Game Boy Camera with Christopher Graves, Super Mario RPG

[00:00:00] Welcome to Tokyo Game Life, a Tokyo-based video game podcast focusing on Nintendo and

[00:00:13] gaming culture in Japan's capital.

[00:00:15] Your host, Mono, here to bring you a slice of gaming life from Tokyo.

[00:00:19] Today's feature is all about the iconic Game Boy Camera.

[00:00:23] Christopher Graves, a Game Boy Camera photographer and picked one up, but as far as posting online, I've been posting my photos online for maybe about six years now. Thanks for joining me today. Before we dig into the history of it, I want to know about your backstory with the device. When did you first discover the Game Boy camera? Yeah, I remember seeing ads as a kid. I was in high school at the time and I just always had a fascination with the Game Boy

[00:01:43] itself.

[00:01:44] It was my console.

[00:01:45] You know, I had brothers and sisters growing up, but it was mine.

[00:01:48] So that was a bit of foreshadowing. It came in a variety of colors. You said you got the red one. And Japan actually had a clear purple design

[00:03:00] that did not come to the West.

[00:03:01] So I wanna dig more into the tech.

[00:03:03] Can you walk us through what are the specs

[00:03:05] of the Gameboy camera. Yeah.

[00:04:20] For example, it has a swivel on the top.

[00:04:22] So you can take selfies, which was, you know, not a thing in the nineties,

[00:04:26] but the Gameboy camera was there first.

[00:05:29] I think the limitations are very fascinating. It only has four colors, so you really have to play with shadow and play with light. And one thing I like to do, I like to go take walks, I like to go

[00:05:34] hiking. And I've noticed that just the brown and green leaves are just hard to capture. So being

[00:05:41] out in nature, you really got to sort of, you Take a cotton swab and dig it around inside there. And I'm surprised sometimes how terrible a camera will be when I pick it up and then just cleaning it out. And it makes a world of difference just keeping it clean. Are there any subjects that are just more inherently photo friendly with the Game Boy camera? I think buildings in architecture

[00:07:01] is really great because they're typically well lit areas up nice and that was really great and then I press left and B but they're just those extra steps are just a little too much for me and I wanted to get in in there take my photos quickly so I've converted completely to the pocket. I've modified it pretty heavily I put a backlit screen in it there is a large lithium ion battery in

[00:08:21] there for and a type c charger that's mostly just. It uses the main original parts, the sensor, and the Mac GBD, the memory mapper, which I think are sort of the brains and the true spirit of what make the camera. And then the rest are essentially entirely new pieces. I basically took the regular size Game Boy camera

[00:09:42] and reduced it to the size of a normal Game Boy cartridge.

[00:09:46] And I like it because it's more, I mean, I kind of mentioned before that the original

[00:11:02] was a lot more playful and there were games in, I see what I'm doing and how can I make this a little bit better? How can I make this easier on me? And one thing I found the big, well, it is unique and really interesting that big eyeball sticking out the top.

[00:12:20] I kind of felt it wasn't really practical.

[00:12:22] I didn't really use the selfie function a lot.

[00:12:24] And I wanted to go out and take cool photos, but it was bulky.

[00:12:27] I had a hard time fitting in the pocket.

[00:13:23] like old school retro rainbow logo. Did you create the design for the card? I did the whole thing from scratch. Well, backing up a little bit, the original is based off of a

[00:13:31] friend of mine's design. He goes by HDR online and he made a version of the Game Boy Camera cartridge

[00:13:37] that is re-flashable with custom ROMs So anyway, I based it off of his design and I mean, which is great. He did an amazing job and it was really fantastic. But I had some people approach me and they would tell me, you know,

[00:15:02] I really want this, but it's beyond my capabilities.

[00:15:04] I can't build it.

[00:15:05] Or I even had a few folks come up to. But yeah, I believe it was within the first hour, first half hour, something like that. They sold out. So I'm going to have my work cut out for me the next several months. What are some other Game Boy Camera-related projects you've worked on? Let's see here. Well, as I mentioned, I've messed with the different iterations of the minicam. One

[00:16:21] of them used the original, basically redesigned the main half off. I remapped all the pieces, all the buttons, all the battery connections and things, and essentially shifted it instead of on the bottom, shifted that bottom section onto the right side

[00:17:42] and made it into a sort of rangefinder looking camera.

[00:17:46] I'm actually taking a whole lot with the printer. Nowadays, I will use a thermal printer to print my photos. They're a little bit larger.

[00:19:00] I use one called the Paperang, which basically it's,

[00:19:03] once it's on my phone,

[00:19:05] I can Bluetooth it to the, but it's still fascinating. I think.

[00:20:22] Final question. We barely touched on it, but there are games on the Game Boy Camera since it's the whole meta Instagram thing is sort of connected. And I'm also unmasked on Game Boy Camera at glitch.lgbt. And a lot of your photos are on GameBoyCamera.com correct? Oh, yes, yes. I completely forgot my website. Yes, GameBoyCamera.com. Some of my photos are there. It's where I have information on where other places define me,

[00:21:43] projects I'm working on. And then talks about the gear I actually use to take my photos. I got a So Christopher Graves, once again, thanks for joining me. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for chatting with me. Let's take a brief ad break. Spaceships, magic swords, intergalactic empires, dead gods, and creatures from beyond the moon. What Mad Universe could contain all these fantastic visions? What Mad Universe is a bi-weekly podcast delving into the misty origins of sci-fi and fantasy,

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[00:24:21] Looking at her gameography, she's worked on Chibi been released via the Virtual Console and on the Super Nintendo Mini, but it was definitely a glaring absence on NSO. I guess we know why now, but does that disqualify all NSO games from getting remakes?

[00:25:43] I mean, maybe? At least I don't expect any ironic since Paper Mario 4 in 64 is probably my favorite game of all time. That or Super Mario World. It's a 1A, 1B type of situation. So there was always the thought in the back of my head where I need to think about my party's health and item management. I want to play random mini-games and do side quests. And Super Mario RPG has all these things. It doesn't have the scope of something like Final Fantasy VI to go back to a game from that era, but the core mechanics are undeniably fun.

[00:28:20] Timing attacks?

[00:28:21] This is just so simple, but why is it fun every time to completely nail it and get that

[00:28:25] extra damage? randomness like sometimes getting a buff when you defeat an enemy, so battles don't feel tiresome since they are so quick and each one plays slightly different even if you're wiping out the same combo of enemies. One of its most signature elements is the very particular look of the game. The original's graphics were pretty ambitious as the isometric viewpoint did try to make the characters appear like they are 3D.

[00:29:40] But now we've got all these fancy polygons, so the novelty of that is gone, but everything

[00:29:45] else that works about the art style is still here. I will say the isometric view does have some inherent drawbacks, especially since you need to jump so often. I will say the isometric view does have some inherent drawbacks, especially since you need to jump so often, and jumping in an isometric viewpoint can really be finicky. But there's not any real major consequence if you miss a jump, you just try again. I do keep jumping on enemies to initiate battles, but no, you don't get any sort of advantage

[00:31:02]