Matt Leone and I had the occasion today to meet and interview Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka, who is probably best known as the composer for the original
Metroid, the president of
Pokémon co-developers Creatures, and a long-time engineer under Gumpei Yokoi's R&D1 division of Nintendo back in the day. One of Tanaka's favorite projects from his years at Nintendo was the Game Boy Camera, a cool little device that plugged into the Game Boy's cartridge slot and turned the system into a makeshift tool for photography. During our meeting, I whipped out my iPhone and shot a the closest thing I could manage to a portrait of Tanaka:
It's not quite a real Game Boy Camera photo, but it's a respectable facsimile, shot with an app called
8-Bit Pocket Camera. It does a good job of imitating the exact pixel resolution and color depth of the Game Boy Camera, complete with the same Brightness and Contrast sliders. Unfortunately, the app does lack the whimsical extras that made the real thing so fun; much of the Game Boy Camera's appeal stemmed from the decidedly goofy animations and games Tanaka built into the cartridge portion of the peripheral.
I regret not having a real Game Boy Camera on hand to photograph its creator with, but in a way using a counterfeit version is probably an even greater testament to what Tanaka accomplished with the device. He made a tool so unique, so appealing, that more than a decade later its fans have crafted a faithful similation of it.
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