VBoy Color Emulator Adds Tile-Based Full-Color Palettes to Virtual Boy
VBoy Color gives Virtual Boy games four-color palettes per 8x8 tile, adding distinct colors to each frame.
Rather than replacing the Virtual Boy’s four shades of red with four different colors across the whole screen, VBoy Color’s readme files say its game-specific Color Packs can assign a distinct four-color palette to each 8x8 tile in a Virtual Boy scene, according to Ars Technica. That lets the emulator give separate colors to objects that share overlapping red hues in the original game.
Ars Technica cites Mario Clash as an example: the emulator can distinguish green pipes, grey platforms and a red brick wall even though those objects all use overlapping red hues on the original hardware. The results resemble an alternate history in which Nintendo chose a full-color display for the Virtual Boy instead of cheaper red LEDs, the report says.
The added contrast is particularly useful in games such as Jack Bros. and Vertical Force, according to Ars Technica. In those titles, the original red-on-red display often makes it difficult to tell the player character apart from busy red background elements.