Here at Ars, we're big fans of classic console emulators that go beyond providing perfect re-creations to those that actually improve on original hardware with new features we could only dream of as kids. So we were excited when we recently stumbled on a Reddit post that shows a full Super Game Boy-esque color palette added to the usual shades of red and black found in Virtual Boy Wario Land.
After experiencing colorized Virtual Boy emulation for ourselves (and grabbing the sample screenshots you can see in this piece), we were struck by just how much a splash of color adds new life to Nintendo's failed '90s experiment (which Ars' own Benj Edwards has written about extensively). Going beyond the usual red-and-black graphics helps to highlight the artistry in the small selection of official Virtual Boy games and provides a great excuse to check out the system's surprisingly vibrant homebrew scene.
Red in the face
Nintendo famously chose to use a line of (then cheap and abundant) red LEDs for the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic display, leading to its iconic monochromatic color palette. While the handful of '90s Virtual Boy developers did their best under this limitation, the hardware's red-on-black graphics have aged even worse than the often muddy grayscale found on the original Game Boy.
But that limitation is gone in the latest version of 3DS Virtual Boy emulator Red Viper, which advertises a "New 'Multicolor' mode, allowing for more versatile color remapping." Colorizing games is as simple as dipping into the Settings menu and using the 3DS touch screen to pick new display colors for the four different shades used by the Virtual Boy (noted in the emulator as "Darkest," "Dark," "Light," and "Lightest").
Previous Virtual Boy emulators (including earlier versions of Red Viper) routinely let users replace the default red LEDs with a different color but usually limited the display to three shades of that same color. There are also a few RetroArch shaders designed to add full color support to emulated Virtual Boy games, but they require a decent amount of fiddling with files and settings to get them working.
With Red Viper's built-in color support, though, anyone with a 3DS modded for homebrew software can now easily add a bit of color to the Virtual Boy library. And running the emulator on the 3DS means you don't even have to give up the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic graphics to do so; Red Viper works with the filtered LCD screen on the 3DS to emulate the visual depth built into Virtual Boy games.
More than just Wario Land
Red Viper currently doesn't have any "default" palettes to choose from, meaning it can take some manual fiddling to get multicolor games to look halfway decent (you can save your palettes on a per-game basis). Once you do, though, it's impressive just how much color adds to games that were never designed to be seen in more than a few shades of red.
We've found that high contrast yellow or green can really help sprites stand out from the jet black backgrounds that dominate most Virtual Boy releases. Accent colors in the blue or purple range, meanwhile, can help set off background elements and make them easier to distinguish from the foreground gameplay. Those color enhancements can be more than just aesthetic, too; in a game like Red Viper, distinct colors make it much easier to distinguish enemies from stationary obstacles in the game's awkward wire-framed 3D.
After you're done colorizing all the Virtual Boy ROMs you've dumped off of your own legitimately purchased cartridges (cough), it's worth dipping a toe in the impressive collection of homebrew Virtual Boy games created by homebrew coders over the years. That includes impressive ports of games like Street Fighter II and Mario Kart and original efforts like a cartoony fish-eat-fish simulator or a hamburger based shoot-'em-up.
Whether you're a Virtual Boy aficionado or new to the world, the newly colorized Red Viper is the perfect excuse to visit this odd cul-de-sac in Nintendo's hardware history. Now if we could just convince Nintendo to release an official miniaturized set of Virtual Boy VR goggles à la the NES Classic.
Peacemaker 2 torna ad agosto: cast e novità | Trailer