GFDi hadn’t actually played the first Wario Land all the way through until just the other day, and i’m very glad i went out of my way to do so using a shader that mimicked the LCD characteristics of the original Game Boy. it might seem unfathomable to deliberately impose latency and ghosting onto a gameplay experience, but this game was designed for that screen! many of its effects are tailored to the response times of that green dot‐matrix display.
a couple more showcases. while the ghost boss itself is obviously more atmospheric, the shivering effect on Wario is also much more subtle and visually interesting with the more “flawed” rendering!
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 is a pretty good video game! i did also play Super Mario Land 2 beforehand, which gives a lot of interesting context. yes i’m playing these in anticipation of finally playing Virtual Boy Wario Land in February when i stick my Nintendo Switch 2 in one of those crazy plastic replicas. and also as a light test of gaming/emulation on Linux, which has proven quite functional.
i hadn’t actually used RetroArch before, but it ships with a much more faithful LCD shader than any other decent Game Boy emulators i tried. it’s pretty capable, yet at the same time it’s somehow missing some simple functionality that i want despite the labyrinth of menus contained within. i find i’d rather not use it excepting cases like this where features like its shaders are truly valuable.
Trevor@GFD I played this on a Game Boy Pocket, which had a very non-green screen, but still had some ghosting and latency, so I'm having a hard time squaring which of your examples looks more like my memory of the game!
@lovemakeshare i’d wager it looked more like this! the Pocket is a good option for anyone who really can’t handle staring at that original DMG screen