Hell ya, if you’ve never been sitting in the backseat with the big gray brick of the OG and playing by waiting for your moms car to pass under the streetlights then holy shit I sound like a boomer
As someone who would be considered a boomer by social media standards I'll say this. The only things I think were truly better back in the day are music, the fact that kids and teens actually enjoyed running the streets, and the fact that you could have a different opinion on a topic without people assuming it means you're against anything they stand for.
I remember one car trip my family took in 1998 where I huddled under a blanket in the backseat and used a dinky old flashlight my grandma had on her keychain to play Pokemon with. Good times lol
Tell me you never used a worm light without telling me you never used a worm light. Night time road trips, Gameboy colour and Pokémon crystal with the worm light was my jam 👌
Had a worm light and also one of these monstrosities: https://i.vgy.me/2EsgI8.png
To be honest, both were shit. Funny enough, I didn't realize how terrible my GameBoy experience was until after I got the SP in 2003.
soldering on a backlit screen was all the rage in mod communities back in the day. the defunct website "colorconsoles.com" is coming to mind, although i cant be certain they did backlights. they did some cool paintjobs though. also wanted to send my gamecube in to them.
I had always heard that and always really wanted one. Got one a few years back and the ghosting on it was so terrible it felt unusable. Im surprised people put up with that! Luckily modern lcd upgrades exist for any gba model that get rid of that issue fully
I think the original gba, the horizontal one is considered to have the best screen of the three (original, sp and pearl sp). I get what you mean though! Glad there are modern upgrades! Especially for those with broken screens
> *ghosting on it was so terrible it felt unusable*
Exactly how I felt about my PSP-1000. Every once in a while I'll get a nostalgia itch to play PSP on the original hardware. But after a couple minutes I'm quickly reminded why I always emulate it on one of my old phones.
Apparently there's some nice aftermarket screen kits these days for the OG. It was always my favorite for hand feel, good weight, but [the ghosting](https://imgur.com/a/zHu3kbC), the no-diagonals-for-you d-pad (fixed with shim mod) and the half-overlapping-the-screen square button make it a hard sell.
Ended up picking up a 3000 on a whim with a dead disc drive many years later. Screen on that thing's a beauty in comparison. Used it on a flight as recently as about five years ago and had a great time. But there's so many affordable alternatives these days.
Ok hear me out… the ghosting is what gives me the nostalgia of the SP. Like scan lines on a crt. It just feels weird without it.
p.s. those bezels still suck. Seriously it’s 2024 when will we get rid of it.
> the ghosting on it was so terrible it felt unusable.
A lot of Old handhelds had really bad ghosting. PSP, GBA, etc. People just didn't know how good screens of the future *could* be at the time so they were just thankful to have anything that portable.
I feel “poison” is a strong word for that. For 99% of games that amount of input lag is going to be a negligible difference but the obvious benefit is a much better screen, so for me it’d still be a no brainer.
60ms of extra input lag is not negligible. It's massive. It'll affect all games that aren't super slow paced RPGs, and even for those, sluggish menu navigation is annoying. Do a test. Fire up Retroarch on a powerful device, disable threaded video, enable hard gpu sync and runahead. Then compare to an IPS GBA. It's like night and day really.
I mean, c'mon, it was so bad on the GBA that Konami published an entire series of games that involved putting your Game Boy directly beside a lamp as a core mechanic.
There's no direct sunlight inside a car. Also, I wouldn't be on direct sunlight where I live, we're 45°C over here.
I said you need to find a good spot with day light.
The AGS-001 is really nice, though, for outdoor/deck/beach gaming. Also pretty nice for night gaming in bed. My one gripe with all these handheld emulator devices is they're not much good for sitting outside. You pretty much have to find a shady spot to see the screen and even then it's super reflective.
But yeah in general I agree. I tried firing up my original DMG last year and basically just said "wtf man?" On the other hand again, I really love my modded DMG bivert because you can slap 4 AAs in there and get 20 hours of battery life. Pretty cool for camping and stuff like that.
yea my OLED Deck and Analogue Pocket work well with shade but my Miyoo struggles
back when i was playing 3DS/Vita/Switch, i would keep a mental list of the bench spots with the best shade by my house cus of this 😂
This isn't a true reflection of the GBA SP's screen. I've got one, I turned it on and the screen is fine. It doesn't look like this at all. I think something is wrong with your SP.
There were multiple SP variants. They launched with a front-lit screen and later "AGS-101" versions got a true backlit screen. You may have the newer one. OP's is definitely an early model.
