Left-to-right, a Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable plug, a FireWire 400 cable plug, a Universal Game Link cable plug, and a Game Boy Pocket link cable socket.
Mooneye GB is a Game Boy research project and emulator written in Rust. The main goals of this project are accuracy and documentation. Some existing emulators are very accurate (Gambatte, BGB = 1.5) but are not documented very clearly, so they are not that good references for emulator developers. Boards Gaming Nintendo Lobby Why is the old GameBoy's acronym 'DMG'? Why is the old GameBoy's acronym 'DMG'? Discussion in ' Nintendo Lobby ' started by lamborghini03, Jun 13, 2004. A subreddit dedicated to discussion of the Nintendo Game Boy. Discussion of all Game Boy models, handheld swaps, mods, games, and homebrew are.
Aug 27, 2017 DMG Classic GameBoy screen glitching problem. Discussion in 'Other Handhelds' started by Pap-Corp, Aug 23. I bought a new shell for one of my old DMG gameboy and started transfering the internals to the new shell. When i turn on the console this is what i get on screen. What will the next Xbox be called? A file with the DMG file extension is an Apple Disk Image file, or sometimes called a Mac OS X Disk Image file, which is basically a digital reconstruction of a physical disc. For this reason, a DMG is often the file format used to store compressed software installers instead of having to use a physical disc.
The NintendoGame Link Cable is an accessory for the Game Boy line of handheld video game systems, allowing players to connect Game Boys of all types for multiplayer gaming. Depending on the games, a Game Link Cable can be used to link two games of the same title, like Tetris, or two compatible games like Pokémon Red and Blue. Games can be linked for head-to-head competition, cooperative play, trading items, unlocking hidden features, etc.
First generation[edit]
2 Game Boy systems connected with a DMG-04
The first generation Game Link Cable (model DMG-04) was released alongside the original Game Boy and has 'large' connectors on both ends. It can only be used to link two original Game Boy consoles to play Game Link-compatible games, usually denoted by a 'Game Link' logo (often read as 'Game Boy Video Link') on the packaging and cartridge.
A select few Game Boy games, such as F-1 Race, supported multiplayer modes for up to four players, although this requires the use of up to three additional Game Link cables and the Game Boy Four Player Adapter (model DMG-07).
After the release of the Game Boy Pocket, Nintendo started using a smaller Game Link connector (See 'Second generation' below) and released an adaptor called the Game Link Cable Adaptor (model MGB-004) which could be used in conjunction with the original Game Link cable (model DMG-04) to allow an original Game Boy to connect to a Game Boy Pocket/Color.
Second generation[edit]
A second-gen cable that also has dual plugs for older Game Boy systems.
The second generation started with the release of the Game Boy Pocket which used a much smaller Game Link connector than those used on the original Game Boy. Although the pin assignment and basic port shape remained the same, its much smaller size necessitated the release of new Game Link Cables.
The second generation Game Link Cables came in a few varieties, but each serves the same purpose. The first was called the Game Boy Pocket Game Link Cable (model MGB-008), and was designed to be used with the Game Boy Pocket. The MGB-008 was the only Game Link cable to be white in color, and may have only been released in Japan.[citation needed] The MGB-008 features the smaller second generation connectors on both ends, allowing two Game Boy Pockets to link.
The next cable in this generation is called the Universal Game Link Cable (model MGB-010). It features the smaller second generation connector on one end, and the cable splits into both a second generation and first generation connector at the other end (although only one connector at this end can be used at any given time). This link cable was included with the Game Boy Printer in the USA and Europe but does not appear to have been available to buy separately.
After the Game Boy Pocket came the Game Boy Light (a backlit Game Boy Pocket only released in Japan), and the Game Boy Color, all share the same link cable port design, and Game Boy Color games and original Game Boy games can both use a second generation cable. Therefore, the Game Boy Color is compatible with the MGB-008 and MGB-010. Despite this, the Game Boy Color did receive its own designated link cable, the Game Boy Color Game Link Cable (model CGB-003), however it was functionally identical to the MGB-008.
Nintendo also released a small adaptor called the Universal Game Link Adapter (model DMG-14) which features a small second generation socket and a first generation plug. The adapter can be used in conjunction with either the MGB-008 or the CGB-003 and features a thin plastic harness allowing it to be clipped on to either cable. In the USA and Europe, Nintendo released the CGB-003 and DMG-14 as a set called the Universal Game Link Cable Set. As the set includes both the CGB-003 cable which features the smaller second generation connectors at both ends, plus a removable DMG-14 first generation adapter, it allows the connection of either two Game Boy Pocket/Colors, or one original Game Boy and one Game Boy Pocket/Color.
The Super Game Boy 2 also shares the same smaller style link cable port and therefore uses the same cables and adapters.
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Third generation[edit]
4 player connection with 2 GBAs, 1 GBA SP and 1 GameCube
The third generation started with the release of the Game Boy Advance which was released alongside its own link cable called the Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable (model AGB-005). It features yet another new type of link cable port which is used on the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP and Game Boy Player. This link cable can only be used for connecting Game Link compatible Game Boy Advance games.
A small hub is included in the middle of the cable, which allows a second Game Link cable to be branched off of the first, and in turn, a third game link cable can be branched off of the second. This provides connections for four consoles in total, meaning games can be played with up to four players. The order in which the cables are connected to one another determines which player is which; the first player always connects through the purple end of a game link cable, and all of the others through the grey ends, due to the design of the plugs and receptacles.[1]
The port design on the third generation is almost identical to the second generation link cable ports except that it adds an extra protrusion on the plug and a notch on the socket to prevent a Game Boy Advance Game Link cable from being accidentally inserted into older model Game Boy systems. The almost identical shape of the port allows the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP and Game Boy Player to accept all the second generation Game Link Cables, but only for backward compatibility between Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. The second generation Game Link cable cannot be used to link Game Boy Advance games, and the third generation Game Link Cable cannot be used to link Game Boy or Game Boy Color games.
The e-Reader also uses the third generation link cable port, but since it is incompatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, it is not backwards compatible with the second generation Game Link Cable.
Also compatible with Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, e-Reader, and Game Boy Player is the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter (model AGB-015).[1] The adapter allows up to five players to link for multiplayer gaming,[2] although it is capable of linking up to thirty-nine copies of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen in a virtual in-game lobby called the 'Union Room'.[3] Unlike the AGB-005, the wireless adapter is not compatible with all Game Boy Advance multiplayer games. Only certain games feature specific support for the AGB-015.
Fourth generation[edit]
The fourth and last generation Game Link Cable, called the Game Boy Micro Game Link Cable (model OXY-008), was designed specifically for use with the Game Boy Micro. The Game Boy Micro features an even smaller link cable port than the Game Boy Advance, so it too requires its own Game Link Cable. The link cable features a fourth generation connector on each end which allows two Game Boy Micros to link. Alternatively, the Game Boy Micro Game Link cable can be used in conjunction with the Game Boy Micro Converter Connector (model OXY-009) to link one Game Boy Micro and one Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Advance SP. Like the Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable, the Game Boy Micro Game Link Cable features a link cable port in the middle, used to receive additional cables to connect up to four players at once.
Also compatible with the Game Boy Micro is the Game Boy Micro Wireless Adapter (model OXY-004). The OXY-004 is compatible with all the same games as the AGB-015 and can communicate with the AGB-015 wirelessly to link one or more Game Boy Micros and one or more Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Advance SP systems.[1]
Other Link Cables[edit]
A Game Link Cable was planned for the Virtual Boy (model VUE-004), but was never released.[4]
The Nintendo GameCube–Game Boy Advance link cable (model DOL-011) is a link cable that links the GameCube to the Game Boy Advance, the Game Boy Advance SP, and the e-Reader. The Game Boy micro is not compatible due to its different connector. The original Wii, however, is compatible with the cable due to the Wii's backwards compatibility with GameCube games and controllers.
