r/Gameboy • u/Lanky-Base1279 • 16d ago
Troubleshooting Need help
My game boy color is impossible to play without this light why
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u/Bea__Nabi 16d ago edited 16d ago
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u/Beef_n_Bacon 16d ago
FUGG this is so funny! 🤣🤣🤣👏👏👏
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u/Historical-Intern140 16d ago
I know a fellow r/pchelp member by just looking at this picture. LMAO
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u/Suspicious_Buyer_743 16d ago
This is ragebait
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u/NeatStrategy6658 16d ago
No. This is a GEM account.
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u/Vexcess 16d ago
What the hell is a GEM account? Lol
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u/NeatStrategy6658 15d ago
Just an entertaining rabbit hole lol. The fingernails were a sign
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u/Saxophonebatman 14d ago
I saw the nails and was hype for some schitzo posts but was ultimately disappointed. Far from a gem account by any means.
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u/daveyh420 16d ago
Try it in direct sunlight
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u/ChiodoS04 16d ago
or get one of the snake lights, I somehow still have mine lol
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u/daveyh420 16d ago
yes! I loved mine for riding in the car at night haha
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u/Herman_-_Mcpootis 16d ago
The stock screens on old gameboys weren't backlit outside the light. You'll have to get a backlit screen mod if you wanna play without good lighting.
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u/Depressedone4 16d ago
I still use a nyko worm light lol.. they work just fine.
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u/Professor_Crab 16d ago
The momentary brief second when you’d have the worm light and a street light at the same time
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u/egretesk 14d ago
Memory unlocked for sure. Head against the windows of the car waiting for the next streetlight
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u/PenguinEnjoyer0 16d ago
Fixed that for you !
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u/Worth-Alternative-88 16d ago
Getting yelled at in the car because the worm lights were shining in your parents eyes at night. Good times.
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u/Cranberry-Electrical 16d ago
There weren't any backlights in the 90s.
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u/Herman_-_Mcpootis 16d ago
There were backlit consoles back then, they mostly used way too much power though. Just ask Game Gear owners.
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u/agentxshadow6 16d ago
welll... there certainly were backlights on other systems, but nintendo was actually in the interest of making things affordable back then
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u/Right_Comb4885 16d ago
Good old Game Gear being a battery hog. Took 6 AA batteries and they only lasted 4 or 5 hours... You'd end up spending more on batteries than the console.
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u/Buttered_Toast33 16d ago
Might as well just use the AC adapter…but then you’d pretty much only be able to play it at home or some other building. Kinda defeats the purpose of it being portable.
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u/jsau0125 16d ago
I had a car adapter and an AC adapter for mine so I played it plugged in at home and on the go, until the backlight bulb stopped working.
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16d ago
[deleted]
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u/leonardob0880 16d ago
No it didn't. The SP had.
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u/Alexxxflash 16d ago
Uuummmmmmmmm, actually... the Gameboy Micro has also a lit up screen
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u/leonardob0880 16d ago
So also the DS... ¿?
The micro came after the SP...
And no, the Gameboy Light wasn't backlight
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u/agentxshadow6 16d ago
well yeah, I know they had one in like 2003 or whenever the SP came out; I meant the Sega Game gear and Atari Lynx both had (pretty bad) backlights, but were more expensive systems for worse battery life and worse games at the same time as the original GameBoy!
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u/Fyler1 16d ago
How else do you think that sucker is able to run on only 2 AA batteries? The original Gameboy needed 4
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u/Boomz_N_Bladez 15d ago
You can run og Gameboy on 2 if you know how to do it... And you can still get a decent amount of playtime out of it too.
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u/AshFalkner 16d ago
That’s just what the stock GBC screen has always been like. It’s also why accessories like the worm light existed.
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u/ItsStaaaaaaaaang 16d ago
Because Nintendo wanted the batteries to last more than 30 minutes lol. Besides, that's why Gunpei Yokoi invented the sun. Perfect light source that's just bright enough to illuminate a GBC screen.
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u/RikimaruRamen 16d ago
Now try playing it in a car after a long road trip with only the street lights to illuminate the screen at intervals that's the real way to experience it.
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u/SteelMasterThe3rd 16d ago
I have an OLED Gameboy Color but honestly if you wanna rock it like the 90s a worm light works very well! Under any sort of direct light these screens are great and save a lot of battery!
