Gameboy Color DX Hacks (+GBC to GBA enhancement hacks)

[kindlekat]

An off-site hacker told me that her previous experiences with him suggests:
- burnout likely
- *conflicts* with other unnamed hackers
- *deriving* is pretty likely okay from previous talks; he spread his work around so it wouldn't be lost in case of some "armageddon" trigger


Her opinion is that:
If someone expands - edits - modifies - improves the work under their own management / project label, then no negative lashback will arise. Minucce did not attack any other project he contributed too - just the ones under his own name-umbrella. Atm, 4/6.
(of which the Zelda one he directs us to use gzip's superior replacement package)

But it can be argued if the author disapproves of the new policy, taking the patches down is their recourse.

This she knows not his opinion. Hasn't talked to him in awhile.

[FlashPV]

What if we make a list of the most wanted colorized games?

[Shadowman621]

I have a suggestion for this topic. Could you also add a list of GBA hacks that have been recolored? You know the ones that are SNES ports that had their graphics brightened. I feel like they should also fit in here

[PZT]

Why hackers seem to stubbornly tilt anti-social without warning is beyond me atm. But peace to them - we'll move forward.

If I had to guess I'd say mental health issues, it's sad but sometimes people just snap

[Supergamerguy]

I have a suggestion for this topic. Could you also add a list of GBA hacks that have been recolored? You know the ones that are SNES ports that had their graphics brightened. I feel like they should also fit in here

I'm not interested in those, sorry. I believe that these DX hacks are the definitive versions of their respective Gameboy titles. I cannot say the same of most SNES-to-GBA ports.

[Cris1997XX]

I'm not interested in those, sorry. I believe that these DX hacks are the definitive versions of their respective Gameboy titles. I cannot say the same of most SNES-to-GBA ports.

What about those with sound restorations too?

[intrinsix23]

Any chance that any recently added/updated hacks on the first post could be labeled as such? Like *NEW* or something. I check on this thread about twice a month just to see what's new, and it would be awesome to be able to see, at a glance, what has been added since last time! Just a suggestion! Thanks for keeping us up to date!

[possom2009]

I have all three of the Kirby DX patch archives. That includes the 10.4 plus version. If anyone needs it, let me know.

Edit: I also have the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2 DX ips file.

[Supergamerguy]

I have all three of the Kirby DX patch archives. That includes the 10.4 plus version. If anyone needs it, let me know.

Edit: I also have the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2 DX ips file.

The first post has now been updated with links to the "Kirby's Dream Land DX - Fluffy Repair Service" and the "Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2 DX" hacks. Thank you, possom2009!

[possom2009]

The first post has now been updated with links to the "Kirby's Dream Land DX - Fluffy Repair Service" and the "Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2 DX" hacks. Thank you, possom2009!

I'm glad I could help out!

[Nintenja]

Who will colorize James Bond 007 game on the original gameboy!?

[FlashPV]

I'll throw a list of some games that deserves a colored version:
-Aero Star
-Batman
-Bionic Commando
-Castlevania Legends
-Final Fantasy Legend
-Gargoyle's Quest
-Ninja Gaiden Shadow (WIP?)
-Robocop
-TMNT
-Tiny Toons
-Wizard & Warriors X

[2mono7]

I'll throw a list of some games that deserves a colored version:
-Aero Star
-Batman
-Bionic Commando
-Castlevania Legends
-Final Fantasy Legend
-Gargoyle's Quest
-Ninja Gaiden Shadow (WIP?)
-Robocop
-TMNT
-Tiny Toons
-Wizard & Warriors X

yess we definitely need some castlevania and ninja turtles colored 

[RT-55J]

Batman

I intend to start work on this sometime this year.

Currently, I have a buildable disassembly along with scripts that can compress and decompress all the graphical assets (and levels) in the game:

https://github.com/alex-west/batGB

I haven't colorized a game before, but from what I've seen of this game's code it shouldn't be too hard (famous last words)

Currently I'm sidetracked by other projects and personal obligations, but this project is towards the top of my list.

[wrangler500]

A colorization of all gameboy batman,tmnt,final fantasy,robocop, and Tiny Toons games world be great. Does anyone else think it's weird that the gameboy didn't get a port of batman returns? Every other system did including nes and sms. Game boy also never got a port of robocop 3 and the original terminator when every system at the time was getting a port. Why no predator games, when we still got an alien vs predator game? a version of wario's woods never made it to gameboy either. Another qood question would be which gameboy color and gameboy advance games would you still like to see get a proper English translation?

[Jorpho]

A colorization of all gameboy batman,tmnt,final fantasy,robocop, and Tiny Toons games world be great. Does anyone else think it's weird that the gameboy didn't get a port of batman returns? Every other system did including nes and sms. Game boy also never got a port of robocop 3 and the original terminator when every system at the time was getting a port. Why no predator games, when we still got an alien vs predator game? a version of wario's woods never made it to gameboy either.

These questions are well beyond the scope of the thread. The short answer is that someone decided there wasn't enough money to be made. (And weren't the Sega and NES versions of Batman Returns done by completely different people?)

Also Wario's Woods would require either scaling the sprites down to the point where they're impossible to see clearly, or using some kind of bizarre scrolling playfield.