References[edit]
- ^ ab'GameFAQs: Compatibility FAQ by ArsonWinter'.
- ^'Nintendo Wireless Adapter'.
- ^'Nintendo.com Games: Pokémon FireRed'. Archived from the original on 23 October 2007.
- ^Nintendo. Virtual Boy Instruction Manual.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Game_Link_Cable&oldid=918543778'
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The Game Boy
Before we talk about the Game Boy hardware, let’s talk about what came before Game Boy. The idea of portable gaming certainly didn’t come into existence from nowhere the day Game Boy launched; various toy companies had been dabbling in the concept since the ’70s. In fact, it’s kind of hard to say where to draw the line for the true first handheld game — which was it?
It makes sense that early portable systems hailed from toymakers; there’s a pretty clear line of continuity from mechanical or gravity-powered toys to Game Boy. Nintendo itself had a lengthy history with handheld amusements, many of which were designed by the man responsible for the system, Gunpei Yokoi.
So when you look back at one of those simple toys where you try to shoot ball bearings into a hole or whatever, you’re looking at the blueprint for Game Boy. Eventually, the advent of inexpensive, compact electronic components allowed manufacturers to cram LED lights into them. Then simple circuits and LCD art. Then legitimate computer processors — like the Game Boy’s CPU, which was based on the processors that powered the PC revolution of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Impressive, right? Well… honestly, in terms of technology, Game Boy was the furthest thing from impressive even in 1989. The concept wasn’t even that original; Milton Bradley had produced the first ever LCD portable that ran on interchangeable cartridges all the way back in 1979, a full decade before Game Boy’s launch. Epoch’s MicroVision was agonizingly primitive and tremendously expensive, but it helped further establish the concept.
No one really tinkered with the concept again for nearly a decade, though, perhaps because the Game & Watch approach of dedicated LCD handheld units that were nearly as cheap as a game cartridge on its own worked so well. Epoch made a limited and ultimately short-lived effort with the Japan-only Game Pocket Computer, which looks like a rough draft of the Game Boy but was doomed by its extremely high cost and limited library. The next cartridge-based handheld to enter serious production also came from a Western company, Epyx, though their “Handy” portable didn’t see light of day for nearly three years after its inception, when Atari bought it up and marketed it as Lynx.
Game Boy beat Lynx to retail by a matter of months, but the close release of the two systems makes for a telling study in purpose and philosophy. Game Boy used a puny processor and a frankly terrible screen… but those features worked to its advantage, allowing Nintendo to offer it for less than half the price of the Lynx, and being relatively gentle on batteries. Sega’s Game Gear would improve on Lynx’s tech, but it too would fall afoul of both its up-front and its long-term costs.
The Primal Soup
Nintendo has been a major force in the video games industry almost since the beginning, but by and large it hasn’t really competed on the same terms as other game makers. The company’s history as a toy and gadget maker continues to shape its approach to hardware design, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. In the case of Game Boy, this mindset definitely worked for the best.
If you look at Game Boy as a game system, its modest power and inferior LCD seem like sheer folly. Taken as a successor to Nintendo’s long line of kid-sized gizmos and amusements, though, it makes perfect sense.
And, of course, the man responsible for Game Boy’s hardware design, Gunpei Yokoi, had been the mastermind of countless Nintendo doodads and watchamacallits dating back to the 1960s. Former NCL president Hiroshi Yamauchi had catapulted Yokoi to prominence when he saw the man messing around with a toy-like device of his own design to kill down time while working on Nintendo’s assembly line. Yamauchi promptly commissioned Yokoi to turn the toy into an actual product. He did, and it become one of Nintendo’s first commercial hits: The Ultra Hand.
