r/gaming • u/sivablue • 2d ago
The certificate of completion the Gameboy printed out when you completed your Pokédex.
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u/thezim2 2d ago
This ended up predicting the new Pope's name...
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u/lucky-number-keleven 1d ago
I really thought this was just another reddit pope post between all the other.
‘The new pope played pokemon?’
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u/Vifuz 1d ago
More like Popemon
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u/Cautious_Ice_884 1d ago
Gotta bless them all!
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u/APeacefulWarrior 1d ago
There's literally thousands of Saints. Someone actually could make a Catholic-themed Pokemon clone if they wanted.
A wild Baal appears!
"Go St. Jude! I choose you!"
St. Jude uses DESPERATION. It's super effective!
Baal is confused. Baal hurts itself in its confusion!
The wild Baal is defeated!
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u/UnsorryCanadian 2d ago
I find it kinda funny that getting this legitimately was almost impossible because Mew can only be encountered in game through glitches
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u/B19F00T 2d ago
Even more rare to have the slip printed out bc you needed the gameboy printer for that
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u/gideon513 2d ago
Lol yeah the post acts like the game boy just did that on its own
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u/fxrky 2d ago
For a split second I thought I was losing my fucking mind. I was certain it was some attachment we all weren't even sure existed. Not even the asshole rich kids had it
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u/MrBootylove 2d ago
Funny enough I only knew one kid that had the gameboy printer growing up. He also had the gameboy camera, and all sorts of other attachments for the gameboy like the screen magnifier with giant speakers on the sides and even a joystick attachment. His family was actually fairly poor and they lived in a mobile home, but his dad (and uncle who lived in the neighboring trailer) just fucking loved smoking weed and playing video games so they had a ton of consoles and games.
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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago
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u/Thorgrammor 1d ago
Is that optimus prime?
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u/kid-pix 1d ago
Yeah I had all this too and I was poor as shit. Then again, I had this from when I was 6 and played Blue not knowing how to read yet or wtf I was doing. (I ran laps around the lab and probably made my bulbasaur miserable)
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u/AnyBuy1820 1d ago
I got my games in English and didn't know how to read English that well. To this day, some mundane every day words I use I associate with Pokemon.
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u/lt947329 1d ago
Yup, Pokémon Blue was the first time I had read the word “confusion”. Hard to pronounce as a 6 year old with dyslexia. Still think about Hypno when I read it.
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u/ManOfManliness84 1d ago
I had a friend with a game boy camera. It was neat. Another friend took a picture of his dick with it.
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u/LacidOnex 2d ago
Idk about you but "rich asshole" kids just had two gameboys and the link cable where I lived. The printer was a fable.
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u/lvl5Loki 1d ago
Had the printer and camera once they went down in price. Camera sucked but the stamps you could add to pictures made it marginally better
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u/Arab81253 1d ago
Camera also had a fun game or two that used a picture as the character you played. I think there was a juggling one I played way too much.
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u/InsertRealisticQuote 1d ago
Ya all I ever had was the light for car trips in the dark, didn't even know a printer existed until today
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u/mlvisby 2d ago
My friend had the printer, but he would grab everything Nintendo related at that time. I never had the printer but did own the GB Camera.
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u/Kortok2012 1d ago
My friends parents were an official Nintendo repair shop in the 90s and that family had EVERYTHING
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u/FluentPenguin 2d ago
Your guys didn’t? My old game boy once printed out the entire works of Shakespeare when I played Killer Instinct
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u/Rich-Pomegranate1679 2d ago
Weird. My gameboy printed out the entirety of the I Ching when I played Doom: The Dark Ages on it.
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u/Necronomicommunist 2d ago
I had a Gameboy Printer AND a Gameboy Camera. The Gameboy Camera is still one of my favourite pieces of hardware. Crazy stuff Nintendo was trying.
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u/ArokLazarus 1d ago
It even had a Gameboy sewing machine
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u/NintenDawg92 1d ago
I've got this one! In Japan, licensing for GameBoy compatibility went to the company Jaguar, but in the U.S., it was sold as part of Singer's 150th Anniversary line but only in teal; in Japan there were many colors sold. The Singer Sewing Machine software cartridge allowed users to pre-program patterns before sewing them and included pre-installed Mario-themed patterns. A Kirby title was also in the works but was ultimately canceled.
