Some Website's Guide to Game Boy Camera

The Game Boy Camera is exactly what it says it is.

It was a Game Boy cartridge with a rotating, bulbous camera lens on the top. Released in multiple colors, most of which were designed to be an exact match to your Game Boy.

Using Game Boy Camera today can be somewhat cumbersome. First of all you'll need a functioning Game Boy. That's not difficult to find, but now that we're all used to backlit displays, a stock machine can leave a lot to be desired. Luckily, Game Boy Camera is designed to be used outside in sunlight. Another Problem is with the camera itself. You're going to need to do some maintenance to get the most out of it. Namely, replacing the internal RAM battery and calibrating the Camera.

If you're interested in buying and using a Game Boy Camera, you'll want to read this guide. Those willing to endure the setup process will quickly find that the Game Boy Camera is one of the most complex accessories Nintendo ever released. While you can skip the initial setup, doing so will give you the wrong impression about it's picture quality. It's never been good, but an uncalibrated camera is even worse.

I'm terrified by the power of TV Jingles. I remember thirty year old TV jingle's like I heard them yesterday. It's an advertising classic that's seemingly fallen out of use. Soccer Bopper, Crossfire, Empire Today, and so many others are permanently etched into my brain. I don't know who came up with the concept, but they're a monster. I'm not saying a I hate these jingles. I just wish they'd stop popping into my head at random. Every time I say the word "pillow" I think "more fun than a pillow fight". Game Boy Camera had a particularly memorable jingle for it's commercial. “SMILE! YOU’RE ON GAME BOY CAMERA!”. Look, if I have to remember it, so do you.

I’m not here to talk about a commercial, but rather, the product the commercial caused me to become obsessed with. Any time I watched Nickelodeon, that commercial would beg me to ask my parents to get this stupid camera for me. The answer was no, which I believe came down to an exchange between my mom and I where I professed that I’d use it to take pictures of my ass. I know I remember thinking about how awesome it would be to do that. Some time shortly after, I happened upon a Game Boy Camera “demo” at some big box retailer. It was blue, and it was housed within a blue Game Boy Pocket. I excitedly tried it out, only to struggle with the menu system. I remember vividly how I was mashing Start, going in and out of the space menu with the trippy transition effect. I never actually got to take a picture with it because I couldn't figure out how. I recall seeing what I presume to be a four foot section fully stocked with Game Boy Cameras and Printers. Nintendo was pushing this thing pretty hard. Not long after that, my dad, who for whatever reason would watch UPN in the morning, had left the TV on. There was a weird cartoon, where this kid was running around with two other kids and a yellow mouse thing.

Of course, I'm talking about Pokemon. After Ash and his dumb little buddies invaded pop culture, nobody cared about the Game Boy Camera. Why would I want a sophisticated camera/printer setup when I can play a clunky RPG about children collecting things? Honestly, I'd still have wanted the former. Yet, advertising steered me in another direction. At the end of the day, Nintendo had accomplished it's main goal of putting the Game Boy back to the front of children's minds.

Personally, I don't think the Camera ever had a shot at truly revitalizing the Game Boy. It's a great product, but the pricing was outrageous. Accounting for roughly thirty years of inflation, it'd cost $350 dollar to buy a Game Boy Pocket, Camera, and Printer all together. The printer itself cost as much as the entire console. A Game Boy together with Pokemon cost a little over half of that.

I'd alway get my hands on every Pokemon game of merit. It'd be years before I'd own a Game Boy Camera though. I'd wandered into a Gamestop and there it was, Game Boy Camera. it was just hanging there in a bag for $5. That was the moment I became the owner of a Game Boy Camera. The same one I’ve had for over 20 years at this point. The same one I’m using now (mostly) to create this entire thing.

To say that this device had an impact on me would be an understatement. I can’t think of many accessories for a console that actively shaped the way I explore the world around me. I learned the basic principle of photography with it, and became obsessed with lighting, which persists to this day, because of how poorly this thing handles that aspect of physics.

I would use my Game Boy Camera to make stop motion films with legos, I’d use it to create elaborate nonsense art, and I’d try in vain to use it to make music. All the while, I’d just randomly discover new features literally months and years into using it because the menu system is both the best and worst thing ever. You give a kid this thing, a Super Game Boy, and a VCR, they could easily use it to create an animated short. It would look like shit, but it could be done.

These pages are a lot of things. They’ll teach you how to prepare and use this device, and they’ll teach you about aspects of it I never knew existed until (sometimes) decades later. But more than anything, these pages are a love letter to what I consider to be the greatest video game accessory of all time. If only because of the sheer audacity of it. It's a creativity tool first and foremost. To combine fledging technology and a child's mind is to enable creation that few adults on Earth can imagine let alone recreate. You give the human equivalent of a blank slate something that can be used to do almost anything, and they’ll do it.

The Game Boy Camera at a surface level is just a crappy, overpriced camera that no sane man would ever bother with. If you look into it further, you'll find something genuinely fascinating. The idea that you could safely give a child a camera at all is wild thought today. Hell, The printer that goes with it is a conceptual relic. It all screams of an era before the internet made the world less tangible and safe. A cute, amazingly expensive toy that doubled as an unintentional teaching tool.