In the years that followed, Yokoi spearheaded the design of dozens of toys, many of which worked as compact electromechanical renditions of arcade amusements. Another major hit for Yokoi came in the form of the Love Tester, a simple toy that measured the electrochemical voltage of two people to “predict” their romantic compatibility. Over time, Nintendo’s toy line incorporated more and more electronic elements, which made their mid-’70s entrée into dedicated, single-title game consoles a natural one.
And with their flag planted in the soil of the embryonic games industry, Nintendo’s Game & Watch seemed a similarly natural progression: Tiny portable gadgets that repurposed adult-oriented technology (in this case, LCD wristwatches) for kids. And adults, too, but mostly kids.
It’s this history that created the primal stew that gave rise to Game Boy. But life didn’t come into being until it was jolted by the bolt of lightning that was Sony’s Walkman. One of the most revolutionary electronic devices ever made, the Walkman made hi-fi audio portable, packing the ability to play radio and cassette tapes into a compact, battery-powered device that output music through a pair of headphones.
The K-Car Revolution
That was the Walkman’s fundamental revolution: It exploded the concept of personal electronics into the mainstream. Sony created a self-contained gadget designed for a single person, compromising top-of-the-line sound for the sake of convenience and portability, and this philosophy influenced hardware design for decades to come.
Nintendo wasn’t even shy about borrowing Sony’s incredible idea — “Game Boy” reads as an obvious riff on “Walkman,” adopting the English-language construction of the cassette player’s name while also speaking to its purpose (playing video games) and target audience (boys). Plus, Game Boy made it clear that the handheld was meant as the junior counterpart to the NES — the serious game experience was still to be found on the console, while the handheld offered a less completely formed take.
Game Boy turned NES-era game design into a solitary pursuit… but of course, Nintendo’s love of play and socialization still found a place in the system despite its being designed for a single player to hold and play at intimate range. While Game Boy excelled at reproducing NES-like single-player experiences (the first year alone would bring players Super Mario, Castlevania, and Final Fantasy spin-offs), the system could also connect to other Game Boys through its Link Cable feature.
The Link Cable allowed as many as 16 players to daisy-chain together… well, at least in theory. In practice, all but a handful of multiplayer games limited themselves to two-person experiences. Microsoft office 2013 mac download. By no means was this solely a Nintendo innovation, either. Atari’s Lynx included a similar feature, the ComLynx, which enabled similar head-to-head play options.
But Link Cable’s presence demonstrated Nintendo’s priorities — after all, Lynx was meant to be the Cadillac of portable game systems, a massive luxury device with all the bells and whistles. Game Boy was a K Car, compact and inexpensive, its feature set stripped to the bare minimum. Nintendo cut every corner they could, but the ability to socialize made the final cut.
The Triumph of Modesty
Instead, the system’s compromises affected not so much the system’s basic feature set as the quality of those features. The system’s processor was a variant on the humble Zilog Z80, an 8-bit derivative of the legendary 8080 that helped power the PC revolution of the 1970s. 10 years prior to Game Boy, the Z80 was a giant; by 1989, however, it seemed a primitive pipsqueak next to the likes of Motorola’s 68000, which had powered the Macintosh in 1984 and now ticked away beneath the hood of Sega’s Genesis. The chip Game Boy used as its main processor was similar to the secondary coprocessor the Genesis kept around almost as an afterthought to allow for vestigial Master System compatibility.
By a similar token, Game Boy’s screen was barely adequate. Capable of a mere four shades of greyscale, it couldn’t even provide that trait effectively; its dull greenish cast set the “white” color value to a putrid shade reminiscent of an unpleasant diaper accident, and the darker tones weren’t much better — and even with the contrast dial cranked up, its facsimile of black was closer in tone and value to rotting asparagus.
Like most consumer-oriented LCDs of the day, the Game Boy’s screen employed a passive matrix display. This resulted in a severe motion blur that affected moving objects as the screen slowly redrew graphics. For simple, single-screen affairs like puzzle games and old-school arcade titles, this was hardly detrimental.
