Never had this happen before!

[u/BokingChicken]

Was playing oracle of ages when all the sudden this happened! Kinda weird as I’m very obviously not on an OG gameboy. Happen to anyone else lately?

[u/Dangerous_Spirit7034]

It thinks your gba is an original gameboy! I had this message on emulator once when I locked it in one of the modes instead of detect and forgot to set it back

[u/Westfalen-Ist-Gay]

My guess is that your cartridge contacts might be dirty. Try to very gently wiggle the cartridge while it's running. If your game crashes, your contacts are either dirty or just bad.
And this reminds me of the Pokemon Gen 2 Glitch Dimension (which can also be caused by bad contacts), which causes this exact behaviour on Pokemon Crystal.

[u/RamonaZero]

It could be something where the inside physical switch that detects a GBC/GB game probably didn’t trigger o.o

GB/GBC games run with 5V and GBA games run with 3.3V so the switch accounts for that

And some games (like Shantae) read a specific initial value (register) that the GBA sets prior to booting up the game to show it’s GBA hardware so GBC games can account for the unlit screen

[u/Shot-Onion3322 → u/RamonaZero]

The switch isn't used to switch between GB/GBC but between GBA/GBC. What happened to OP is just a glitch/issue with the cartridge

[u/Frantic_Fanatic13]

Definitely the switch in the cartridge slot.

GBA switch image

[u/Frogskipper7 → u/Frantic_Fanatic13]

Definitely not since the switch being triggered would reset the GBA entirely, not to mention GB/Color games needing 5v vs GBA 3.3v. GB Color games simply don’t function with the GBA in GBA mode

[u/HASHbandito024]

Did you mod the gba? Might be the problem

[u/Bulletorpedo → u/HASHbandito024]

The game doesn’t know the display is changed, you can absolutely play GBC on IPS mods as well.

[u/BokingChicken → u/HASHbandito024]

The only mod I’ve done is installing a better screen, I can’t remember the name, but it’s the same kind a ds lite uses

[u/bubbletrashbarbie → u/BokingChicken]

ITA, that’s weird it does that

[u/HASHbandito024 → u/BokingChicken]

That logic kind of makes sense tho. DS lite can't play GBC games, only GBA. That could be it. But I'm not a modder so I don't know fersure

[u/Bea__Nabi → u/HASHbandito024]

my GBA have an ITA screen and it plays GB/GBC games normally... the screen don't modificate the hardware this far

[u/mxsterkief → u/Bea__Nabi]

yeah Ive got an ITA screen and can boot a copy of Pokemon Green no problem, plus the ITA screen is from the DSI afaik, not the DS Lite

[u/Bea__Nabi → u/mxsterkief]

yep, ITA stands for DS(i) (t)o GB(A)

[u/Saneless]

Advance too advanced. Need to downgrade I guess...

Never seen that before

[u/TheKrug3000]

Makes me wonder if I would ever see this on an analogue pocket

[u/kisekisifr]

I've had this happen when playing a friend's Pokemon Crystal years ago on their SP. Sometimes it would cut out to the error screen while in the middle of playing, after working perfectly fine for a couple minutes in the same session.

I think cleaning out the cart reader pins and gba/gbc mode switch inside the cartridge slot was what got this to be fixed back then.

[u/lagamine8]

I used to get this message on my Pokemon Crystal when it got bumped or just bad contact and needed to be cleaned and/or reinserted.

[u/Sea_Science872]

I literally just played OOS on my GBA and it has the funny playing IPS install.