Welcome to another episode of the 8-Bit Guy.
So, recently, a fan of mine sent me the Gameboy Camera.
This would essentially be an early digital camera from the late 1990s.
It did come out in 1998.
But, don’t expect too much from it, it did sell for $49.
So, let’s review it!
It’s actually a whole cartridge that slides into the gameboy.
It will also work on the Gameboy pocket, gameboy color, Gameboy Advance, and even my GB-Boy
clone that I have.
However, it doesn’t really offer any advanced features on, you know, the higher end later
model gameboys like the advance or the color because it was strictly designed for the original
gameboys, so it only operates in 4 shades of gray, or essentially, you know, black and
white!
You may notice the camera is looking slightly up from the screen.
The reason for this is most likely due to the nature of the reflective screens on these
old gameboys that required you to hold them at an angle so that light could reflect off
of them.
That would allow the camera to be angled straight ahead while holding the gameboy at this angle.
So lets power it on and see what it does.
When you power it on you get this little dancing Mario.
After you press a button you get the option to shoot, view, or play.
So let’s pick shoot.
So, next you get this screen, I’ll come back to some of these other features later,
but for the moment, let’s go to shoot.
So you can see what I look like here in my studio.
The up and down controls will change the brightness of the picture.
OK, that’s way too bright.
There’s some sort of a delay between changing it and when the camera actually responds,
which tends to cause me to overshoot on these controls.
So the key is to go slowly.
Ok, so the left and right controls will adjust the contrast, and you can see what effects
that has on the picture.
I keep hoping one of these controls will make the image look a lot better, but it’s really
a lost cause.
OK, so I’m going to try to take a selfie here.
This thing just barely has enough resolution to capture a person’s face and be recognizable.
So, I’ll push A to snap the picture, then it will ask me if I want to save it or cancel.
So I’ll go ahead and save.
I decided I should try taking some outdoor photos, so I went down to the 9/11 memorial
here in my city of Kennedale.
This was actually built with a piece of the original steel structure of one of the twin
towers.
There’s also a big clock tower next to it, so I snapped some photos of that.
And there’s also a fountain next to it with an eagle in the middle.
Did I mention that you can rotate the camera around like this so that you can take selfies?
Was this the first ever selfie camera?
It might have been, at least for a digital camera.
I also went to the park and tried to photograph the ducks, and these geese.
One of these geese bit me in the rear end one day when I was at this park.
So I took a selfie at the fountain.
So let’s take a look at some of these photos I took.
This time we’ll pick view.
So, you can just pick a picture and view it.
So, this is the 9/11 memorial, so let’s talk about the resolution.
So, I already mentioned it is 4 shades of gray, which is limited primarily by the gameboy’s
LCD screen.
As for the resolution, officially, it is supposed to do 256x224 pixels, however I find this
hard to believe because the gameboy’s screen is only 160x144 pixels and as you can see
they don’t even use the entire screen.
I’m actually estimating it to be closer to 130x100 pixels.
So, it turns out that the cartridge will actually store around 30 pictures in it’s own battery
backed RAM.
So you can actually take the cartridge out and even stick it in an entirely different
gameboy and still see your photos.
Heck, it will even work in the Super Gameboy adapter for the Super Nintendo and you can
view your pictures on a TV.
So one of the things I find interesting looking back at the late 1990s.
Digital cameras were kind of new, and one of the big complaints that the naysayers had,
you know, saying the technology would never take off, they said you couldn’t get prints
made, or at least not easily made of your photographs.
And, that was sort of true, but it seems kind of ridiculous today looking back because we
rarely even print photos today especially with the proliferation of online social media
and whatnot, we tend to prefer our pictures in digital format.
But, at the time it was fairly important to people.
So, Nintendo had that covered with the gameboy printer.
Now, this little accessory was $59.
And it came out around the same time as the gameboy camera.
And while it does work with a few other games, it’s primary purpose was to be used in conjunction
with the camera.
I bought this on eBay and it is a brand new, old-stock printer.
This sucker has never been opened and still has the original Nintendo seals on it.
It has one of those little RFID security tags, that looks like it might have come from Toys
R Us.
Well, time to cut the seal.
OK, so inside we get a printer, obviously, and a manual, and a cable.
