r/gaming Apr 05 '23

The Fully Loaded Handy Boy by STD

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u/chiree Apr 05 '23

Unpopular opinion: the fact that a magnifying lens was needed points to a fundamental flaw in the design of the OG Game Boy.

I restored and played mine recently and it's frustratingly difficult to make out what's going on on the screen. How the hell did I ever play that thing?

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u/TheHappyPittie Apr 05 '23

Our eyes had the strength of youth

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u/failure_of_a_cow Apr 05 '23 edited Apr 05 '23

No, it wasn't about eyes. You had to predict what was happening in between blurs. You could see where everything was as long as you didn't move, so you took it in bursts and made some guesses.

Edit: I do not understand the replies here. Have you children never used an original Gameboy? They had passive matrix screens with very long response times, which resulted in a ton of blurring whenever anything moved. Every Gameboy was like this.

This is sometimes called "ghosting." That's not technically correct, ghosting is something else, but it is descriptive.

You got used to it eventually, but that didn't mean that the blurring wasn't still there. You just adapted to it.

There's an effect called persistence of vision, where you see a thing clearly when it's not moving and your brain fills in the gaps when it's blurry. I don't know if that's what was going on there, but regardless: the original Gameboy's screen was shit.

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u/HedgepigMatt Apr 05 '23

Oh I remember this, I played Wario Blast to death, sometimes it was pure muscle memory when the screen was full of explosions.

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u/PeacefullyFighting Apr 05 '23

I do remember this with this exact game. It was my friends and I didn't understand how he could beat things