Here at Ars, we're big fans of classic console emulators that go beyond providing perfect re-creations to those that actually improve on original hardware with new features we could only dream of as kids. So we were excited when we recently stumbled on a Reddit post that shows a full Super Game Boy-esque color palette added to the usual shades of red and black found in Virtual Boy Wario Land.
After experiencing colorized Virtual Boy emulation for ourselves (and grabbing the sample screenshots you can see in this piece), we were struck by just how much a splash of color adds new life to Nintendo's failed '90s experiment (which Ars' own Benj Edwards has written about extensively). Going beyond the usual red-and-black graphics helps to highlight the artistry in the small selection of official Virtual Boy games and provides a great excuse to check out the system's surprisingly vibrant homebrew scene.
Red in the face
Nintendo famously chose to use a line of (then cheap and abundant) red LEDs for the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic display, leading to its iconic monochromatic color palette. While the handful of '90s Virtual Boy developers did their best under this limitation, the hardware's red-on-black graphics have aged even worse than the often muddy grayscale found on the original Game Boy.
Kyle Orland / Red Viper Wario just looks more Wario-ish in purple and yellow... Wario just looks more Wario-ish in purple and yellow... Kyle Orland / Red Viper Kyle Orland / Red Viper Making the turtles green has the side effect of making Mario look a bit like Luigi... Making the turtles green has the side effect of making Mario look a bit like Luigi... Kyle Orland / Red Viper Kyle Orland / Red Viper Jack Bros. was already a Virtual Boy hidden gem, but it works even better with a splash of color. Jack Bros. was already a Virtual Boy hidden gem, but it works even better with a splash of color. Kyle Orland / Red Viper Making the turtles green has the side effect of making Mario look a bit like Luigi... Kyle Orland / Red Viper Jack Bros. was already a Virtual Boy hidden gem, but it works even better with a splash of color. Kyle Orland / Red Viper Kyle Orland / Red Viper The color picker interface in Red Viper includes brightness and saturation sliders. Kyle Orland / Red Viper Just because it's called "Darkest" doesn't mean you can't set it to bright white.
But that limitation is gone in the latest version of 3DS Virtual Boy emulator Red Viper, which advertises a "New 'Multicolor' mode, allowing for more versatile color remapping." Colorizing games is as simple as dipping into the Settings menu and using the 3DS touch screen to pick new display colors for the four different shades used by the Virtual Boy (noted in the emulator as "Darkest," "Dark," "Light," and "Lightest").
Previous Virtual Boy emulators (including earlier versions of Red Viper) routinely let users replace the default red LEDs with a different color but usually limited the display to three shades of that same color. There are also a few RetroArch shaders designed to add full color support to emulated Virtual Boy games, but they require a decent amount of fiddling with files and settings to get them working.