Finally, Luigi isn’t forced to wear a red hat in Mario’s Tennis, thanks to VBoy Color, a new Virtual Boy emulator that brings full color to Nintendo’s original monochrome red-and-black system.
VBoy Color comes with built-in color packs for 15 different games, a significant chunk of the Virtual Boy’s limited official library. Tinkerers can edit those packs manually using built-in video tools to color individual screens, teaching the emulator which colors to assign whenever that same tile appears elsewhere in the game.
The re-coloring process doesn’t work perfectly in the current beta release. The coloring algorithm occasionally misses individual tiles, leading to flickering, uncolored squares that stand out distractingly from their surroundings. The process also fails on games like 3-D Tetris or Red Alarm, which rely on a 3D wire frame effect rather than tile-based graphics. For these titles, VBoy Color offers an option to apply new palettes or color gradients based on the apparent depth of each line, making the 3D effect easier to discern, especially on a flat monitor.
Even in its early state, VBoy Color delivers high-quality emulation, built off previous emulators such as Virtual Boy Go and Beetle VB, along with useful features like full stereoscopic support on VR headsets or 3D monitors. All in all, it’s nice to have yet another emulator that goes beyond accurate gameplay to actually improve on the experience delivered by the original hardware.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing