple years now and am going through your "Works" series, but this is the first time I've commented. Old games for me aren't just nostalgia - they're also legitimately fun (I was too young for the NES). But GameBoy Camera is something that brings out legitimate memories, and it's wonderful to see it captured this way.
Time to change the batteries in my Printer peripheral and see if that thing still works.
I had one of these as a kid and just started getting back into it the other day actually. The thing was in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the world's smallest digital camera, so it was still pretty cutting edge in a sense.
I also had the Game Boy Printer. The paper had an adhesive back so you could use your pictures as stickers. You could also use it to print Pokedex entries from Pokemon Yellow, which I did a good bit. But the prints fade away over time, so don't go printing you pictures thinking you're saving them!
The Game Boy Printer also printed stickers from Super Mario Bros DX and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
Had no idea that the GB Camera had a composer at the helm but it makes total sense looking back at it given how experimental it was. Still love that the settings menu was themed around the solar system
Nintendo Power magazine published a Player's Guide for the Game Boy Camera, which I initially thought was strange until I remembered they did the same for Mario Paint years prior. It is similar in scope to the Mario Paint guide, providing tips and creative ideas. I still own a copy of that guide (and the blue Game Boy Camera I bought near launch) and the binding on it is terrible. I'm surprised I didn't lose any pages yet.
I haven't checked out the album on my GB Camera in ages, and apparently all that's there is old screenshots of what appear to be scenes from Toonami airings of G Gundam and Sailor Moon, so that's a time capsule.
I used the Gameboy Camera SO MUCH when I was younger. It was one of those "You had to be there" items that was just amazing. All those sound effects are burned into my psyche for sure.
I was initially stoked about using the Game Boy Camera for my Perfect Dark multiplayer character.
Oh man, same here! ... Teenage me was PISSED it didn't happen, but in retrospect I suppose they made the right decision.
I was too but in retrospective they would’ve looked like complete shit. Black and white hilariously low res 2D pictures posted on a color 3D modeled character would’ve never worked.
AlexRN My understanding was that it was in full colour on the TV. I have an old Nintendo Magazine from January 2000 which shows it actually in operation. The taking of the picture was via the TV screen on the Advanced Settings of Combat Simulator.
Holy crap, that clip at 5:35 though..."What are you running from?". NIGHTMARE FUEL
I first used Game Boy Camera in 2003. It really does have a level of magic not found with any regular camera, or even a lot of games in general. I remember later seeing a 3rd party camera peripheral for GBA, and the photo features of the Nintendo DSi and 3DS, hoping that those would capture some of the magic, the pure fun and energetic weirdness of the original Game Boy Camera. But nothing ever compared to it. I think a large part of it is the mix of the strange and obtuse menus, and all the activities and secrets hidden away in it that entices you to create, explore, and have fun with every corner of the software, not just the picture taking part.
For a while I used to say Game Boy Camera was my favorite game on Game Boy (until I later discovered Link's Awakening).
those "who are you running from" screens trigger my phobia of faces that look off or not quite right, even now--i braced myself coming in and my heart still rushed as they were shown. as a child i would've thrown my bloody gameboy at the wall.
You can really hear the enthusiasm in Jeremy's voice here. Great as always!
It really was a gadget where you could let your imagination run free (within certain parameters). It was also an educational tool, gently persuading the player to learn the basics of photography and sound mixing by trial and error.
I love how this series is developing.
Now I want a Game Boy Camera. I guess I would need a Game Boy as well.
Someone needs to make a smartphone app that simulates the GB Camera.
a little shocked nintendo hasn't
There is, or was, an app that did this. I used it to take a photo of Hip Tanaka when I interviewed him in back in... 2013, I think? He seemed unimpressed....
I see a couple on the App Store.
I like 8bit Photo Lab on Android.
I think mGBA has webcam support.
Very interesting episode. Lots of obscure facts and historical connections.
Just a quick story about Gameboy Camera. I worked for about a decade in a new and used game store. One day, a group of police officers showed up in the store and wanted to see the gameboy case. I showed it to them and they asked to see the Gameboy Camera. They looked it over and said "Yeah, that's the one". They then told me they had to confiscate it for evidence. I asked why and they said there was a picture on it that showed evidence of a crime being committed. I laughed because I knew the quality of the pictures and I didn't think they'd get much evidence out of it. But, they made me fill out a form and took it with them. They weren't allowed to tell me what the crime was. But, I still wonder to this day what was on it and if it truly helped the case or not.
4:12 My eyes practically popped out of my skull when I heard this. I had NO idea.
"Drug Charges Dropped After Key Witness Dies". Goddamit Nintendo.
what?
I second this. What?
Lovely to see IGA there. :)
My GOD! The memories! .. everything, EVERYTHİNG i remember watching this video.. every picture, tune, graphics... Wow. No mario 1, up to mario 64 did that.. and the gameboy camera :)
There was also the Connectix QuickCam, a very early monochrome consumer webcam that plugged into a computer's printer port for data and used the keyboard port to draw power (at least on Wintels). I can't recall if there was webcam software that existed before 1998 which provided easy ways to make photographs comparably spiffy to what the Game Boy Camera could make. It's been ages since I used a Game Boy Camera, but its influence definitely shows in many more bits of software that followed, like Apple's Photo Booth included on iSight Macs starting in 2005.
