The Game Boy Color IR Sensor Was Weird and Underused

The Game Boy Color was a good system. There's no denying that.

But, it was also arguably just a stopgap between the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Advance. That said, it still had some neat tricks up its sleeve. One of the coolest (and most under-utilized) of these was the IR Sensor, a feature that was built into every single GBC and allowed for wireless communication between systems, pre-dating the Nintendo DS by five years!

Thus, let's take a look at the GBC Infrared Sensor and go over how it works, before diving into all 29 games (that I know of at the time of making this video) that support IR stuff on the GameBoy Color! Today on Stuff We Play: The GameBoy Color IR Sensor Was Weird and Underused!

Time Stamps:

Intro and Background Info: 00:00​
How the IR Sensor Works: 01:53​
Robopon: 03:18​
Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal Versions: 04:25​
Bomberman MAX: 06:36​
Chee Chai Alien: 07:29​
Donkey Kong Country for GameBoy Color: 09:01​
Mission Impossible's Weird GBC Game: 09:17​
Rare's Racing Games: 09:30​
Ubi Key Games: 09:44​
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe: 11:07​
Pokémon Pinball: 11:32​
The Final GBC Game and the IR Sensor: 11:42​
Warlocked: 12:08​
Pokémon Trading Card Game/TCG GB2: 12:25​
Extra Bits: 13:45​
Conclusion: 14:32​

Correction: One game that I failed to mention in this video was Dancing Furby, a Japanese-exclusive title that communicates over IR with actual Furby toys! Legit, I might have to track that down for a video of its own someday!

In addition, both the Xena: Warrior Princess GBC game and the GBC port of Lego Island 2 apparently have basic IR support, though I have yet to test this.

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Additional Music and Sound Clips from 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency' and 'Streets of Rage 2'.

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Thank you for watching!

[StuffWePlay]

I hope you all enjoyed this video! I have a big project in the works for May, along with a big video I promised a while back that I'm finally getting out for April!

[Dreamwriter]

I was a GBC programmer back in the day, and we supported the IR port. Thing was a real pain, it was only truly reliable if the two systems are straight across from each other and like 2 to 4 inches apart. And there was tons of interference, we had to include a lot of error checking and validation, if it failed we just had to try sending the data again. Which made it slow.

[TheWax]

I use to have the mission impossible cart. It was neat that it could clone your TV remote, thus turn the gbc into one. But since it didn't save the settings it would forget the IR codes soon as you turn it off; so it was kind of pointless. Anyways, good vid.👍

[peterhammes]

Those pokewalkers definitely were built to that oldschool Nintendo quality. I lent mine to my friend and he lost it. we found it 3 years later when he sucked it up in his lawn mower. The thing still worked!

[undergroundmonorail]

out of the blue dunk on jkr upgraded the video from "oh i enjoy this, i should check out more" to windmill slamming the sub button lmao

[joniivee]

I legit didn't even know this was a thing at all. Thanks a ton for the in depth look!

[scottishcomedian]

It is an absolute CRIME that you don't have more subs, keep up the good work man. i loved this vid!

[philreed]

I don’t think I ever used the Game Boy Color IR sensor once, back in the day. I did occasionally transfer contacts from my laptop to my Nokia with IR. That was as slow and flaky as you’d expect!

[CI]

The Pokemon TCG game is the only time I ever used this thing. Was actually pretty helpful.

[RetroGameNova]

I remember my friends and I tried using that sensor during recess to trade Pokémon. Needless to say we used the link cable lol Great video dude

[StanSmithMarket]

Just found this channel. You're gaining a sub because I liked the video, but mostly because I wanna see that Pokemon TCG deep dive. Loved those games soooo much. The music is ***chef's kiss***

[patrickmcloughlin]

9:43 lol why's Mickey so big compared to the house and so well animated

[paperchazz]

Hey there! At 7:30 you show 「ちっちゃいエイリアン」 ちっちゃい is a colloquialism meaning little, small, or wee. I think a more accurate translation might be "Lil' Alien." 🙇 Great video!

[Ehal]

Minor correction, Chee Chai (ちっちゃい) Alien just means small alien.

[jayrbee]

Great video... I remember getting my GBC back around '98-99 when it came out and loved it but was hugely disappointed that the IR never seemed to work with other friends who had the same GBC... we always had to breakout the cable but mostly gave up on it...

Seemed like technology too early/too soon for that time period because if it had worked it would have been amazing. We already started thinking about player vs player battles for games outside just Pokemon.. but never got it. Then the GBA came out and I stopped trying to keep up with the handheld consoles.

[KimFareseed]

6:27
Holding it in my hand right now, ready to walk to work. Feels nice to in a sense, take my starter with me for a walk.

[ekojar]

What i miss the most about this IR time with the Gameboy, is that being connected was an option and a Luxury. It was a fancy thing back then. It was a feature that I looked forward to using if I ever got the opportunity! And I always thought of it as a high tech part that just wasn't figured out yet. I dreamed of me an my neighbor friend both buying a chat cartridge game so we could message each other!

[ThePutosaure]

Nice video, here are a few omissions:
There are two more games that support Ubi Key, the adaptations of the French movies "Taxi 2" and "Les Visiteurs".
More importantly, the two Looney Tunes games by Infogrames "Martian Alert" and "Martian Revenge", had support for multiplayer through IR. That's right, if you didn't have any Link Cable, you could play 1v1 mini-games wirelessly as long as you kept the two consoles fairly stable in front of each other (honestly, it didn't work that well as you might expect). But it's a pretty big thing as it's not only about wireless trading but the first steps of wireless multiplayer :)

[TarksGauntlet]

There's a port of VIP on gameboy?


I have some more research to do.

[QueenCheetah]

I played Pokémon TCG so much when I was a kid- I, too, recommend anyone interested in the TCG try out the fan-translation of the sequel! It's awesome!!