The box looks empty but I can feel some weight on the bottom, so maybe it is a power adapter?
I’ll have to cut this seal too.
OK, so it comes with 6 double A batteries.
I wonder if these are still any good?
They should be close to 20 years old now, but I don’t see an expiration date on them.
OK, so here’s the printer, this thing definitely looks brand new!
And here’s the cable that comes with it.
I was curious why it had 3 connectors on it.
I had to look in the manual and it turns out the original gameboy used a different connector
type.
I didn’t know that because I’ve never owned the original model.
I didn’t find any paper but it says it includes one roll of printer paper.
However, upon further inspection, I found it hiding under here.
I decided to go ahead and use the old batteries it came with.
I turned it on and the power light came on, but it goes right back off..
Not sure if that is normal.
I checked the voltage on all of the cells and they all read 1.5 volts, so I think they
are good.
So, the next thing to do is install the roll of paper.
Then I connected it to the gameboy and tried to print… but it would never work.
So I decided to remove the batteries and put brand new ones in here.
So, let’s try that again.
OK, so this time it worked, but I noticed the image was very light and hard to see.
By the way, this paper isn’t just regular thermal paper, you can actually peel off the
backing and it becomes a sticker.
I wondered if the old thermal paper had just gone bad?
A viewer of mine had also recently sent me this paper which says it is for a calculator
but happens to be the right size for the gameboy printer.
You can see the roll is smaller, but also it’s just regular paper, there’s no sticky
backing to it.
Anyway, I feed that paper into the printer and tried the test print, where you hold down
the feed button when you power it on.
Well, this certainly looks darker than my last printout.
So, I went back to the gameboy and tried printing my picture again.
This time it was much darker, so that confirms the old paper had just gone bad after two
decades of storage.
So here’s the final result.
The image is ridiculously small, it’s about the size of a postage stamp.
And even then the resolution is still terrible.
Now, let’s compare it with the printout from the original paper.
Since it is so small, I wanted to have a closer look at the picture on the paper, so I put
it in my flatbed scanner.
Here’s the scan of the paper.
And here’s a capture from the gameboy’s video output.
So there isn’t really much of any difference.
I was sort of hoping the printout might be higher resolution than the on screen version,
but it doesn’t appear to be.
Well, let’s take a look at some of the other photos I took.
Here’s some more of the 9/11 memorial, and the clock tower.
This is probably my favorite photo that I took with this camera.
Another thing I’d like to point out is that these pictures were never really meant to
be viewed enlarged like this.
They were meant to be viewed on the tiny gameboy screen or on the postage stamp sized printout,
so the lack of resolution would be less noticeable.
So, let’s look at some of the other items on the cartridge.
Some of this stuff, like RUN doesn’t do much besides just show weird pictures from
ROM.
Under magic you can do all sorts of things like montage pictures, or panoramas.
Under items, you can do self timer or time-lapse.
There are also a variety of little embedded games you can find in different places.
Oh, and you can draw or use stamps on your photos that you took, so this is a photo of
my cat here and I’ll stick some funny eyes on her.
The last thing I’ll show you is how to erase all of the photos from memory.
Just hold down the start and select buttons when you power on the device and it will ask
if you want to erase everything.
So what do I think of the gameboy camera?
Well, I do believe the camera was designed primarily as an entertainment device, not
so much something for serious digital photography.
That being the case, keeping in mind that a typical gameboy game usually cost around
$30 during the mid 1990s, this would have been only slightly more than buying a regular
game.
And, it certainly provided at least a few hours of entertainment.
So, there’s no doubt about that.
However, from a perspective of me wanting to use it, for photography.
You know, I actually get a kick out of using old, crappy digital cameras sometimes, and
I’ve done several of those in previous episodes.
And, sometimes I enjoy the challenge.
But, I have to be honest.
I have to draw the line somewhere.
And, I draw the line at the gameboy camera.
It’s just a little bit too crappy for me to really be able to enjoy using it.
And, but you know it is a neat device and it’s got a lot of historical perspective
on it, so I like it for that aspect.
But, definitely not something that I want to use for taking family photos on.
Well, anyway, I hope you did enjoy this episode and stick around, I’ve got more coming on
the way!
So, thanks for watching!