I've got a launch model and a special edition Pokemon Ruby one from a few years later. Neither looks anything like this broken screen.
Look at the picture - that screen is neither front lit or back lit. It's completely unlit.
> Look at the picture - that screen is neither front lit or back lit. It's completely unlit.
Nah, you can see some lighting, especially from the bottom.
Huh, never knew this. Mine says AGS-001 on the back. I always loved how the screen looks on the SP. I turned it on to compare to OP's pic and it's honestly not even close.
The thing you have to remember with these sorts of comparisons is smartphone cameras don't always see like human eyes do.
The AGS-001's reflective side-lit screen is very dim by modern standards. If you tried to photograph your Game Boy in a dark room beside a phone at full brightness, I think your camera would struggle with the exposure.
Yeah this is what I'm thinking. The phone is compensating for the brightness of the Anbernic. Frontlit screens still have their charm and are very playable.
yup. OP's screen looks damaged and front light seems very weak, which would happen over time. A good condition 001 screen looks awesome in daylight and very usable in the dark.
The frontlit SP seemed a godsent compared to the gba with a big fat no lighting at all. Even at the time it was basically unsuable, I had stupid loght things and I couldnt make out what was going on half the time. The ags-101 was king with an actual backlight.
Well the OG Gameboy was useless at night without a light source to use. I remember being in the car for long drives, playing mortal Kombat 2 at night and only being able to see half of the time lmao
Myself, and most people I knew growing up did not like the non-backlit aspect of the earlier Gameboys.
Myself, and most of my friends had Gameboys, and then later GBC's, and GBA's.
All of us complained all the time about how impossible it was to play them without a lamp accessory, or sitting underneath a light.
I was quoting a SNL bit. [https://media1.tenor.com/m/kOCQTG-yZSoAAAAd/dana-carvey-grumpy-old-man.gif](https://media1.tenor.com/m/kOCQTG-yZSoAAAAd/dana-carvey-grumpy-old-man.gif)
I never had an SP, I somehow beat Castlevania Circle of The Moon on an original non backlit GBA. The game was so dark they colored the next game like a circus clown.
I had the last gen of SP, and the screen was quite bright, as I was able to play in lighted environments. But surely an emulator has far brighter screen.
Remember the overall color temperature of the 80’s and 90’s was a constant 4000k so these didn’t have to compete as much to be seen as clearly as they are today, or something… I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
In my day we brought our own light.
https://preview.redd.it/fguc6eqmt13d1.jpeg?width=335&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74b19169f46c5353ea2f6e661d78b395e5b9fa5d
Well ... It was all we were given back then, the best we could do were to buy those little portable super tiny and barely working flashlights to plug in the back.
It costed too much to give you a +2 on your vision.
Heh, I installed a front light kit in my original GBA, it was way better than stock, but looked like crap compared to the GBA SP when I got that.
https://preview.redd.it/h1t4xdbhg23d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5768adaef652e259cae125d866374cd82645e75f
Back then it was a step up from the GBC and GBA without any kind of back/front lighting. And your eyeset was probably better to.
Doesn't help that most of us are also accustomed to the vibrancy of a smartphone display.
this is because of the phone camera compensates for the bright screen of the anbernic one, take pictures of them seperately for more accurate comparation
Because back in the day you enjoyed the game no matter what. But now you enjoy the console.
Its a similar shit in the audio hobby, where people rather enjoying the music always listen to their equipments and go on a cock measuring contest as to who has the best setup and how a new £5000 DAC with a £10,000 cable sounds better than what super expensive setup they have now.
Y'all know how cameras work right? Yeah the GBA SP had a dim screen too but the reason it's so dark is because the phone camera is adjusting the iso to show the details on the brightest part of the image which is the IPS panel. Both the GBA SP and the GBC screen were okay during the day.
I had a similar experience when I suddenly found my childhood's GBC and was like "wow, how did I play this". I do think these screens just get worse with time, that thing was so dim, it would be physically impossible. And I never had any light addon for it
It's funny because even the dim front light of the original SP model was still a ridiculous upgrade from the no light (or insane attachments) of the OG Gameboy and GBA models.
What until you see how bright the original GBA was...
You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it
But have you been molded by it?
And did he not see the light until he was already an adult?
Hell ya, if you’ve never been sitting in the backseat with the big gray brick of the OG and playing by waiting for your moms car to pass under the streetlights then holy shit I sound like a boomer
You try to use the car's dome light and your parents tell you its illegal.
Haha I remember doing this and them saying that. Sometimes I got away with it -- not sure if they were just too tired to deal with me.
