Hey everyone, it's Colin. How's it goin'?
Installing backlights in Game Boys is a really popular mod these days
and I've done a couple of videos about it.
But I regularly get asked why there's no backlight mod for the Game Boy Color.
Stick with me and we'll look at just how backlighting works and why the Color gets left out.
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Now, everything in this video also applies to the original Game Boy Advance.
That handheld did have its own backlight mod though:
the use of a replacement screen, but that's another story.
The Game Boy Color is really the only model in the series
that has never had a solution for backlighting.
The answer that's always given as to why
is just a generic statement, like "It's due to the way the screen works."
That answer isn't good enough for me, and I'd bet it isn't good enough for a *lot* of fellow console modders.
There *is* a good answer, though.
To understand it, I think a brief look at just how LCD screens work is in order.
There's actually a lot of technology at work in a modern LCD, so this is going to be just a very basic explanation.
Liquid crystal displays are made up of a series of layers, and each layer manipulates light in some way.
The first layer is a filter, known as a linear polarizer.
It only lets light pass through that's oriented in a certain direction.
The next layer down is a grid of very fine electrodes and liquid crystals.
The grid makes up the pixels of the display.
With no electric current passing through the electrodes, the liquid crystals are oriented in such a way
that the polarizer makes them look transparent.
Those pixels are essentially turned off.
But when a charge is applied to those electrodes,
the liquid crystal reorients itself in a way that blocks light.
These pixels are turned on, and this process relies on the next layer,
which is another polarizer.
But this polarizer is turned 90º to the first one.
You can think of that top polarizer as making off pixels look light,
and the bottom polarizer making on pixels look dark.
There's one more layer to the display, and that's what passes light through the screen.
The thing to keep in mind about liquid crystals is that they don't produce light on their own.
They can only block it.
So there are two kinds of LCDs when it comes to light:
reflective and transmissive.
Transmissive LCDs have their own light source, a backlight of some sort.
But reflective LCDs use ambient light to make the screen visible.
Light goes through the front of the screen, bounces off of a reflective layer, and heads back out.
And it's this reflective layer that you remove when you install a backlight
in an original Game Boy or Game Boy Pocket.
The displays in those systems have two glass layers,
with that reflector stuck to the back like a big sticker.
It's pretty easily accessible.
So doing that backlight mod essentially just converts the LCD from being reflective to transmissive.
So what's going on with the Game Boy Color?
It uses a reflective LCD too, so why can't it be modded the same way?
Tell you what, let's take one apart and we'll find out.
All we're interested in is the display itself,
so the Game Boy gets disassembled like we're doing the frontlight mod.
I peeled all the foam off the back and carefully lifted up the ribbon cable.
Then I separated the metal frame from the glass display.
It's just used to position the display in the front housing.
Looks like a pretty normal LCD screen.
If we flip it over, the reflector should be stuck to the back.
Eh, except the back is plain glass.
This is the reason why the Color's screen can't be backlit.
If we look at it from the side, there are three glass layers here, not two like in the earlier Game Boys.
That second polarizer and reflector are actually sandwiched
between the second and third pieces of glass.
They're just not removable.
To try to separate the glass layers would ruin the display.
The bummer is the exact same thing is going on with the original Game Boy Advance.
It seems that when Nintendo came up with a new way of manufacturing something that it liked,
it carried that on through multiple products.
The Game Boy Pocket was the first to have the logic board mounted to the front housing, for example,
and Nintendo carried that on with the Color and Advance.
Clearly Nintendo liked the idea of moving the reflector inside the display, since it also did it
with the Advance and even the first generation Advance SP.
Of course, with the SP, it doesn't really matter, since there's a frontlight,
but the underlying display construction is the same.
So what does this mean?
Unfortunately, it means that there will never be a kit to add a backlight to a stock Game Boy Color display.
The original GBA was very lucky to have the second gen Advance SP,
known as the AGS-101, as an upgrade path.
The screen was the same size and electrically compatible with use of an adapter.
There's really no such stock part for the Game Boy Color, though.
A custom manufactured backlit screen is really the only way.
That has its own problems though, specifically, having to do with money.
I've been told that to setup an assembly line in China to make screens like that
would cost upwards of $100,000, and that's just for the tooling.
Of course, someone could try to make it happen with a platform like Kickstarter.
But honestly, it'd be pretty tough.
Between that tooling cost, materials, labor, and a small profit margin,
it would take either a surprising number of backers
or fewer people willing to pay a higher per unit price.
Something like a $100 a screen, if not more.
I know it's a bit of a downer, and that sucks.
I wanna have a backlit Game Boy Color just as bad as you do.
But, it is what it is, and I'm at least glad that other mods exist, like installing a frontlight.
I'm not holding my breath for someone to step up and make a backlit screen, but as the saying goes...
Never say never.
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Be sure to follow me on Twitter at thisdoesnotcomp, and as always, thanks for watching.