[tobiasvl]

Something else that's probably beyond the scope of this thread, but interesting to know when discussing DX versions (not complete ports of new games), is Nintendo's policy on accepting updated GBC versions of old GB games. DX versions, although colloquially used in this community (and thread) to simply mean "colorizations", were required to contain more than that!

if you are planning to "colorize" a previously released monochrome game we require that it include game-play enhancements (beyond simply adding color) to differentiate it from its monochrome counterpart. Such game-play enhancements may include, but are not limited to: additional stages, levels, or areas; new characters; additional items; game-play based on color; and so on. These enhancements must be readily apparent to players familiar with the original monochrome game.

And, for good measure, their policy on color usage. We're obviously not bound by this policy (and many hacks on RHDN go beyond this anyway), but it might still be useful to keep this in mind when working on colorizations - or just historically interesting, if nothing else.

• Differentiation - If a game is to be considered CGB-compatible, then it must appear significantly more colorful than a monochrome Game Boy game when "colorized" by the CGB hardware. The principal measure of this is the number of colors in the background (BG) and the number of colors in the objects (OBJ).
• Simultaneous Colors - Because CGB hardware automatically "colorizes" monochrome games with up to four colors in the BG palette and up to six colors for two OBJ palettes (three colors per palette), a game typically must display more colors than this automatic "colorization" to be considered a CGB game.
• Appropriate use of Color - Objects in the game that are based on reality (trees, rocks, animals, and so on) should be a color that we would normally associate with them. For fictional objects, colors should be chosen to show appropriate detail and, when needed, to differentiate unlike objects.
• Variety of Colors - The CGB is capable of producing a wide range of colors (32,768 to be exact -- albeit not all at the same time). A CGB game should use this capability of the hardware to yield distinctly different colors for objects, characters, areas, and so on.
• Contrast & Saturation - Two of the elements that make a game look colorful are high contrast and "saturated" or vibrant colors. Pastel colors on a white background will not seem nearly as colorful as the same colors on a dark background. Not every game can use a dark background, but the intensity of the colors should still be maximized as much as possible

[Supergamerguy]

Something else that's probably beyond the scope of this thread, but interesting to know when discussing DX versions (not complete ports of new games), is Nintendo's policy on accepting updated GBC versions of old GB games. DX versions, although colloquially used in this community (and thread) to simply mean "colorizations", were required to contain more than that!

And, for good measure, their policy on color usage. We're obviously not bound by this policy (and many hacks on RHDN go beyond this anyway), but it might still be useful to keep this in mind when working on colorizations - or just historically interesting, if nothing else.

This is really neat. Thank you for sharing!

[Zeikar]

I cannot access bwass downloads that site is blocked by security software. Someone have another safer site to upload the files to?

EDIT: Nevermind someone had it on archive(dot)org

[Specialagentape]

Something else that's probably beyond the scope of this thread, but interesting to know when discussing DX versions (not complete ports of new games), is Nintendo's policy on accepting updated GBC versions of old GB games. DX versions, although colloquially used in this community (and thread) to simply mean "colorizations", were required to contain more than that!

I feel as though already the community of people colorizing these games is small, and the expectation is now that the colorization hacks should have a billion bells and whistles and fix everything wrong with the original game and as someone working on these colorizations I do occasionally find this frustrating, actually. Sometimes the extra additions and QoL changes can be just as much as, if not more work than, the colorization process itself.

I dislike the DX moniker for other reasons as well (I personally dislike when improvement hacks modify the title screen, but this is a personal taste thing) but I definitely have thoughts on the expectations of colorizations to be a be-all-end-all definitive version; it puts a lot of unnecessary expectation on the hacker to make changes that could easily be addendums. The policy of making the colorized version not identical makes sense from a 90s Nintendo marketing standpoint, but I would prefer not to scare off potential colorizers by adding excess pressure for their projects over bells and whistles. I even say that as someone who very much has added those bells and whistles (playable characters, extra modes, whatever) that if any up-and-coming GB->GBC colorizer is nervous about lacking the experience/time/motivation to add these bells and whistles it's actually fine if your project wants to stay small in scope.

Wily's Revenge for me for example was meant to be a smaller, simpler project after DKL2 and due to circumstances outside of my control constantly gets compared to a project with 10x the dev time (I'm going to likely put "Not as good as Mega Man V DX" on my tombstone), and somewhere along the line it's a process of realizing that fan expectations for colorization projects do occasionally brush up on unhealthy and can be stressful to the hacker, and also I want to say that every game is different and to be wary of expecting each colorization to be able to use the same techniques/methods/process, even within the same series. For example, I constantly got criticism for not updating the pause screen enough compared to the other Mega Man project, but people don't realize that unlike MM5 GB the pause screen in MM1 GB doesn't cover the whole screen so you need to keep the level palettes loaded or do some absolutely nasty LCD interrupt stuff, but trying to explain how complicated that can be to someone who hasn't made one of these can be impossible.

If your hack gets panned for not adding enough new features/etc/whatever it's not always due to lack of effort, sometimes the project just hits snags in places where you least expect, and I do wish the expectation for these to fix every flaw or rough edge of the original game was given a re-evaluation from people playing these hacks. That all said, I actually think if someone wants to make a colorization hack that just adds colors and nothing else, go for it! If people want those sorts of additions and you don't want to implement them, they can use your work as a base and make the game look however they want, don't let fan expectations turn you off from starting what should be a fun hobby project.