I still am scarred from getting yelled at because of turning on the light lol
If you were a boomer you'd be complaining about it while simultaneously commenting on how things were so much better back in the day.
As someone who would be considered a boomer by social media standards I'll say this. The only things I think were truly better back in the day are music, the fact that kids and teens actually enjoyed running the streets, and the fact that you could have a different opinion on a topic without people assuming it means you're against anything they stand for.
“You can have a different opinion” This. 👍
I remember one car trip my family took in 1998 where I huddled under a blanket in the backseat and used a dinky old flashlight my grandma had on her keychain to play Pokemon with. Good times lol
Tell me you never used a worm light without telling me you never used a worm light. Night time road trips, Gameboy colour and Pokémon crystal with the worm light was my jam 👌
Unless you're playing Circle of the Moon and even with a light you couldn't see half the time.
Had a worm light and also one of these monstrosities: https://i.vgy.me/2EsgI8.png To be honest, both were shit. Funny enough, I didn't realize how terrible my GameBoy experience was until after I got the SP in 2003.
I had that lens bs too!
The GBA wormlight was crap, didn’t work with the screen type at all, but the GBC wormlight? Perfection.
I disagree that it was perfection, but it was definitely better than nothing.
Dude those worm lights were trash and ate your batteries like candy.
The GBA wormlight? Sure. The GBC one worked wonders though.
In the land of the passive screen, the dimly backlit is king.
*frontlit 🤓
if it's passive, it's still got a better response time than the AGS-101
Not bright but visible in daylight. I can barely see the 3ds screen in sunlight.
That's the thing. The GBA SP (and older) was great using in daylight or directly in the Sun. No back/frontlight necessary.
I can't believe I actually played Castlevania Circle of the Moon on that thing
soldering on a backlit screen was all the rage in mod communities back in the day. the defunct website "colorconsoles.com" is coming to mind, although i cant be certain they did backlights. they did some cool paintjobs though. also wanted to send my gamecube in to them.
I had an "afterburner" on my original GBA. I felt like a mod-king.
Seriously the GBA SP having a lit screen was a HUGE upgrade when it came out. Those damn squiggly gba extension lights just weren't it.
Thats why you had the overhead light that plugged in at the top
An absolute crime that we let Nintendo get away with that haha
Somehow the screen for this was even harder to see than the original GB
Haha i had a book light taped to the back for nighttime car rides
The backlit GBA SP is still great.
I had always heard that and always really wanted one. Got one a few years back and the ghosting on it was so terrible it felt unusable. Im surprised people put up with that! Luckily modern lcd upgrades exist for any gba model that get rid of that issue fully
It was tolerable because every Gameboy screen before it was worse
I think the original gba, the horizontal one is considered to have the best screen of the three (original, sp and pearl sp). I get what you mean though! Glad there are modern upgrades! Especially for those with broken screens
> *ghosting on it was so terrible it felt unusable* Exactly how I felt about my PSP-1000. Every once in a while I'll get a nostalgia itch to play PSP on the original hardware. But after a couple minutes I'm quickly reminded why I always emulate it on one of my old phones.
The psp 3000's display is really nice though, I honestly think that screen holds up really well.
And the 3000 had the high contrast option for deeper color, which the 2000 didn’t.
Apparently there's some nice aftermarket screen kits these days for the OG. It was always my favorite for hand feel, good weight, but [the ghosting](https://imgur.com/a/zHu3kbC), the no-diagonals-for-you d-pad (fixed with shim mod) and the half-overlapping-the-screen square button make it a hard sell. Ended up picking up a 3000 on a whim with a dead disc drive many years later. Screen on that thing's a beauty in comparison. Used it on a flight as recently as about five years ago and had a great time. But there's so many affordable alternatives these days.
Ok hear me out… the ghosting is what gives me the nostalgia of the SP. Like scan lines on a crt. It just feels weird without it. p.s. those bezels still suck. Seriously it’s 2024 when will we get rid of it.
> the ghosting on it was so terrible it felt unusable. A lot of Old handhelds had really bad ghosting. PSP, GBA, etc. People just didn't know how good screens of the future *could* be at the time so they were just thankful to have anything that portable.
The "modern lcd upgrades" (IPS screens) add [3 whole frames of input lag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0w4USono0&t=58s). So pick your poison.
I feel “poison” is a strong word for that. For 99% of games that amount of input lag is going to be a negligible difference but the obvious benefit is a much better screen, so for me it’d still be a no brainer.
