Just a few days back, YouTuber ChromaLock dropped a fascinating video on his channel, showcasing his latest hardware adventure. This time, he’s engineered a Game Boy Color that plays videos using its original link cable, all made possible with a Raspberry Pi Pico and some custom software specifically tailored for the job.
The simpler the video, the higher the frame rate you’ll see, which brings an unexpectedly clear and smooth viewing experience—kind of like hooking up a USB webcam instead of using the old-school Game Boy Camera. However, when it comes to most videos, they stream best in monochrome. Why? The Game Boy Color has a meager color palette of just four shades, making colorful videos a bit of a challenge on its 160 x 144-pixel screen.
At the heart of this setup is a neat little app called CGBLinkVideo. You can find it on GitHub, thanks to ChromaLock who pieced it together using some open-source code as a foundation. Now, while video compression does tone down quality to 1MB per second, the real kicker is that the Link Cable itself can only handle 64KB per second. The result? Heavily squished video frames, and you’ll probably notice some frame drops or splits. But hey, it technically works!
In his full video, ChromaLock doesn’t just hit play and call it a day. He dives deep into the technicalities of getting video playback to function within the Game Boy Color’s limitations. In grayscale or monochrome, playback can soar to 60 FPS. However, add color into the mix and you’re looking at roughly 12 FPS.
ChromaLock also gave video game streaming a go, but quickly found out it’s nowhere near as smooth as running native Game Boy titles. Modern games, particularly something like Doom Eternal, are practically a jumble of pixels due to the Game Boy’s ancient screen resolution.
For ChromaLock, the grand objective appeared to be showcasing the iconic Touhou Project music video “Bad Apple” on the Game Boy Color. Since the video’s already in monochrome, hitting 60 FPS isn’t just possible—it’s impressive, despite noticeable dithering thanks to the complex streaming process.
If you’re intrigued by how ChromaLock made this magic happen, you might want to head over to his channel to catch the full breakdown. It’s quite the trip down memory lane, albeit with a fantastic twist.