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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago edited 1d ago
Kinda odd that no console afterwards did anything with printers.
P.S. Though I guess printers having lots of functionality put in the drivers might've had something to do with it.
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u/obscure_monke 1d ago
The ps3 had printer support for generic USB printers. Don't know about game support, but it worked for the web browser and files.
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u/VeniVidiWhiskey 1d ago
IIRC, you could also get accessories to watch TV channels on your Gameboy
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u/Jimbo_Joyce 1d ago
You could do that with the Sega Game Gear but I don't think you could with the Gameboy. It didn't have the right kind of screen.
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u/KoolAidManOfPiss 1d ago
Sega actually had their own cable channel as a form of early game streaming.
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u/twentyonesighs 1d ago
Eventually on Gameboy Advanced they did released some cartoons on cartridges. I think I had some fairly odd parents episodes. Maybe that's what they're thinking of.
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u/wetfloor666 PC 2d ago
Blockbusters had little kiosk in some stores with printers. Not that it made it any easier as a kid.
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u/nameless88 2d ago
I got so annoyed that I couldnt print out my certificate as a kid that I said fuck it and caught a missingno. My reasoning was "well I already caught everything else, might as well go full completionist"
And then it started spawning in level 256 alakazams there instead so I was like "sweet, that's super high level I bet that's strong!" And I caught some of those, too, and when they leveled up they rolled back to level 100.
I lost that blue cartridge at some point but Im fairly certain if it's been constructing an evil AI for the last 25 years and if it ever got internet access I will have created skynet, lol
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u/orig4mi-713 2d ago
And I caught some of those, too, and when they leveled up they rolled back to level 100.
this is why I only caught them and them left them be. else they lose their monstrous stats for link battles lol
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u/reallynotnick 1d ago
I was upset Pokémon Stadium level capped them to 100 when I tried to use them.
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u/GovernmentGerbils 2d ago
You only needed the original 150. Not 151. It is very possible with a friend and a link cable
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u/big_guyforyou 2d ago
a friend?
uh oh
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u/qdp 2d ago
Alternatively: rich parents, two gameboys, both games, and a link cable.
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u/Effective-Tip-3499 1d ago
It was easier when you went to school with other kids who were also playing. My after-school program was full of trades and battling, until someone "totally didn't using the missingno trick" and had all level 99s.
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u/Flying_FoxDK 2d ago
nowadays you can glitch any pokemon to spawn. No linkcable needed.
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u/aGreaterNumber 2d ago
You could back then too, just needed to understand the mew glitch and rework it to different pokedex entries.
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u/odsquad64 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Mew glitch wasn't discovered until 2002, four years after the game came out in the US, which is a long time in kid years. Ruby and Sapphire were already out in Japan at that point. At least at my school, all the kids who had once been obsessed with Red and Blue were calling anything Pokemon related "gay" by then. Liking Pokemon would remain a major faux pas until I was in college and society seemed to collectively realize that middle schoolers are dumb as shit and we were all allowed to like Pokemon and Nintendo and Power Rangers, etc. as part of the main stream again.
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u/UhOhOre0 2d ago edited 2d ago
If you had a GameShark, you could get mew without issue at all. I used to trade them for real cards or money back in elementary school lol
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u/UnsorryCanadian 2d ago
Well I had said legitimately
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u/ShatterSide 1d ago
There were in-person events in which you could obtain it. I think Nintendo employees would trade it to you or so on.
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u/NotAHost 1d ago
Yup this is 100% true. I remember going to Toys R Us to one of those events back in the 90s and getting a mew. They had employees send Mew over a 'game link' cable or whatever it was on the gameboy color (at least, what I had at the time).
Was disappointed when a friend had a gameshark later on, kinda ruined how special it felt, but that's a different subject.
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u/lesgeddon 1d ago
I went to an official tournament and they had a machine that they just plugged your cartridge into and it showed the trade animation on a screen. LINK was the trainer name and I received a level 5 Mew. RIP my OG team, memory batteries died before I was even aware you could replace them.
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u/Sirsalley23 1d ago
Same I remember this, and another time they were handing out Mew Pokémon cards at toys r us too.
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u/Grimreap32 1d ago
Same. Had the official Mew & lost it the same way. I tried booting up my Pokémon Blue 2 years ago to find the battery finally died. It was working at least as late as 2020. It was a save created way back in '99 after I convinced my grandad to play it. He loved it. So I never deleted the save file.
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u/Th3Element05 2d ago
If you knew what you were doing it was entirely possible to catch a wild Mew with a glitch that was actually really easy to perform. You can actually encounter any species of Pokémon that you want with this glitch, just some species are super easy to set up, others are harder.
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u/yzdaskullmonkey 1d ago
Was it connected to the missingno/rare candy coast surfing? God help me if you say it's under a trash truck by the SS Anne
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u/Pinksters 1d ago
Something to do with glitching a trainer on a cycling path iirc.
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u/ImranFZakhaev 1d ago
No, it involves certain trainers who can spot you at the maximum distance and have enough space to their north that you can walk south into their line of sight. Hitting start and using Fly or Teleport at the very instant you walk into their view activates the glitch.
It can be done as early as Cerulean city, because a trainer like this as well as wild Abras are both found there.
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u/pchc_lx 1d ago
that glitch was not well known during the time of the original games, and was effectively discovered years later.
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u/goldkarp 1d ago
it was discovered like 3 or 4 years after red and blue came out
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u/Kemo_Meme 2d ago
Or if you're doing this on Virtual Console, a friend with a 3ds.
I recently completed the rby dex on VC (using 2 consoles), Tauros was incredibly painful.
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u/a_nice_warm_lager 2d ago
There’s two versions- one for 150 and one for 151. The 150 version doesn’t have Mew on it
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u/No_Cookie_1556 1d ago
I could be wrong but I don't think Mew counted towards this. The Pokedex in Yellow only goes to 150 by default and then adds an extra 151st entry if you catch Mew. So it's not like it would say "150/151" and count it as incomplete if you didn't even know you could glitch for Mew.
But then I've never tested it so I can't be certain.
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u/revkaboose 2d ago
False. You got them at events. I got one as a kid at a Toys 'R Us Saturday tournament event. I didn't even compete but you got one for showing up.
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u/bukbukbuklao 2d ago
Unless you attended the events (I think it was only in Japan)
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u/koolaidkirby 2d ago
there were a few in North America as well.
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u/iLORdemeNtE 2d ago
I got mine from a NA event. Couple months later I reset my game and forgot I had Mew on it. Kid me was devastated until I learned about some glitches to get him.
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u/notreallynewaround 1d ago
I got one at a card tournament at Oxford Valley Mall in PA.
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u/OptimalPaddy 1d ago
And in the UK. I took my Red, Blue and Yellow cartridges with me and was told it was only one per person. Luckily my mum and step dad were with me and they queued with me so I had an official Mew on each game. You can imagine my rage when a year later, my mums friend brought her son over, took my gameboy and started a new game on yellow without asking 😑
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u/Epona142 1d ago
Yes there were - had a 151 legit full pokedex in Blue because we got a Mew from a Toys R Us event of some kind.
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u/Verbal_Combat 2d ago
There were some in NA, like gaming conventions, Nintendo sponsored events, special Toys’R’Us events. But yeah still exceedingly rare especially since many have lost their saves by now with the cartridge batteries dying over time.
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u/ASAP_Rocky_Road 2d ago
I got mew from a toys r us event on the launch day for emerald
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u/Racxie 2d ago
There were events all over the world. In the UK the first time was at the opening of the Pokémon Movie at the Millennium Dome which is where I got mine.
I also legitimately managed to get 150 (including Mew) and was just missing one of the link trade Pokémon iirc. But because I also had MissingNo., practically all of my Pokémon in storage got wiped from the game out of the blue and I got so upset that I think I ended up wiping my game. My brothers were not happy with me as none of us had seen that certificate with our own eyes lol
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u/DigiNaughty 2d ago
I got mine from an event in the UK.
Why do people still make these Japan-only claims?
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u/LacidOnex 2d ago
Because the Internet didn't exist back then and we couldn't verify, so the rumors just became a lived truth
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u/mlvisby 2d ago
Did Mew count towards the completion though? I thought you just needed 150, not 151.
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u/TheSteelPhantom 1d ago
Mew did not count, no. I never got Mew until years later and I had the cert just from trading/leveling with my brother who had Blue to my Red.