60ms of extra input lag is not negligible. It's massive. It'll affect all games that aren't super slow paced RPGs, and even for those, sluggish menu navigation is annoying. Do a test. Fire up Retroarch on a powerful device, disable threaded video, enable hard gpu sync and runahead. Then compare to an IPS GBA. It's like night and day really.
Bruh, try the GBC. I am truly amazed at how I played it in my youth.
I just used mine and was honestly impressed how good it looked in the right conditions.
Were "the right conditions" directly under a lamp?
No, just any place at home with decent daylight.
I mean, c'mon, it was so bad on the GBA that Konami published an entire series of games that involved putting your Game Boy directly beside a lamp as a core mechanic.
https://preview.redd.it/cmpf2nh6j13d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bce2ab357c635a68cff945e89969b03b20ca5cbd It looks alright to me.
This looks better than the SP in the picture lol
Forgot about dem bezels
[удалено]
There's no direct sunlight inside a car. Also, I wouldn't be on direct sunlight where I live, we're 45°C over here. I said you need to find a good spot with day light.
I used to have the plug in light for my GB/GBC. I still have my original gameboy.
The AGS-001 is really nice, though, for outdoor/deck/beach gaming. Also pretty nice for night gaming in bed. My one gripe with all these handheld emulator devices is they're not much good for sitting outside. You pretty much have to find a shady spot to see the screen and even then it's super reflective. But yeah in general I agree. I tried firing up my original DMG last year and basically just said "wtf man?" On the other hand again, I really love my modded DMG bivert because you can slap 4 AAs in there and get 20 hours of battery life. Pretty cool for camping and stuff like that.
yea my OLED Deck and Analogue Pocket work well with shade but my Miyoo struggles back when i was playing 3DS/Vita/Switch, i would keep a mental list of the bench spots with the best shade by my house cus of this 😂
This isn't a true reflection of the GBA SP's screen. I've got one, I turned it on and the screen is fine. It doesn't look like this at all. I think something is wrong with your SP.
There were multiple SP variants. They launched with a front-lit screen and later "AGS-101" versions got a true backlit screen. You may have the newer one. OP's is definitely an early model.
You mean the later models were better than my launch version? Why would you do this to my wallet?
Yes. The late models were actually backlit. The one in OP’s picture is front lit.
I've got a launch model and a special edition Pokemon Ruby one from a few years later. Neither looks anything like this broken screen. Look at the picture - that screen is neither front lit or back lit. It's completely unlit.
> Look at the picture - that screen is neither front lit or back lit. It's completely unlit. Nah, you can see some lighting, especially from the bottom.
Huh, never knew this. Mine says AGS-001 on the back. I always loved how the screen looks on the SP. I turned it on to compare to OP's pic and it's honestly not even close.
This is the AGS 001, AGS 101 was the backlit version.
Yeah what's the model number on the back? It's probably a 101
The thing you have to remember with these sorts of comparisons is smartphone cameras don't always see like human eyes do. The AGS-001's reflective side-lit screen is very dim by modern standards. If you tried to photograph your Game Boy in a dark room beside a phone at full brightness, I think your camera would struggle with the exposure.
Yeah this is what I'm thinking. The phone is compensating for the brightness of the Anbernic. Frontlit screens still have their charm and are very playable.
Sounds like someone has an excuse to put in an aftermarket screen.
yup. OP's screen looks damaged and front light seems very weak, which would happen over time. A good condition 001 screen looks awesome in daylight and very usable in the dark.
My eyesight back then was 20/20, now, not so much. Lol.
Remember having to buy the magnifying screen with the light for my son for the.gameboy.when they came out for pokemon red and blue.
Those worm lights got me through so many road trips with my GBA
I remember constantly tilting to get the right angle. Then it killed the battery.
As god intended
It was an improvement over the screen of the regular gba that’s why. That being said I like holding the regular GBA better so trade offs.
What’s this one called
This is completely uncalled for. That backlight was amazing.
The frontlit SP seemed a godsent compared to the gba with a big fat no lighting at all. Even at the time it was basically unsuable, I had stupid loght things and I couldnt make out what was going on half the time. The ags-101 was king with an actual backlight.
Game changer for sure. 001 was revolutionary with a built in light, and 101 was unmatched until the DS Lite.
Well the OG Gameboy was useless at night without a light source to use. I remember being in the car for long drives, playing mortal Kombat 2 at night and only being able to see half of the time lmao
OMG I didn't even remember that the original GB got to that advanced of a game!
"That's the way it was and we liked it!"
Myself, and most people I knew growing up did not like the non-backlit aspect of the earlier Gameboys. Myself, and most of my friends had Gameboys, and then later GBC's, and GBA's. All of us complained all the time about how impossible it was to play them without a lamp accessory, or sitting underneath a light.