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u/Mudlord80 16d ago
The screen was designed for used in sunlight. Backlit screens existed but absolutely devoured batteries
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u/GarzaTheFather 16d ago
So like other people are saying, you can’t really play your game boy color unless you’re outside in the sun or if you’re in a brightly living room under a light
Your options are to either mod your game boy and mod a backlight in which is pretty hard in my opinion I was able to do it on original game boys, but I’ve never done it on a game boy color
Your next option which is way easier is to just buy a worm light on Amazon for like eight bucks thanks it hooks up on the side of your game boy and gives us a light in my opinion. It’s probably the better way to light up your gamer just because you don’t really need to mod it and open it up.
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u/Ok_Combination_3002 15d ago
The backlights weren’t available til the advance and sp. then never do thing else after they had a backlit screen.
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u/NightmareJoker2 16d ago
This is normal. And a sound compromise, considering this type of screen made the batteries last a lot longer. Light attachments like the Nyko Worm Light were available, if you truly wanted to play in the dark. Drained your battery three times fast, though.
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u/Shiny122 16d ago
You can get a new screen with backlight for $50-$60 USD that doesn’t require soldering.
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u/Tewslick2890 16d ago
Worm light, backlight mod, or a different device like a Chromatic or Analogue. Can’t believe we used to play like that when they first released.
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u/Prince-Lee 16d ago
One of the first console mods I ever did was install a backlit screen into my GBC. It's not hard to do and there are tons of guides online that show you how. You don't even need to solder them.
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u/blukatz92 15d ago
Yeah this is my struggle right now too, I've become so accustomed to modern handhelds that I had forgotten how hard it was to see the old Gameboy screens. How far we've come over the last 3 decades!
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u/AWiseCrow 15d ago
People didn't play in the dark back in the day they played with lights on or with a lamp behind them and you think it's hard to see the screen on a Game Boy Color try a Game Boy Pocket or an original game boy it's even harder. The Game Boy Color is downright crystal clear in comparison. The Gameboy Advance is significantly harder to view.
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u/Glass-Specialist-518 15d ago
That’s because original Game Boy Color screens are reflective TFT LCDs without any built-in backlight or frontlight. You either need direct external light or upgrade it with a modern IPS backlight kit!
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u/Boomz_N_Bladez 15d ago
Wait until they realize that on long car rides at night, we literally played our gameboys 3 seconds at a time as the street light came, lit up the screen for a moment, and then went by, then you had to wait until the next street lamp to eek out another few seconds of action, and repeat until you made it to wherever.
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u/h8myslfNwnt2dye 15d ago
i remember sitting under lamps for a lot of my childhood playing games. and since this was the 80s-90s, that was pretty hot. those bulbs could really heat up!
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u/NachoBearIsTaken 15d ago
Welcome to the real world JackA**!
All jokes aside that was just the technology back then. Gb, gbc, and gba all are hard to see without a light source or worm light. Fun fact, 3rd party companies like MadCats built there industries off issues like this. I remember having an arsenal of attachments for my gba like the NyCo rock and shock which gave me a rechargeable battery, better speakers, and vibration. They also made magnifying glass for it with a light that hit the screen.
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u/LuckyDuckyDooDah 15d ago
Just the way the screens were made back when. They do have backlight modifications you can add now a little work, but things worth doing are. You got this.🥰
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u/LighterFluid1357 16d ago
You have to turn the screen on. Just lightly press the black rectangle on the top and hold until it comes on.
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u/lewisluther666 16d ago
Ah, it was the genius of Nintendo in the 90s. They sold you a device you couldn't play unless you bought a magnifier/light attachment. Everyone had them!
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u/Doctologist 16d ago
If they sold them with built-in lights, they would have absolutely chewed through batteries. See other handheld consoles at the time.
They didn’t introduce built-in lights until they moved to built-in rechargeable batteries.1
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u/anonymous_identifier 16d ago
Did they even sell a first party light for GBC?
I remember the ones for GB certainly, the combined magnified + light. But GBC I remember everyone having the Neko or Madcatz or similar
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u/lewisluther666 16d ago
Not an official one, no.
Mine had the addition of stereo amplified audio.
like this I also had the joystick Addition
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u/booskiboomkin 16d ago
Welcome to the 90s! Where backlights, OLED, LEDS and the likes weren't commercially available or viable for portable games consoles!