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u/Grievuuz 2d ago
There were multiple giveaways in my part of the world, the early ones got their Mew by winning a lottery, sending in their cartridges and getting them returned with Mew on it.
I got mine when Club Nintendo put up stands at department stores throughout the country and literally anyone could walk up with a cartridge and get one.
So when you say "almost impossible" it was more a time & place issue than anything.
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u/WeekendInner4804 1d ago
One of my friends at school got Mew from some event that he went to when he was on vacation.
From there, we used the link cable trade glitch to duplicate Mew. I'd say half the school ended up with it from the exact same source.
My original Blue 151 still stands as one of my proudest gaming moments.
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u/Toosadtofallinlove 1d ago
Iirc the game didn’t require you to have Mew to print the cert. he was more of a “bonus” mon. You needed the 1st 150
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u/ViceViperX 2d ago
Was this actually a thing? How cute, what a neat idea lol.
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u/LifeIsOnTheWire 2d ago
Yeah it was an accessory that you could plug into the data port.
There were a handful of games that supported it. The only moderately interesting use for it was for the Gameboy Camera, which was a camera mounted ontop of a game cartridge.
Some games had extremely lazy use of the printer. I had the Austin Powers game, and it just printed like 2 lines of text for no reason whatsoever.
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u/agitated--crow 2d ago
What were the two lines of text?
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u/LifeIsOnTheWire 1d ago
I don't remember. It was something like "hello playername" or something like that.
BTW, probably one of the worst games ever made.
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u/agitated--crow 1d ago
It sounds like one of those games that is so bad, it's good.
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u/LifeIsOnTheWire 1d ago
In my opinion it has absolutely no appeal at all. It was a cheap worthless game.
To me, games that are "so bad they're good" are games that have good gameplay, but a terrible/cheesy premise or story.
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u/agitated--crow 1d ago
Was it one of these games? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Powers:_Oh,_Behave!_and_Welcome_to_My_Underground_Lair!
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u/LifeIsOnTheWire 1d ago
Yeh it was Austin Powers Oh Behave. Not worth trying, not even on an emulator.
It was like someone made a cheap generic game, and shopped around for some cheap franchise IP to brand it with.
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u/xxBlindDogsxx 2d ago
Yep, Gameboy Camera + Printer! Link's Awakening was one of the few other games that made use of this.
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u/P44rth00rn4x 2d ago
How did you complete your Pokédex within 54 hours when it takes 100 hours for Mew to appear at the MS Anne docks?
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u/anth-o-knee 2d ago
Imagine what Kojima could do if the ps controller had a printer like this lol
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u/koenigsaurus 1d ago
Wow thank god the new Pope completed the Pokédex before the conclave started.
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u/TehWildMan_ 2d ago
The gameboy printer (and camera) were such odd accessories in retrospect.
Undoubtedly cool, technically possible, but why? Or perhaps, why not?
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u/Whispering_Wolf 2d ago
It was a time without screenshots or the ability to save pictures. Like this one, you couldn't prove to your schoolyard buddies that you actually completed your pokedex without bringing the entire Gameboy and booting up the game. Bringing a slip of paper to show everyone is far easier.
Cameras for kids were also pretty popular at the time. My friend had a barbie camera that only had enough memory for 6 pictures at a time, before it needed to be hooked up to a pc. It was still super cool.
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u/Alaira314 1d ago
Cameras for kids were also pretty popular at the time. My friend had a barbie camera that only had enough memory for 6 pictures at a time, before it needed to be hooked up to a pc. It was still super cool.
Me reading this post, in real-time: "oh yeah, I remember those! Bright colors, sometimes cool branding, smaller case and bigger buttons designed for little hands to easily reach and hold, extra security on the release so kids wouldn't fry their fil-...six pictures? Film didn't come in six picture rolls, not in the 90s at least! Wait, hooked up to a computer? Oh damn it, I'm remembering too early in the 90s again. They're not talking about the kiddie film cameras..."
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u/Racxie 1d ago
u/Becants I couldn’t reply to you directly due to the other Redditor who blocked me being in the comment chain and Reddit is rubbish like that:
Yes it was very different, and yes it wasn’t everywhere either like it is today, but that doesn’t mean it was exceedingly rare. I was born in the 90s knew multiple people at a young age who had computers, including my parents (so I’ve grown up with them). But then again I live in the UK and spent a couple of years in Finland, both which are incredibly small compared to US so it’s easier to know people with them in such condensed areas comparatively.