I love that camera lens adapter. It brings joy to my heart that you can use an actual camera lenses with such a simple piece of tech
It's also great for getting lots of funny looks in public
this was indeed so weird and so much fun back in the day. i got nostalgic flashbacks from watching this video, i spent way too much time with this thing.
@Jeremy Parish, to be fair, the GB camera in 1998 was a low-end digital camera, but not where near as withered as it seemed in retrospect. Back then digital cameras were still very much niche, and to have a very cheap camera available on the GameBoy would be similar to the Nintendo DS getting a web browser back in 2006. Withered yes,, but the add on itself in the context of its release, it was quite a novelty and not as far back tech-wise as it seemed in retrospect.
Yeah. That was the point. It was a fairly recent technology, and Nintendo took the tech and stripped it down until it was affordable for everyone.
Know what's funny? I'm pretty sure this was the first game to feature Pokemon ever released in America. I know it came out before we got Pokemon and it definitely had Pokemon stickers you could add to your photos.
Limitations inspire the greatest creativity
I'm pretty sure this was used in Undertale for the Omega Flowey fight, yeah?
I still use my GameBoy Camera regularly to post photos. I highly recommend the BitBoy to dump photos to an SD card.
Oh what a gem, and this video did a great service to it too.
I remember literally finding the camera on a street floor, and my inability to read english at the time (something that was "normal" for non-english players back in the day...) made me question what exactly was going on with the RUN command for YEARS.
Did I fail to do something in order to select it? Was this locked, then how could I unlock it? And most of all, who were those dudes? Were they the first owners of my game?
This really brought back memories anyway.
For a lot of people this was one of the first accessible "shitpost" machine.
Thank you for your work on this series :)
I am hoarding so many of these and keep adding more. 😅
Ah, the nostalgia here is so powerful... if kid me didn't have Pokémon in his Game Boy, he was probably messing around with the Game Boy Camera.
Also, being able to use it to take photos with the Super Game Boy was always a ton of fun. Too bad it doesn't work too well with GameCube's Game Boy Player
Thanks for posting this comprehensive overview of the add-on. The GB Camera kind of passed right by me, and I never really thought to look into any of it. Seems like you could have a lot of fun with it even today, which can't really be said for the Activator or Super Scope.
I took my Game Boy Camera and Printer to school and you'd better believe I was the coolest 13-year-old in the world for like two weeks.
also Fun Fact: there's an ultra rare "Coro Coro Comics" version of the Pocket Camera which were given away in Japan. It still hasn't been dumped, or even found at all to my knowledge. It includes unique content based on a couple manga series the magazine ran. Luckily some of that content is still stored in the standard retail ROM, but that prize version is still a total enigma.
Sounds like a rabbit hole for me to avoid entirely
great video, keep it up!
There was an unofficial PC transfer cable sold in game shops like Funcoland. It plugged into the Game Boy link port (small type) and a PC's 25-pin parallel port. You ran custom software to capture the prints.
I can recall who made it... Pelican, Performance, InterAct/Datel, Mad Catz... likely one of those.
You're videos are awesome. Good work!
Now I want that SD Card adapter for the GameBoy Camera because the battery in mine yet isn't dead and I'd love to transfer the pictures I made with it.
The DJ minigame was the first synth I have ever used...
Another great video, Jeremy.
I never once bothered to see what the Game Boy Camera is all about. I assumed you just took photos.. and that was it. Honestly though, after watching this video, I have to say that it looks pretty fun to mess around with.
Two of my grandparents separately got me one, so we returned one them, only for me to set one down somewhere during an airplane flight and not realize until after we had left. I still can't imagine where I would have put it, though. Bought another copy of it a few years back.
Hip Tanaka? He definitely brings a lot of personality to this game. I made a jazzy arrangement of what I initially thought were his compositions. The main one (the Super Mario Land theme) is, but I don't think the other two are. This revelation didn't stop me from titling the arrangement "Hipper Than Thou".
My favorite piece of trivia about this quirky piece of gameboy history is its credits theme! For some reason, it reuses the song that plays in Twinkle Elementary from Mother 1. Never was quite sure why they decided to use that song in particular, but given Hip Tanaka did some of the music for Mother 1, I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense.
Is that Iga at 9:32 ?
He graciously allowed me to photograph him with a goofy bit of vintage tech at E3 a few years back.
I loved this gadget back then had a lot of fun with the printer and DJ mode ☺ ♥ 🇯🇵
I remember really wanting one...
This is supposed to be a feature, named Perfect Head, for the combination of Perfect Dark and Transfer Pak for the purpose of putting anybody faces' into a customizable avatar for its multiplayer mode. Unfortunately, it lead to implications of fantasizing of killing anybody that dislikes therefore Rare had to cancel this feature so the launch will never get confronted.
