What IS a GameBoy Camera?

Since it's a quite niche piece of hardware from the ancient late '90s era, I feel it will be a good idea to describe it shortly, before I write the bigger post about the silly game I made on it. It's super quirky so it perfectly fits my blog too!

Two GameBoy Cameras, my GameBoy,
and GB Operator to bring my saves to the computer.
Also a dinosaur, for a good measure.

As the name suggests the hardware is used to take photos - up to 30 can be saved - and for its time it was a quite good option to have (granted, if you happened to have a spare buck to spend...). The photos, limited to 4 colours, are surprisingly good quality, especially if you experiment with your lighting setup, as well as fiddle with the in-game brightness & contrast settings during your photoshoot session.

Some screens to break the walltext.
But hey, the last one shows part of the cool photo-editing interface.

Once a photo has been taken, you can choose a frame to be displayed in your album, or add a comment. You can also edit it by using the drawing tools (very finicky to use!) or stamps (eyes/mouths/noses, faces, *Pokemon* (their first in-game appearance outside Japan afaik), Nintendo characters, and letters & symbols/shapes). You can get quite creative with these, albeit it does take some time to create a masterpiece there :P Lastly, you can print your photo (if you have GameBoy Printer), or delete it.

There are some more advanced tools for even more photo-shenanigans: timers and intervals can be set, and the Magic option allows you to achieve various distortion/mirroring effects, montages, panorama shots, or include your face (or OC? :P) in the games. 

Games? Yes, the software is quite quirky and there's a lot of things hidden inside it, inviting you to explore every button possibility, etc. Obviously, you can play games when pressing the PLAY button on the main screen. Space Fever II is the startup game, and you can continue playing it by not killing the first enemies you see (killing them will lead you to the other games). Ball is a Game & Watch classic, and D.J. allows you to express yourself musically. The button tapper Run Run Run is unlocked once you beat the Space Fever.

^Cool TAS video, full credits at the end. You are welcome.

VIEW gives you access to your personal Album or to watch the animations/hot-spots you created. Meanwhile, the built-in second Album (some pictures in it unlock with your high-scores and such!) allows you to use the default exquisite photos for post-processing editing. You access these tools by pressing Select on the main menu. There's a whole animation editor, Link Cable stuff, and the hot-spot feature. This one is what I used to create my game. Pressing Start on the main menu teleports you to a galaxy view (ha!) where you can edit your profile, see your records & high-scores, or the credits.

What this software has to offer is a whole of a trip. This piece of tech has been with me for a long while, and (coming from a rather poor background) it was the only camera I had, up until 2007 or 2008.  It would perhaps require a bunch of separate posts to cover everything, each of its tools and menus. Still, I'm afraid it won't convey the full experience, even if I tried to describe it with all my might. I really think that the best way to experience GameBoy Camera is by playing it yourself✌