GB Studio

GB Studio is “A free and easy to use retro adventure game creator for your favourite handheld video game system”, by which they mean, but don’t want to name specifically, Nintendo’s Game Boy:

Simple visual scripting means you don’t need to have made a game already. GB Studio also hides much of the complexity in building GB games so you can concentrate on telling a great story.

What a fun idea from developer Chris Maltby. You can output ROMs for emulators, play them on actual Game Boy hardware with a flash cartridge, or even export them for the web (which will even work on phones). It’s a remarkably polished IDE.

There’s something about 1-bit (and few-bit) displays that makes me so nostalgic — the original Mac, Game Boy, Newton, PalmPilot, iPod. Those devices all inspired such deep affection. In our current world of ever-cheaper, ever-better color displays, I’d love to see 1-bit displays make a comeback somehow. That doesn’t make any sense, but nostalgia isn’t about sense. “A pain in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone”; “it takes us to a place where we ache to go again” and all.

★ Friday, 17 May 2019