Not long ago we shared the work of Game Boy hacker stacksmashing, who has been doing intriguing mods with the retro portable. They had managed to connect to the link cable process in the original Tetris to manipulate the pieces that would drop when playing multiplayer. It was just a bit of fun, but from a technical perspective it meant there was a better understanding of how the link cable and software works, and how it could therefore be adjusted.
Now the modder has made a breakthrough and produced the hardware, software and server setup that'll allow you to play the original Tetris, on a Game Boy, in online multiplayer with friends. They even test the idea with up to three players - take that, Tetris 99.
It's rather clever, as the various mods allow software to connect to the Game Boy and essentially recreate the communication that the link cable would enable in the past. It's fun to see online multiplayer actually functioning on technology from the late 1980s. Check it out below.
It's a fun project, even if it'll only be a few hardy souls actually go to the effort to make it all work. As always, the modding community continues to do amazing things with iconic games.
Anyway, back to Tetris 99...
[source youtube.com, via gizmodo.com]
Comments 12
Can't wait to play Atari 2600 games online
seems cool, but mostly usless, playing T99 or a modern tetris game is insanly easier, plus I feel like most friend groups are more likely to have this, than whats needed for online GB tetris.
online GB pokemon or other games and count me in.
I wonder if this same tech could be used to transfer Gen 1/2 Pokémon to Gen 3 (and beyond). Really, someone just need to define how some of the stats translate, then write some software to do the transferring.
@montrayjak
Seems like you can transfare your save Game from the original Modules into your 3DS and than up to every other Game.
Thanks to Devices as the Retrode and the possibility to acces the SD-Cart of the 3DS
Nice but with Tetris 99 and Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 & 2, we already got some good online Tetris now but cool concept if you still want to play it old school and had some friends who share the some passion.
I still have 2 og gameboy with 2 copies of Tetris and a link cable lol. This is cool though for sure.
Soo.. Tetris 99, but with GameBoys. This is really nice software / hardware engineering.
And see here, you can create something awesome, without breaking any copyright.
Now they need to find a way to make BurgerTime multiplayer
That's unbelievable cool!
@Azuris Ohhh that's awesome!
I wish I could play ANY Game Boy games' multiplayer modes easily. I do own multiple Game Boys, a link cable and multiple copies of many of the games, but it's still a hassle even in 2021. Emulators don't help much since I'm not aware of any Game Boy ones that enable multiplayer. =|
The second player might be at a disadvantage since the game was only designed for 2 players. Would every subsequent player target the previous player by default? Though the first player might target every other player.
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