DKC Atlas Forum

[Blaziken257]

OK, so this is something that has bugged me for about a decade now. In all three DKL games, the sprites blur occasionally when there's any kind of lag, at least when I play it on any of my handhelds. That is, at times, random pixels disappear or are in the wrong spots. It seems to be especially bad in DKL and seems to be not as bad in DKL3 as the others. And obviously, my cartridges aren't defective, or else it wouldn't happen to all three cartridges that I have O_o

Since I started using emulators in 2007, and played the DKL games on it, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of this sprite blur. I was surprised (in a good way) to see this happen; it made the game feel a lot "cleaner". This led me to play the games on VBA more than on the real handheld itself. And whenever I went back to my real GBA SP (which is what I play the games on, although the sprite blurring appears on a GBC and GBA also), it was difficult due to the distracting blur, which at that point I was no longer used to.

Now, I got a Super Game Boy a couple of days ago, and noticed the same thing as I did on VBA: The sprites didn't blur! Again, this surprised me, since the same cartridges that have the problem on all my handhelds don't have the problem on SGB. So now I know that the sprite blurring seems to be some hardware issue, as opposed to sloppy programming.

I don't have a brick Game Boy or a Game Boy Pocket, so the only thing I have left to wonder is: Do the sprites blur at all on either of those two systems? If not, then the GBC and GBA aren't perfectly backwards compatible with the original GB, as they have the sprite blurring problem. If they do blur, then Rareware didn't bother to test any of these games on the handheld, and only really optimized it for SGB. Either way, I'm curious, and it's weird how the games perform differently on different systems, even though they're supposed to all be compatible with each other.

[Phyreburnz]

I know this is a major bump... but whatever.

I have a gamebrick, and it blurs like crazy! You can't even tell what is going on half the time because it blurs so bad! However, every game blurs on the original Game Boy. The original Game Boy, although really cool looking, is a pretty sucky system. You can't see what's happening a lot because of the terrible blur.

[Mattrizzle]

Blaziken wasn't referring to that kind of blur (which is normal), but the fact that some horizontal lines on the sprites become garbled at random. My Game Boy Pocket and Super Game Boy don't have the problem, and I presume the original Game Boy doesn't either. When I play DKL on the Game Boy Color, the same issue you've been having arises, so the problem must lie somewhere in its hardware. The same hardware is used for non-Game Boy Advance games in all GBA models.

If I remember correctly, in one issue of Nintendo Power, someone sent in a letter in to Player's Pulse saying they were experiencing audio problems when playing a certain Game Boy game (can't remember which) on the GBC. The editor's response said that the GBC isn't completely backwards compatible with every GB game.

[Phyreburnz]

I know that Blaziken wasn't reffering to that type of blur. But it doesn't matter. You can't tell anyway. The original Game Boy is so blurry that you can't tell. I know exactly what he means, with the missing pixels and such. But even if it did blur like that, you wouldn't be able to tell.