I’m up to six GBCameras and a BitBoy and GBSP cart flipper. I really want to get that cannon lens mod someday... I saw another guy had 3D printed a mount to use a cheap Mobil phone lens and even that would be enough for me, but the files were never made available as far as I can tell.
You just had to open with THAT line, didn't you?
I wonder if some of the camera games from this item were the inspiration for Face Raiders.
GB Cam is one of the best piece of hardware ever its just a ton of fun
suddenly the nintendrew outro music started and i thought another tab started playing
also i had no idea gb camera had an arrangement of mayim mayim this makes me happier than it ought to
I still have mine!
Pretty neat little device for the time
Rhett Mclaughlin at 6.03.
My jaw dropped when I saw that giant lens on it😂😂
2:58 "I need an adult!"
*I AM an adult!!*
Floating Sunfish no you are not
Whoa, no one ever told me there was an Atomic Purple one!
I'm only halfway through the vid and already realizing the Wario Ware vibe of it all, and I had one of these back in the day. I'm curious now if the similarity will be mentioned in the vid.
Still got mine, with printer and paper. It'll be around forever!
You weren't cool unless you had Game Boy Printer prints of your Game Boy Camera pics all over your locker at school.
How dare you? I have very carefully curated the 80,000 memes on my phone.
I love the game boy camera, but now I'm intrigued about the digital camera that uses floppy disks as storage.
I always love watching videos about the Game Boy Camera. Mainly because they're always interesting, but also because it gives me a chance to show off my profile picture.
It makes me wish I had paid extra for the English version now as mine is all in Japanese and I've not figured out half of the features yet haha!
I finally sold my Zelda Gold edition Game Boy Camera a year ago. Originally ordered it out of the Power Supplies Catalog from Nintendo Power. It actually got stolen by a crackhead back in 2001 a long with my imported Arctic White GBA but I recovered it (long story!).
Ah dang, I'm envious. The gold camera is the only model I don't own... not that I deliberately set out to collect them. They just kind of accumulate in my line of work.
@@JeremyParish I remember being heart-broken when I couldn't scrape together enough Power Stamps and cash to get it in the initial catalog run. Thankfully it returned as part of a little extra section of a later catalog with the unsold remnants, now selling for a discount. I had enough Power Stamps and snapped it up right away that time! I regret getting rid of it but I really needed the money and, as much as I cherished it, it wasn't worth to me what people were offering (nearly $400). Hopefully you'll find a deal on one somewhere!
“..Modify and mutilate their photos...” lol
The GameBoy Camera was special. I might even get one even though the picture quality isn’t the best around. Definitely great software / hardware. Would it fall under software or hardware? The camera itself is extra hardware but the camera runs on a software cartridge and needs to run with software on that cartridge rather than built in to the console.
The duality and ambiguity of the GBC's nature is why I put it under the "Gaiden" banner (also, that gave me an excuse to cover it much sooner)
@@JeremyParish I did wonder actually why it was under the Gaiden banner and also I think the Gameboy Camera was definitely better early than maybe never as Gameboy Works 1998 seems like a long way away or even never and the GBC is a device which has to be mentioned when talking about the Gameboy in general so I can see why you wanted to do it sooner
Me and my friends would get high and be entertained for hours lol!
And then you got a Game Boy camera! >*
To this day, I am a bit disappointed that Nintendo never released the GameBoy Camera to 3DS Virtual Console.
Oh wow, so the GB Camera released with Pokemon stamps months before Pokemon was even released in the US?
Yep. They reached some with Zelda stamps for the special edition. I recall capturing them for DMG Ice along with all the Album B differences. Used mine with a Super Game Boy and ATI All-in-Wonder video card (had a built-in TV tuner and capture card) to get the images.
Okay, what's the history behind that photo of Koji Igarashi?
I interviewed him at E3 after the Bloodstained Kickstarter campaign wrapped and said, "Can I take a photo of you with this?" He said "OK." The end!
How can I purchase the add-ons listed in the video
The BitBoy is here: gameboyphoto.bigcartel.com/product/bitboy - I don't think the lens mount is readily available.
Hey Jeremy, a question, Which capture device did you use for this video and the others? Great Video btw
Super Game Boy 2 on an Analogue Super Nt via Analogue DAC/Framemeister. It's a mouthful.
@@JeremyParish Thanks :)
@@JeremyParish Curious why you went through the DAC and Framemeister when the Super Nt outputs HDMI directly. Was it for the Framemeister scaling options?
It's because I use a CRT when I play, for zero latency and light gun compatibility... and also because old games look better on a good CRT.
Warning: jump scare at 11:55 😰
Who are you running from?
Is that M.H. Williams? Do you guys still hang out?
It is, but since we don't work together anymore, I don't see Mike much. I was on a PAX panel with him last year, though!
Ngl this guy kinda sounds like blameitonjorge
They should port it to mobile
I’ve got the Gold one.
I'll DM you my mailing address.
11:51 C U R S E D I M A G E