Back in the days before massive LCD displays, mankind had to settle with the idea of linking up banks of CRT TVs to create that 'big screen' vibe – and now, a hacker has achieved the same kind of effect using Game Boy displays.
In his efforts to reverse engineer the Game Boy's crude greyscale LCD display, kgsws was able to connect 9 screens to the same console, creating a larger (albeit segmented) version of that famously tiny screen.
Despite the increased size, it's still jolly hard to make out what's actually happening – a consequence of the blur-prone tech Nintendo used on the Game Boy (and Game Boy Pocket) all those years ago. Still, it's an impressive feat.
Comments (17)
Cube world check
The blurry effect was because of the processing power of the gameboy, nothing to do with the display
EDIT: Ok, I have had loads of messages saying I'm wrong, so sorry, thanks all
@Bunkerneath I thought it was the low refresh rate on the screen
We're finally living in the future.
Hah! Come back when you have a screen for each pixel.
@noobish_hat You sure about that? Not AS blurry as the OG model, but it's still blurry!
@Bunkerneath Eh? So why do Game Boy games not look blurry on the Analogue Pocket? Or on the GBA?
@Mikmoomamimocki
23,040 screens. That's quite a kickstarter.
Not to be THAT guy (yes, again...) but they could have lined the 9 screens up properly before making the video...?! It genuinely hurts my eyes to watch that ! Needs a solution to remove the small border from the screens too - not easy. Fun project though - and clearly skilled!
@Bunkerneath
It's predominantly blur from the screen update, dude. Each pixel in the transparent dot matrix takes some amount of time for switching between off and it's three intensities.
The processor is considerably faster at informing the screen what it should do, than the screen is at following suit. :v
Gameboy Big Screen, need a Gameboy advance version for Gameboy video.
This reminds me of the first time I walked into a Best Buy and they hard Mario Kart running on 3by3 of CRTs. Felt like I walked into disney world or something of that nature.
@Bunkerneath LOL no. The blur is due to the speed at which the LCD pixels are able to change color (or go from on to off). Early LCDs had slow color changes. Early flat panel PC monitors also had noticeable motion blur for the same reason.
People have modded original Gamboys with modern fast response LCD screens and they have no blur. Here's an example: https://youtu.be/QsukSN_Ts8E?t=1356
Why not just output to one large screen???
@Bunkerneath Sorry but it's not. It was due to the low speed response of the screen, pixels would need time to go blank after being used, thus the blur effect. Even back then, you could use the super game boy on the SNES, which was exactly a game boy hardware but in a cartridge, just using the SNES to outuput the picture instead of the GameBoy screen and it was not blurry at all on the TV screen
That looks great where do I buy one?
@Bunkerneath wrong. It was the low refreshing rate of the display
I think you would even need more processing power that the gameboy had to archive motion blur instead of low framerate with a modern display…
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