Is it true early GBA games were oversatured bcs of frontlit screens and desaturating it is the way to go? (case in point: Castlevania Dissonance)

[Dreamboum]

It's just using a desatured shader on emulator.

What do you think? Yes? No? I'm just curious to know what is the overall opinion or if it's just a wrong way to understand how GBA games are supposed to actually look like?

 

[Richietto]

I thought it was the brightness that was cranked up not necessarily the color saturation.

 

[Robin64]

It's absolutely true. Later games had options depending on which display you were playing on, be it an original GBA, an SP, or a GameBoy Player on the TV.

 

[Crushed]

It is absolutely a thing.

Look at how FFTA had multiple color modes selectable for if you played on a standard GBA, a front-lit SP, or on the Game Boy Player. (They were labeled LCD A, LCD B, and TV, and they went from increasingly bright and blown out to more natural)

 

[NeonZ]

Yes, it's pretty obvious with many SNES ports. Although I don't know how good that filter is.

 

[Bigkrev]

It's sort of a thing where launch/first year games didn't account for anything at all, but the next wave started to account for the fact that the screen was impossible to see by oversaturating the games, and then after the SP was out, we started getting games with options, and then they just started assuming everyone had a SP and stopped giving options

 

[LakeEarth]

Complaints about how launch GBA games were dark led to some ... interesting choices, you could say.

 

[Dreamboum]

I thought it was the brightness that was cranked up not necessarily the color saturation.

Click to shrink...

I think it's a mix of both. I know the shader also darkens the screen quite a bit

 

[PlanetSmasher]

God, it was crazy how hard it was to see the OG GBA's screen. Yeah, I'm sure it impacted development.

I remember trying to play Circle of the Moon on the school bus and I had to like twist myself into a pretzel to find a position that would let me see the screen right.

 

[Jmdajr]

Hmm. Never knew!

 

[Calamari41]

Yeah, especially Harmony of Dissonance. Circle of the Moon was absolutely raked over the coals at the time because of how difficult it was to see, moreso than pretty much any other GBA game.

 

[Richietto]

I think it's a mix of both. I know the shader also darkens the screen quite a bit

Click to shrink...

Ahh. The shader you used looks good though.

 

[Kingpin Rogers]

Super Mario World is incredibly obvious if you play it on anything other than a GBA. Looks so off compared to the Snes version.

 

[G_Shumi]

Yep! NeonZ already posted a video for SNES games that were ported to GBA, but the Donkey Kong Country games were probably the worst example of oversaturation to make up for the console's lack of a backlight. Rare even did the ports themselves so you can't blame the developer for not doing a good job. They were just working with what they had.

 

[Stopdoor]

I started handheld gaming on the original DS and GBA SP and it blows my mind people put with un-lit screens at all the few times I've tried it out. You guys were truly desperate for some gaming, eh

 

[cyrix]

while true, i don't think the colors in your de-saturated versions are correct, like his coat is def supposed to be red, not salmon. maybe just a bit too aggressive?
like in art outside the game hes def drawn with a very red coat.

 

[platypotamus]

Maybe it's my colorblindness talking, but I like the saturated look better

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

Yes, it's true. This is why the GBA Virtual Console on Wii U desaturates the image of all of the games (fun fact, it also uses per-pixel motion blur to replicate the LCD "flicker transparancy" effects used in many GBA games! :D ).

GBA games weren't actually designed to displayed on flawless modern displays. Even the DS/3DS has games that are oversaturated to compensate for their fairly low quality LCD displays (OoT 3D is probably the most obvious example).

 

[Deleted member 5621]

True that it was oversatured: yes
Using desaturated filters is the way to go: eeeeehhhhhh

 

[Robin64]

Worth noting that if you are emulating, there are a few hacks that restore the colours.

https://www.romhacking.net/?page=ha...order=&dir=&title=color&author=&hacksearch=Go

 

[Deleted member 5621]

I started handheld gaming on the original DS and GBA SP and it blows my mind people put with un-lit screens at all the few times I've tried it out. You guys were truly desperate for some gaming, eh

Click to shrink...

It was completely fine playing inside the house tbh

 

[knightmawk]

Huh, this has got me kind of fucked up. They're definitely different, but one doesn't look worse or better compared to the other.

The thing that's got me is that the desaturated look /feels/ unnatural. Like, I guess I have internalized so much what a GBA game looks like that it feels like the colors in the desaturated screenshots shouldn't exist, it's like seeing gurple for the first time.

 

[Ekid]

I started handheld gaming on the original DS and GBA SP and it blows my mind people put with un-lit screens at all the few times I've tried it out. You guys were truly desperate for some gaming, eh

Click to shrink...

Yes, desperate is the word:

 

[Chakoo]

Old GBA dev here, Can confirm we use to boost the saturation not due to frontlit/lighting but due to the first model of the GBA and the way the screen displayed colors. It was a really bad screen and would drive the art team nuts. -.-