Orlando Mee, a multimedia artist based on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, didn’t initially set out to become a game developer. His artistic journey led him to explore interactivity through cheap electronics, a pursuit that began with an exhibition titled “Churning The Ocean.” He was looking for ways to program interactive objects for his art, using readily available plastic items from discount stores.
“I work with lots of different weird technology and I was looking for a way to program interactive objects that I made using pieces of kind of plastic junk that you might buy at a two-dollar shop,” Mee explains. His method involved stripping existing electronics from these items and integrating small computers with screens and buttons.
To achieve the desired lights, sounds, and interactivity, Mee found the simplest solution was to develop miniature games. He settled on the Game Boy as his chosen medium for these embedded experiences. Utilising GB Studio, a free software tool for crafting Game Boy games, Mee began building these tiny digital worlds, incorporating them directly into his artworks.
“I quickly became obsessed with exploring Game Boy games, making games that would have blown my mind when I was a 10-year-old playing with my old Game Boy Color,” he admits. This fascination has now evolved into his current project: a brand-new strategy game for the 28-year-old Game Boy Color console. This upcoming title artfully blends elements of board games with his Anglo-Indian heritage.
A Fusion of Heritage and Art
Mee views this game as an extension of his broader artistic practice, a way to delve into his Indian heritage and honour India’s often overlooked contributions to the world of tabletop gaming. “Before it was even a video game, I thought of it as part of my arts practice where I was trying to explore my Indian heritage, and paying tribute to the often forgotten contribution of India to the world of tabletop games,” he states.
He highlights the origins of many classic family games, noting that their Indian roots are frequently unknown. Games like Snakes and Ladders and Parcheesi are prime examples. Furthermore, Mee points out that the precursor to chess, known as Chaturanga, originated in India long before the game evolved into its Persian form. “It’s just kind of awesome to know that people have been playing them for thousands of years,” he adds, reflecting on the enduring legacy of these ancient pastimes.
The Creative Power of Technical Limitations
The original Game Boy, released in 1989, featured a basic monochromatic screen with a resolution of just 160 by 140 pixels and a mere 16 kilobytes of memory. These specifications are dramatically outpaced by most modern smartwatches. Its successor, the Game Boy Color, launched in 1998, offered more power while maintaining backward compatibility. Collectively, Nintendo sold approximately 118 million of these devices globally.
While not a technological marvel, the Game Boy’s affordability and portability cemented its status as a beloved console worldwide. It continues to be a significant player in the thriving retro gaming community. The resale market for retro games and consoles experienced a notable surge during the COVID-19 lockdowns, leading many players to discover or revisit these vintage devices.
Australian Developers Embracing the Game Boy
Melbourne’s Tom Lockwood, who creates games under the moniker Gumpy Function, is another Australian developer breathing new life into the vintage console. He echoes the sentiment that the Game Boy’s limitations can foster unique creative approaches. “The first console I had was the Nintendo and the original Game Boy and I’ve always kind of been drawn to the more pick-up-and-play; retro games have always been very arcadey or gameplay-dense,” Lockwood shares.
Lockwood began his game development journey during the pandemic, a significant shift from his previous careers as a carpenter, auctioneer, and valuer. It was becoming a stay-at-home dad that provided him with the time to pursue his passion for game creation. He finds that the simpler designs inherent to Game Boy games facilitate quicker iteration and completion cycles.
“I was just kind of drawn to this process, I can only fit so much information in this scene, given that it’s Game Boy RAM,” he explains. This constraint forces developers to be inventive. “I asked myself ‘How am I going to do that? How am I going to get more detail out of this art asset? Can I try to do some kind of palette trick here or use a sprite in a certain way that kind of makes it look like something’s more detailed when really it’s just a Game Boy game?'”
For Lockwood, who has ADHD, the short design and development cycles of Game Boy games are particularly beneficial. “I think the reason why, specifically, Game Boy development has been so good for me is because it’s quick turnover, you can make games kind of quickly,” he says. “It really suits an ADHD type because you have an idea, it comes out, you can like produce something in a couple of months or three months or whatever it might be, and then you’re just onto the next idea.”
Lockwood has established himself as a prolific Game Boy developer, releasing numerous titles. One of his most notable creations is the viral hit “Grimace’s Birthday,” which was part of a marketing campaign for McDonald’s. New Game Boy games are typically distributed as downloadable ROM files, which can be played on specialised cartridges for the physical hardware or through software emulators.
Nostalgia Reimagined for a New Generation
Mee is leveraging the nostalgic aesthetic of the predominantly Japanese-made Game Boy games to reimagine his project, “Yakshini Lokam.” He poses the thought-provoking question: “what if the cultural hub of a generation of games was set somewhere else?”
“Because [Indian culture] hasn’t seen much play on the Game Boy, I really wanted to experiment with rules that had been established by countries that were making Game Boy games in that era: Japan, some European countries, and the USA, a couple from Australia as well,” Mee elaborates. He believes that simple design adjustments, such as employing a different colour palette, can significantly alter the player’s experience, especially for those accustomed to commercial Game Boy titles.
“A lot of the colour choice in the game, it feels quite unusual to a Western audience that’s maybe more familiar with like, knights and dragons type fantasy.” He continues, “This is still very much fantasy, but there’s a lot of colour schemes that you see in Indian art, in history, and in sort of like temples, statues, that sort of thing, very bright colours, bold pinks and turquoises.”
Mee envisions an alternate history where diverse countries contributed to the Game Boy’s gaming landscape. This exploration allows him to break established rules and poetically play with aesthetics, resulting in something that feels both familiar and strikingly new.