But for anything that scrolled, such as platformers and shooters, Game Boy’s visuals quickly degenerated into a smeary mess. Every moving object was trailed by a blurry afterimage as once-darkened pixels faded to “white.” This severely undermined the playability of many games, especially the NES-caliber experiences developers sought to make portable.
Indestructible, Undefeatable
And yet, despite these individual failings, the system simply couldn’t fail. Its particular design flaws were more than offset by all the advantages Yokoi built into the system. Its rugged, compact design definitely spoke to the work of an experienced toy designer familiar with the utter lack of care with which children treat their playthings.
The Game Boy hardware could withstand any number of offenses — impacts, scratches, even fire — and keep ticking away. Crack the screen and you could still make out the graphics running away happily around the bleeding LCD cells. Run it through the washing machine and it would kick back to life a few days later when its innards had dried out again. The Game Boy was like the Terminator: Invincible, unstoppable, and relentless in its mission to entertain children.
Of course, Yokoi had another advantage working in his favor: Nintendo’s utter dominance of two-thirds of the global video games industry. The simple fact that the people behind Mario had produced a handheld system was good for a few million sales alone. The Super NES would draw fire for making the NES obsolete and mooting kids’ extensive 8-bit libraries a few years later, but there was no such concern for the Game Boy. It was a wholly unique device from the NES, despite its obvious kinship: More primitive and limited, and one used in a totally different fashion.
Even if Lynx had beaten Game Boy to the market, Atari had very little in the way of must-play games on day one. Nintendo, on the other hand, delivered not only a legitimate (if miniaturized and somewhat weird) Super Mario game but also the majestic Tetris as well. And within a matter of months, it brought the full fury of Nintendo third-party partners to bear on the market as well.
Atari couldn’t begin to compete, not in 1989. U.S. game developers were still struggling to catch up in the console space, having shifted to personal computers and arcades after the early ’80s crash that had been precipitated by Atari in the first place.
No, consoles were a playground dominated by the Japanese, and Japanese developers weren’t going to partner with Atari when Nintendo had its own homegrown handheld option available to them. After all, despite Nintendo’s reputation for unfavorable licensing terms, the Famicom and NES had made many publishers very, very rich, and the Game Boy represented the most obvious opportunity for extending that filthy lucre into a new medium.
The Game Boy looked like easy money even in the midst of Japan’s ’80s economic boom, a time when the yen practically minted itself. The system had a guaranteed global reach of millions. Its humble hardware was easy and cheap to develop for; the Z80 processor was an industry standard, well-documented and familiar to any programmer worth his salt. The hardware was cheap. Software was cheap, too. And Nintendo already had an amazing global distribution system.
For developers who already had extensive experience in NES game design, its little cousin must have seemed like a total no-brainer. The biggest drawback to Game Boy, besides its harrowing technical limitations, was the fact that every game had to stand up against Nintendo’s own first-party projects.
It may not have been much to look at, but between its familiar NES-style control setup and the Link Cable, the Game Boy could offer a reasonable simulation of NES play experiences — enough to satisfy kids, certainly, and appealing in its own way to adults as well. Puzzle and parlor games made a better fit for Game Boy than kid-friendly mascot action games. Despite its juvenile moniker, the system sunk its hooks into grownups in short order as well.
Why Is A Gameboy Called A Dmg Download
Of course, the no-brainer business appeal of Game Boy also worked against the system; thanks to the low barriers of entry to development, the machine was quickly inundated by decidedly less-than-exceptional wares. The early years of the Game Boy library were flooded by repetitive puzzle games. Shopping for Game Boy software meant slogging through a minefield of licensed crap. And a preponderance of two-bit Pokémon clones made the system’s later years similarly fatiguing.
Things were even worse in Japan, where dozens of indistinguishable horse racing simulators, pachinko games, and mahjong titles choked the release lists. American gamers missed out on a few gems over the years, but we also dodged enough bullets to belt-feed an M2 Browning.