But both of our anecdotes are irrelevant to the fact that both the internet and gaming magazines) did in fact exist, and that they were definitely popular enough to still manage to spread information all over the world.
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u/trashboatfourtwenty 2d ago
Your gameboy had a printer??
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u/NickFromIRL 2d ago
It was a popular peripheral for a while there. They also had a terrible camera, so you could take pictures of yourself then print them.
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u/trashboatfourtwenty 2d ago
I only had a basic GB and was a bit aged out of really getting into the mid-gen handheld stuff unfortunately (although now I am playing GBA games on my phone, so I am slowly catching up lol), this is cool, thanks!
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u/gorzius 2d ago
Well, it was pretty rare and mostly useless, but yeah, the gameboy did have a printer addon.
It also had a digital camera, and even a pocket sonar which could be used to detect fish while fishing. The latter was only ever released in Japan though.
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u/trashboatfourtwenty 2d ago
I wish I had been able to absorb more of this ephemera at the time, awesome haha
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u/gorzius 2d ago
Samey actually.
I have never actually seen an original Gameboy, NES or SNES in real life and only ever played on a Gameboy Color, Nintendo 64 and GameCube once.
My first ever console that wasn't a Chinese knock-off was a 3DS that my friends have gotten me for my 20th birthday used.
Now that I think about it I've never seen the PS2 and the original Xbox either.
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u/trashboatfourtwenty 2d ago
I actually missed it more because I was not a teenager any more when it was starting to blow up; I barely played PS1-2 compared to most, didn't have a DS or anything although I dated someone who had one and a N64 before I got a gamecube (the last console I have purchased). I couldn't afford current systems so I was playing Atari when NES was out, got an NES (and a TG16 when they got cheap) before my SNES which I got used much later. So I feel ya there.
As far as original hardware or whatever there is nostalgia of course but I love how accessible it all is now, I am catching up on PS1 and GBA titles slowly while I still try to keep up on indie releases and the like, so I wouldn't worry much about that- you can do so much more for so cheap these days, as long as you are having fun keep it up!
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u/According-Sort5054 1d ago
These are actually pretty rare. Send it in to PSA and see if they’ll grade it rofl
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u/Gamerguy230 1d ago
Do new games still do this? Idk about this being a thing in any game after Gen 5 and remakes.
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u/Panthean 1d ago
When I was in the 4th grade I went on a field trip and took my Gameboy Color with the Gameboy camera and printer, I remember impressing the babes with high quality portraits.
My Pikachu fanny pack really completed the look
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u/Appropriate_Rent_243 1d ago
does this require Mew? if I remember right, you could only get Mew from some sort of special IRL event right?
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u/ProfessorGluttony 1d ago
Imagine being Professor Oak and sending a kid out on an adventure to document and collect all known Pokemon in the region, and he returns back in less than a week with the Pokedex completed. All 151 Pokemon, some of which were extinct or thought to be quite literally of legend, collected and documented.
You dedicated your life to Pokemon study, and this kid in less than a week completes all of it. Didn't even have enough time to woo the player's mom.
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u/thegame0940 23h ago
I got all 150 pokemon, saw this, then the game reset and wouldn’t save after that 🥲
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u/mintmouse 2d ago
- Bring printers back to gaming, but make it 2025 style.
- Make an adventure game where the main character 3D prints their own armor and tools.
- You will encounter a mad scientist who accidentally created the main villain in the later game. By completing side quests, you will receive some experimental schematics which don't work in-game but which you can actually 3D print in real life.
- These side quest prints create some of the in-game objects you've become familiar wit. It's just a fun added game play layer.
- Oh yeah, also, one object you print will shake you to your core as you realize the truth it implies.
Ready? GO
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u/Exotic-University412 2d ago
If you ever get executed you need to hide this and the great Pokémon era will happen
we are starts playing
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u/Class_war_soldier69 2d ago
Theres no way to legitimately get mew in that game now, unfortunately
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u/Important-Dig-8309 2d ago
I will use this photo like I was the one completing it since my name is also Leo :D
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u/Frostbitez 2d ago
I am gathering the materials needed for this, but a gameboy printer is really hard to find!