The look of Gameboy Camera posts always makes me insanely nostalgic. It's such a distinct look, and I loved mine back in the day (still think I have it stored somewhere in my closet).
Also cool: I found this Lemmy post via Kbin, then followed the Pixelfed user via my Mastdon account. Federation is cool.
This is genuinely very cool and has made me nostalgic enough to consider trying to get hold of one for my Game Boy! I only wish I had some photography talent, as it's quite a feat to take good photos with something so technically rubbish.
I remember shopping with my Mom at, I think, Wal-Mart, and coming across the GameBoy Camera and the Printer in the bargain bin in the electronics section. I explained it what these were and she was like "Yeah let's buy these, plus a camera for your brother!" I don't remember how much they were, but probably no more than like $50 combined. Otherwise can't see her just buying two cameras and a printer on a whim like that.
I think I still have my Camera somewhere...but the Printer I'm pretty sure is gone. The Printer used thermal printing on rolls that were actually stickers. So we'd make stupid faces, edit them, and print them out. Of course, this was in the days before Amazon and buying cheap replacements for anything, so once our roll of sticker paper was gone, that was the end of the Printer. Which is probably why I haven't seen it in over two decades. Probably got tossed our during various family moves.
I'm pretty sure the same thing happened to my printer. I ended up with a bunch of dumb photos, printed them out, and never used it again after that because I didn't want to buy more paper.
It's not exactly the same experience, but @endrift has an excellent Game Boy and Game Boy Advance emulator, mGBA, which supports emulating the camera and runs on many platforms, from desktops to other video game consoles
If you've got a homebrewed Nintendo 3DS, it makes a particularly good Game Boy Camera with mGBA. It has both inner and outer cameras, which can kind of simulate the swiveling lens of the original device, and you can either copy your save to a PC to extract your photos, or just hit the screenshot button in mGBA when you've got a shot you like to get an image dropped directly onto the 3DS SD card.
It's the closest experience I've had to the real thing since ... the real thing, plus you get the advantage of a backlit screen, no need for specialized hardware to get your photos off the device, it's overall just a great way to relive the Game Boy Camera (or experience it for the first time).
Matt Grey on the YouTubes has a couple of videos with his Gameboy camera. He's managed to take a few coloured photos, and set up a way to almost instantly get the pictures from the GBC to his phone.
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