The Good and the Bad of Victory
These combined factors — low cost, adequate technology, kid-friendly design, an extensive and varied library, and tons of third-party support — made Game Boy an unrivaled success. The competition produced some impressive attempts to compete over the years, including Sega’s powerful Game Gear (literally an upgraded portable Master System) and the TurboXpress from NEC (which played actual TurboGrafx-16 games). Yet none of them hit on all the same success points as Nintendo, and none of them came close to selling anywhere near as well as Game Boy.
Ultimately, Nintendo came away the clear victor in handheld gaming, though that too exacted a certain toll as well. Lacking true competition, Nintendo drifted along after a while and ceased to innovate. Instead of producing a Game Boy follow-up after seven years, they instead produced a more energy-efficient model with a better screen: Game Boy Pocket.
Yokoi focused his efforts on the tragic Virtual Boy, another toy-inspired self-contained gaming system, but one that lacked the smart, no-frills appeal of Game Boy. Nintendo’s salvation from that brush with disaster actually came from Game Boy itself, when Pokémon gave the system its second wind in the mid-’90s.
With the rest of the industry (and the press) too focused on the heated 32-bit console wars to care about handhelds, Game Boy flew beneath the radar until Pokémon became too big to ignore. The phenomenon caught everyone except Nintendo flat-footed, and Game Boy mopped up. In fact, Pokémon’s success gave Nintendo the freedom to shelve the Game Boy’s direct successor, the 32-bit Project Atlantis, for five years and continue to rake in the easy money with the aged Game Boy hardware.
Rather than take handheld gaming into the next generation, Nintendo chose instead to follow up with the Game Boy Color, an incremental upgrade to the old black-and-white system. Less a new generation than an enhancement, Game Boy Color offered smooth intercompatibility with its predecessor’s library, with a number of cartridges offering dual support for both platforms.
In the end, Game Boy remained a viable platform for more than a decade. Its final release, the dual-compatible One Piece: Maboroshi no Grand Line Boukenki!, launched in Japan on June 28, 2002: More than 13 years after the system’s April 21, 1989 debut, and more than a year after the arrival of its second successor, Game Boy Advance. Meanwhile, Game Boy Color stuck around for more than a year after that; the licensed utility app Doraemon Study Boy: Kanji Yomekaki Master launched on July 18, 2003.
While not exactly the most exciting finale to a platform that lived well beyond any reasonable estimates of its natural life, in a way, that’s kind of fitting. Underwhelming and/or licensed content was the Game Boy’s bread-and-butter, and the system’s unexciting competence kept the tills ringing for years after its superior competitors were long since dead and buried.
Video Feature
Nintendo Game Boy
Japanese title: Game Boy • 任天堂ゲームボーイ
Developer:Nintendo R&D1
Publisher:Nintendo
Release date: 4.21.1989 [JP] | 8.1989* [US] | 9.28.1990 [EU]
Format: Enhanced color palette (built into Super Game Boy)
Predecessor:Game & Watch series [1980-1989]
Successors: Game Boy Pocket [1996]; Game Boy Light [1998]; Game Boy Color [1998]
Developer:Nintendo R&D1
Publisher:Nintendo
Release date: 4.21.1989 [JP] | 8.1989* [US] | 9.28.1990 [EU]
Format: Enhanced color palette (built into Super Game Boy)
Predecessor:Game & Watch series [1980-1989]
Successors: Game Boy Pocket [1996]; Game Boy Light [1998]; Game Boy Color [1998]
*Specific launch date unavailable; available online newspaper archives from 1989 do not contain a specific news story marking the debut of Game Boy, and articles on the system variously cite its U.S. debut as anything from “summer” to “September.”
Gallery
Why Is A Gameboy Called A Dmg System
Image sources: be-cause, Nintendo Before Mario, Wikipedia