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[Conrad Link]

I remember Pokemon Red and Blue didn't look as great on GBC cause playing on that for some reason it didn't get the colours right but they looked perfect on SGB.

Was that a thing I'm remembering correctly?

They fixed it with English Yellow though and that looked awesome cause GBC was a real thing by then and they put its compatibility on the box etc.

 

[Quackula]

I remember Pokemon Red and Blue didn't look as great on GBC cause playing on that for some reason it didn't get the colours right but they looked perfect on SGB.

Was that a thing I'm remembering correctly?

They fixed it with English Yellow though and that looked awesome cause GBC was a real thing by then and they put its compatibility on the box etc.

Has to do with the built in SGB stuff on those carts:

On that note, one of the worst things about the GBC's B&W colorization when compared to the SGB's is that the SGB CAN change palettes on the fly (or between levels, at least, not during them I don't think), so each level can be colored appropriately to that level in games that get the most out of the SGB. You see this in stuff like DK'94, Wario Land 2, Kirby 2, Mega Man V, etc. -- the water levels are blue, forest levels green, etc. On the GBC/GBA, however, each game has one preset or selected palette, and they cannot change during the game. Disappointing!

 

[A Black Falcon]

Pretty sure there's only white/green and 3 shades of grey if you want to put it that way. But you seem to say that later so I'm not sure where the 5 is coming from.

I think you're right about that, yeah. White and three colors.

Actually, the dual-mode games couldn't make use of the faster CPU or extra memory (or the largest cartridges). That's really the main reason there are GBC-only games, those are the only games that could really push the system. And you could do some insane things with the full GBC, like have hundreds of colors on the screen by reloading the palettes every scanline.

Really, dual-mode games can't use the faster CPU or extra RAM? Why not? So you're saying that stuff like R-Type DX aren't using the faster CPU? Is that why it has so much flicker? (Yes, I know part of the reason is that it's R-Type, and all of the 8 and 16-bit versions of R-Type have flicker, but it's bad at times here!)

I thought that the main reason that there are GBC-only games is because a lot of people bought GBCs, so the effort of making B&W versions of the games stopped being worth it after a little while. So most early GBC games are dual-mode titles, while most later ones are color only. There are exceptions of course, and a few later games are dual-mode too, but most are color only.

As for cart size, I know that pre-GBC GB games never got over 8 megabits (1MB). Is that a hard limit or something, that you could only get past with the GBC-only stuff?

On another note, what's the excuse for Wario Land 2 making its save file color only and B&W only, so that you need to delete your save (and you can only have one on the cart!) in order to play it on the other system? Is there no reason for that at all? I've beaten both versions before (it's worth it, the game looks very cool on SGB, but has more colors on GBC), and apart from the color differences they seem to be identical... so why in the world does it lock the save files like that? Most games don't do that.

 

[MrCunningham]

Once again, given the GB's 2-bit (four color) video display, I'm really not sure what you're talking about here, as far as putting more than four colors on screen is concerned. Sure it could do different palettes for different things, but they're all working from the same "four shades of grey or transparent" hardware! The GB cannot put six shades of grey on screen, because they don't exist.

No no, I am not talking about how many Colours the original Gameboy hardware itself can display. Going back to my original post, I was talking about how many colours the GBC could add to original GameBoy Games. The original GameBoy can have additional sprite layers that the GBC could assign additional palettes to.

Here's an example of Cool Spot (running on an emulator) which is an original GB game that does not have SGB support. The main character Cool Spot is on his own sprite layer (3 colours, pink being opaque), while the enemy sprites and game hud sprite share the secondary layer (yet again 3 colours). With the BG can have a single four colour palette assigned to it:

Pretty sure the additional sprite layers were originally there for sorting purposes, but as you can see, they can have additional colours applied to them. The GBC actually took advantage of this in a select few GB games as far as I know. While most of the other GB titles ended up with a 7 generic colour palette.

I don't even know if I am making sense after reading that.

 

[BooJoh]

Yellow's GBC mode mimicked the colors used on Red and Blue's SGB mode, rather than going for a full-color overworld and sprites, but people often make the mistake of thinking either that Yellow was not GBC enhanced or that Red and Blue were. I remember a GameStop or EB employee telling me before the GBC came out that Red and Blue were GBC enhanced.

But the same rumor was being spread about Pokemon BW and 3DS when those came out, so times haven't changed all that much it seems.

 

[DDayton]

Actually, the dual-mode games couldn't make use of the faster CPU or extra memory (or the largest cartridges). That's really the main reason there are GBC-only games, those are the only games that could really push the system. And you could do some insane things with the full GBC, like have hundreds of colors on the screen by reloading the palettes every scanline.

There were some cartridges with both a regular and a color version of the game on the cartridge, if I recall correctly. I'm not sure how that impacted everything, but there were some "double" carts -- Wario Land 2 (color version), Conker's Pocket Tales...

 

[gerudoman]

Starting Pokemon with B down unlocked night mode.

A feature which made HM Flash completely useless.