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  • Joined: 30 Jun 2016
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  • Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Game Gear RGB Ramp
Post Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2021 12:29 pm
I'm opening this topic out of both curiosity, and to see if anyone else finds the topic intriguing.

In recent times, the Game Boy emulation and art scene has saught to more accurately emulate the various screens in the line of hardware pertinent to them.
Has anyone in the Game Gear scene done something similar for its own various screens?

As it is, when working with art, I've been working in linear RGB steps of 17. This obviously fulfils having 16 RGB steps to work with, but it is almost certainly not accurate to how any of the actual panels looked for original (ie. not modded) Game Gear screens.
Is it even practical to perform a measurement of the screens in 2021, given many of them have decayed badly with both the backlight and the actual LCD pixels themselves?

Apologies if a topic or series of posts discussing this already exists, by the way!
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  • Joined: 22 Apr 2018
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Post Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 12:37 am
Surprisingly, color reproduction on original Game Gear screens is in some cases still better than e.g. a McWill mod. This is visible, for instance, in the SMSTestSuite. However be aware that the Sega-era and Majesco-era screens reproduce colors differently from each other.
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Post Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 12:43 am
Also the TV Auto Tuner (and in Sega models the TV Tuners) can be used with an external video source to display the 240p suite from newer consoles which might aid in characterizing the LCD vs. the vagaries of the VDP
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 2:14 am
I just looked at prices for colorimeters, it was a bit of a nasty shock! Maybe someone already has one + a Game Gear though?
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  • Joined: 05 Jan 2006
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:09 am
Interesting topic! I love the idea of exploring better colors for the new LCDs. There are still a number of drawbacks to doing the upgrade that I'd love to see ironed out.
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 11:37 am
There are some comparison pictures at https://www.retrorgb.com/gamegearmcwilllcd.html showing original, Majesco and McWill screens and how different their colours and contrast are. I suspect it’s hard to capture in photographs though.
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2021 3:57 pm
Yeah, that bias towards brighter colours is what intrigues me most. Especially since a lot of artists using the "Linear 17" scale might be very tempted to use a lot of dark shades, when in fact there wouldn't be very many available.
Or even existent.
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