Just a few days ago, ChromaLock, a popular YouTuber, shared an exciting new project on his channel. He has managed to modify a Game Boy Color to play videos through its link cable, using a Raspberry Pi Pico and tailor-made software to handle the demands of this unique task.
When it comes to playing videos, simpler content generally leads to better frame rates. Remarkably, the clarity and smoothness rival a USB webcam connected to the classic Game Boy Camera. However, sticking to monochrome is often the best bet since the Game Boy Color’s limited 4-color palette can make video playback even more challenging on its 160 x 144-pixel screen.
The core of this nifty setup is an app called CGBLinkVideo. This app, shared by ChromaLock on GitHub, was crafted using other open-source software as a foundation. Video compression for this setup brings quality down to 1 Megabyte per second, while the link cable can only handle up to 64 Kilobytes per second. As a result, the video undergoes heavy compression, leading to frequent occurrences like dropped or split frames, though playback surprisingly works overall.
ChromaLock’s video goes beyond simply showing video playback; it delves into how he navigated the Game Boy Color’s system limitations to make it all happen. The system can hit up to 60 FPS for grayscale or monochrome videos, but when colors come into play, the performance drops to around 12 FPS.
He also experimented with streaming video games. While streaming original Game Boy titles proved to be significantly inferior to running the games natively, more modern, high-resolution games like Doom Eternal were practically undecipherable on the Game Boy Color’s old-school, low-res screen.
The driving force behind ChromaLock’s project seemed to be the challenge of playing the well-known Touhou Project music video “Bad Apple” on a Game Boy Color, with smooth playback being the ultimate goal. Given the video is already monochrome, achieving 60 FPS was surprisingly doable, although the streaming method did introduce visible dithering effects.
