I used that cable for my Gameboy printer more than anything.
I had the green Gameboy, but this makes me wish I had chosen yellow. Yellow looks sharp.
Shout out to all my transparent purple homies.
I was a transparent purple homie. Ended up having to write my name on it because all my friends were too and we didn’t wanna accidentally switch them up. One of the group was notorious for not taking care of his shit and I didn’t wanna end up swapping with him on accident and getting a janky boi
In 99 we had a sleepover and we’d all trade our best pokemon to one another and pulled the plug out before completion to clone the pokemon.
I have a real job now and do real business deals. Nothing I’ve done professionally has ever felt as official and business like as that one sleepover.
back in the late 00’s there was (maybe still is, who knows) an online service called “gamefly” where you could rent games. At the time the DS pokemon games would allow you to plug in a pokemon GBA cart and copy the pokemon from the GBA to your DS. So I would constantly rent GBA Pokemon games in hopes of finding something good on them to copy to my DS Pokemon game. I had it all scheduled out and everything. You could also wondertrade hacked pokemon or like really good pokemon online. I don’t remember exactly HOW you did it but I do remembering doing it.
Maybe the real business deals would feel more official and business like if you could employ the pull out method with them too?
If only money transfers worked this way…
I send you money, cancel mid way, and now both of us have the money!
I’ve actually heard that’s why overdraft fees are a thing. The money transfer system gets confused if you’re around zero and ends up creating money that doesn’t exist.
Wasn’t there a way to link with the IR blasters on the GBCs too? I never tried it but I’ve heard it was possible
I’ve only seen that done for the TCG to do trades. Odd how a video game series turned into a franchise with a trading card game got a video game adaption of the trading card game.
Only on games that were designed to use the IR. It was limited to Mystery-Gift-type quick transfers due to the low data speed and the need to keep the systems pointed directly at each other.
I remember trying that over and over, then reverting back to the more reliable link cables.
I’m sure there were other uses.
Choking your little brother when he beats you at Pokemon?
(I have no idea if that’s how it worked, I didn’t have Pokemon for my Gameboy.)
TETRIS.
You could play multiplayer Tetris that way. I think I saw it once in my life.
What is multiplayer Tetris?
I played multiplayer Tetris frequently.
When you get lines, your opponent’s stack pushes a line with a gap up from below, except when you get a Tetris, which pushes four lines (with the gap aligned, so you could Tetris back and forth).
You had an indicator for the max height of your opponent’s stack next to yours.
Great game.
Well, it’s complicated. See it’s Tetris but with multiple players.
No way, my mind can’t even begin to comprehend
Me and my brother did it on road trips in the family van. It was awesome.
There‘s also an excellent Gameboy Color romhack of Dr Mario that supports multiplayer. Recently tried that out with my girlfriend and it was a lot of fun.
Edit: this is it for anyone interested. Looks like even the original version for the Gameboy supports multiplayer.
I played multiplayer bomberman :D
Some newer games only needed one game to play with 4 players.
I believe Mario Kart was one of them, then some other game with a motorcycle looked from the side.
I played those on the Gameboy Advance with the nieces and nephews during family parties.
Ah yes the cable with a hub in the middle for additional branches to be connected on to
It was the only two-player game everyone definitely had.
Were there other uses? Yes.
Were they common? Well, just look at the GameBoy pocket. At the time it was designed (it released 7 years after the original GameBoy) there were a lot of people at Nintendo who wanted to get rid of the port entirely because it was barely ever used. They ended up compromising by using a different, smaller, cheaper port that needed an adapter to work with the regular ones.
Which was kind of a pain for some people because the GB Pocket and Pokemon both came out in Japan in 1996 lol.
Yeah PVP Street Fighter!
I think there was a Bomberman game on the GBA that used the link cable for multiplayer too that I remember playing
the link cable is also pretty nice for midi synching
Got one for my birthday once and managed to leave on the steps in the breezeway. It was gone inside of ten minutes :(
We had even one to connect 4 Gameboys and played “super rc pro am”, oh the nostalgia
Oooooh rc pro am AND micro machines ought to be remade
RC pro am in the big bathroom with 4 stalls, passing the link cable under the dividers. Best way to skip class ever. Only ever managed 4 players a couple times but it was amazing.
IIRC you only needed like one copy of the game, too??
