HOWTO_Transfer_Photos_from_a_Game_Boy_Camera

About

In 1998 Nintendo released the Game Boy Camera accessory for their Gameboy Console. It can be used to take simple greyscale pictures which can then be transfered to the Game Boy Printer to be printed onto thermal paper. In this HOWTO we will be transferring the photos to Gentoo using a program called gblnk. gblnk is a program developed by Chris McCormick which allows you to view and save your photos in bitmap format.

Prerequisites

Connecting the Game Boy to your PC

To connect your Game Boy to your PC you will need a Mad Catz Camera Link cable. You can usually find them on sites like eBay or Amazon.

Emerge Allegro

The Allegro library is needed to compile the gblnk so go ahead and emerge it.

# emerge -av media-libs/allegro 

You should now be all set to compile and run gblnk.

gblnk

Getting gblnk

gblnk can be obtained from the official website. Make a new directory called "gblnk" and navigate to it. We can use wget to download the needed files.

# wget http://mccormick.cx/dev/gblnk/current/src/gblnk.c http://mccormick.cx/dev/gblnk/current/src/makefile

You should also download the readme file for credits and usage information.

# wget http://mccormick.cx/dev/gblnk/current/README.TXT

Compiling gblnk

To compile gblnk simply run make from the gblnk directory.

# make

Once this is done they should be an executable file called "gblnk" in your directory

Using gblnk

Preparing the Game Boy

• First connect your Game Boy to your PC via the Mad Catz cable.
• Power on your Game Boy with the Game Boy Camera cartridge in.
• From the main menu select "View" then "Album".
• From your album you should be able to select and view all the photos you have taken with your Game Boy Camera.
• View a photo and press the "A" button to bring up extra options.
• Select Print at the Top to bring you to a Screen With your Photo and the options "A Print" and "B Cancel".

We will leave the Game Boy for now and prepare gblnk.

Preparing gblnk

to run gblnk just type "./gblnk photo.bmp" where "photo.bmp" is the filename you wish to save to the photo to.

# ./gblnk photo.bmp

Then once the program has loaded a window will appear.

Transferring the Photos

• Once gblnk has loaded go back to your game Boy and select print.
• The Game Boy camera will display a transfer bar.
• Shortly after the Game Boy camera completes the transfer gblnk will display the image.
• To Make the Image Larger Press "D"
• To Make the Image its Original Size Press "A"
• To Save the Image press "S"
• Once you are finished hit "Esc" to exit.

End Result

Once your finished you should have something like this...


You Can use an image editing program like the GIMP to remove the black border and crop the image.

Now you can start building your Game Boy Camera photo album :)