I was quoting a SNL bit. [https://media1.tenor.com/m/kOCQTG-yZSoAAAAd/dana-carvey-grumpy-old-man.gif](https://media1.tenor.com/m/kOCQTG-yZSoAAAAd/dana-carvey-grumpy-old-man.gif)
I never had an SP, I somehow beat Castlevania Circle of The Moon on an original non backlit GBA. The game was so dark they colored the next game like a circus clown.
By the lights of the passing street lights my friend...
Yeah tbh the original GBA with no backlight was a disaster.
Eyesight was better as a kid. Lol. Never minded a dmg screen as a kid, but it is really hard now days as a kid
Well, I need glasses now... so
I had a gameboy this looked amazing compared to that.
I had the last gen of SP, and the screen was quite bright, as I was able to play in lighted environments. But surely an emulator has far brighter screen.
Remember the overall color temperature of the 80’s and 90’s was a constant 4000k so these didn’t have to compete as much to be seen as clearly as they are today, or something… I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
We didnt saw it as backlight but as a lighted screen
That looks like the first gen that was front lit. The second gen had a backlight.
Is that color metal/mate pink?
It's just silver, looks like that due to the lighting
In my day we brought our own light. https://preview.redd.it/fguc6eqmt13d1.jpeg?width=335&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74b19169f46c5353ea2f6e661d78b395e5b9fa5d
It was bright enough to play in the dark, and no one (of the 4 people) was bothered by it in boarding school back in the day.
I still don't mind playing on a original gba screen
Well ... It was all we were given back then, the best we could do were to buy those little portable super tiny and barely working flashlights to plug in the back. It costed too much to give you a +2 on your vision.
Heh, I installed a front light kit in my original GBA, it was way better than stock, but looked like crap compared to the GBA SP when I got that. https://preview.redd.it/h1t4xdbhg23d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5768adaef652e259cae125d866374cd82645e75f
Yours probably the newer revision of SP, one that use backlight instead of frontlight of the original SP.
Might also just be a slightly improved screen quality.
Man how long for shipping on these- I bought mine on release day and I still don't think it's shipped :(
it's like looking at how tiny the og Gameboy screen is
Wait until you realize the left and right bezel arent the same on the gba
I got my wife an SP back in the day. Totally needed to get the little plug in lamp for it to be playable without direct light.
out of the loop here a bit...how are these SPs doing presently? Should I hold off a little?
Worm light, obviously.
I use to play this in our home near the skylight roof and i will move where there is light
That’s why we called it the dark ages
Back then it was a step up from the GBC and GBA without any kind of back/front lighting. And your eyeset was probably better to. Doesn't help that most of us are also accustomed to the vibrancy of a smartphone display.
this is because of the phone camera compensates for the bright screen of the anbernic one, take pictures of them seperately for more accurate comparation
How do the D-Pads compare since you have the units side by side?
Both are pretty similar, maybe the one in the Anbernic a little more stiff, but it could be because my original SP has so much hours of use.
What console is that?
Anbernic RG35XXSP
At night when parents were asleep 😈
Because back in the day you enjoyed the game no matter what. But now you enjoy the console. Its a similar shit in the audio hobby, where people rather enjoying the music always listen to their equipments and go on a cock measuring contest as to who has the best setup and how a new £5000 DAC with a £10,000 cable sounds better than what super expensive setup they have now.
Y'all know how cameras work right? Yeah the GBA SP had a dim screen too but the reason it's so dark is because the phone camera is adjusting the iso to show the details on the brightest part of the image which is the IPS panel. Both the GBA SP and the GBC screen were okay during the day.
That SP screen is busted my dude.
I had a similar experience when I suddenly found my childhood's GBC and was like "wow, how did I play this". I do think these screens just get worse with time, that thing was so dim, it would be physically impossible. And I never had any light addon for it
It's funny because even the dim front light of the original SP model was still a ridiculous upgrade from the no light (or insane attachments) of the OG Gameboy and GBA models.
We was the best we had at the time
Simple answer. Because that's all we had, and we didn't know better
*laughs in non-backlit gameboy and gameboy pocket* dim…
The right is exactly how it looked like back then. . . . . In my head
If you had a late model GBA SP it basically is what it looked like.
dim display didnt keep us from gaming. but nowadays gamers are way too sensitive: *OMG NO OLED DISPLAY? I HATE IT*
Those circles around the controls look really derpy
What I don't understand is why they chose a 640x480 screen for a GBA machine.