New horizons in cat photography
A while ago, because nobody sensible stopped me, I bought a Game Boy Camera to go with the clear-cased original Game Boy we’ve had for a while.
The Game Boy Camera may be the lowest fidelity digital photography device ever made. I’ll leave it to others to explain its magic.
If you’ve got the Camera, though, the logical next step is to get a Game Boy Printer.
If you don’t have a Printer, you can get images out of your Game Boy Camera by using a cable that connects to a PC and makes the Game Boy think it’s connected to the Printer.
Or, as I did, you can improvise.
But I needn’t scan the Game Boy any more, because yesterday I took delivery of my very own Printer!
With no paper.
Like lots of other old crummy printers, the Game Boy Printer uses thermal paper. The special little narrow rolls are now very hard to come by.
All thermal paper is, however, very much the same. So I rifled my wallet for an ATM receipt, cut it to fit the printer…
…and made my first print!
The “KATOOMBA” is from the original ATM printout, as is everything else except the black-framed picture of Joey and, at the top right, the greeting from Mario that you get when you turn the Printer on with its Feed button held down.
The image area inside the print’s black “NINTENDO” border is 21.5 by 18mm. About 410 such prints would fit on one of the “Super A3″ sheets that’re the biggest my Stylus Photo R1800 can accept.
I have to ask… “But, why?”
Comment by cjhay — May 25, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
If you have to ask, you will never understand the answer.
Comment by phrantic — May 25, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
But why? you ask. For the same reason you try to get. Because you can. You never know, you might learn something new.
Comment by pondscum — May 25, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
I can top that purchase!
Remember that useless SNES modem system that was only available for a few months or some such? Let people play games on demand or something like that.
Yah well I bought one of the modems, almost a decade after the system went down. Just so I could say I own one.
Comment by com2kid — May 26, 2007 @ 12:32 am
I grabbed the camera and a printer when they were going on clearance everywhere, but I wasn’t smart enough to grab any of the 4-packs of thermal rolls. I’m going to have to look up the GB PC hookups.
They don’t look like much, and there are a variety of plastics that can cause thermals to “go clear” again, but it is kind of fun being able to print off sticker pictures of things, heh.
Comment by HitScan — May 26, 2007 @ 2:50 am
I wasn’t smart enough to grab any of the 4-packs of thermal rolls
Unless you want to print a lot of these hilariously terrible photos, it’s really no big deal to just cut down fax paper, or whatever. Get yourself a cheap guillotine and it should be easy.
Comment by Daniel Rutter — May 26, 2007 @ 3:46 am
Or just get a roll from a store that sells supplies to stores. A lot of cash registers still use thermal paper…
Comment by Itsacon — May 26, 2007 @ 8:17 pm
And with $2100 in the bank, you haven’t purchases something even more outlandish and less sensible???
So confused… ;)
What’s that, do I hear another RC toy calling???
Comment by darkith — May 28, 2007 @ 8:03 am
Actually the Gameboy camera is a handy little jigger for those who play with low end uC’s and wish to tool about with machine vision.
Comment by stewpot — May 28, 2007 @ 3:50 pm