Alright, technological Kiwis, it's time someone helped me out with this mystery that has been haunting me for the past ten years or so.
When I was a young, bright-eyed Silver with not a care in the world, I had a strange incident occur with my and my best friend's Game Boy Advance SPs that we have never been able to replicate, and the Google search I did just now isn't proving fruitful. (Who even used the Internet in the age of the SP to have this problem, anyway? I mean, come on. It's not like there were Pokémon forums where I heard about the arrival of the DS firsthand, after all. ... Wait, what?)
Basically, my friend and I were faffing about with our copies of Pokémon Blue and Pokémon Gold. Both of us had a copy of both, but I can't remember whose specific carts we were using at the time, or even if it matters. Though, for the record, both of my copies of the games still functioned fine afterward. We were taking advantage of the whole thing with Pokémon games being able to link and trade and all that jazz to do some... I dunno. Kid stuff. Fuck if I remember. I only remember the weirdness.
What happened is that both of our SPs had a thing. This may be common to multiple SPs, for all I know; my current SP doesn't do it, but it's also a newer (backlit) model that has never been thrown at the wall like my old SP. (Only bitten on a few times.) The thing was that sometimes (it might have actually only happened this day, for all I remember), when you put a GB(C) game - we noticed it with specifically Pokémon, but then, I only had one non-Pokémon GB(C) game - into the system, the screen, which when off is normally black (obviously), would grow ever so slightly lighter. This was enough to be noticeable, but neither I nor the friend cared, since we figured this was normal - it didn't do it with any GBA games, so I guess I rationalized it as being like the older technology of the GB(C) games and the GBA having to be back-compatible with those and I dunno, man, I was like ten. Regardless, it did that thing.
Well, on this one day, we were swapping around carts pretty regularly between our systems. Don't remember if it was just a single copy of Blue and Gold or if we were transferring stuff between three or even four carts total, but we were doing a lot of swapping carts to SPs and trading. At one point, I stuck a cart - don't remember which; it doesn't matter - into the SP. I stuck it in pretty swiftly. Then, the screen did its normal change-of-tint - except it became a very light gray, almost white. This was abnormal. A little freaked out, I promptly unceremoniously yanked the cart out of the system...
... And the Game Boy logo came up. With the power switch off.
After about five minutes of refusing to touch the damn thing, I finally grabbed it and flicked the switch to on, then off, then back and forth and the Game Boy screen just remained there (never progressing anywhere cause there was no game in the system; this is normal for the system, but usually only when you turn the damn thing on!) throughout. I finally fixed this by putting the cart back in, which made the screen go back to gray, and from there it was able to function as normal. I don't remember if the system was set to on or off when I stuck the cart back in. I want to say it was on, and then I just turned the system off after the screen went back to gray, but I don't remember.
Here's the thing, though - and why I'm able to remember it so long later - it happened again. With my friend's system, and with whichever Pokémon cart was the one I had not used mine for. Same results. From there, understanding that we had happened upon some sort of freak occurrence, we tried to recreate it (not for "pictures" though probably; this was before cell phones or computer cameras or anything that would have made it easy for two ten-year-olds to prove it to anybody). It didn't happen. I'm guessing the reason it didn't happen was because we were just sitting there shoving the same carts in and out of the systems without playing them or using different carts. I feel like it might be related to something I once read about the N64 holding RAM data for up to 60/30 seconds after being turned off, and something happening where the SP was kind of having a fit because the game put in didn't match the RAM - or something; don't ask me, I've got no clue how technology works. I've not been able to recreate it since; I tried a few times with Gold a couple minutes ago, but this was on the newer model (I still have the SP that the glitch happened on, but I'm not sure where it is because it's not in my drawer like it normally is, which is odd since I never play it, and Blue's missing from my game box as well) and there isn't a Link Cable involved (which for all I know may have been relevant).
This is something that happened ten years ago but even now I still can't make sense of it. Anyone who wants to put my mind at rest with some techno-babble, I'd love it if you could do so.
When I was a young, bright-eyed Silver with not a care in the world, I had a strange incident occur with my and my best friend's Game Boy Advance SPs that we have never been able to replicate, and the Google search I did just now isn't proving fruitful. (Who even used the Internet in the age of the SP to have this problem, anyway? I mean, come on. It's not like there were Pokémon forums where I heard about the arrival of the DS firsthand, after all. ... Wait, what?)
Basically, my friend and I were faffing about with our copies of Pokémon Blue and Pokémon Gold. Both of us had a copy of both, but I can't remember whose specific carts we were using at the time, or even if it matters. Though, for the record, both of my copies of the games still functioned fine afterward. We were taking advantage of the whole thing with Pokémon games being able to link and trade and all that jazz to do some... I dunno. Kid stuff. Fuck if I remember. I only remember the weirdness.
What happened is that both of our SPs had a thing. This may be common to multiple SPs, for all I know; my current SP doesn't do it, but it's also a newer (backlit) model that has never been thrown at the wall like my old SP. (Only bitten on a few times.) The thing was that sometimes (it might have actually only happened this day, for all I remember), when you put a GB(C) game - we noticed it with specifically Pokémon, but then, I only had one non-Pokémon GB(C) game - into the system, the screen, which when off is normally black (obviously), would grow ever so slightly lighter. This was enough to be noticeable, but neither I nor the friend cared, since we figured this was normal - it didn't do it with any GBA games, so I guess I rationalized it as being like the older technology of the GB(C) games and the GBA having to be back-compatible with those and I dunno, man, I was like ten. Regardless, it did that thing.
Well, on this one day, we were swapping around carts pretty regularly between our systems. Don't remember if it was just a single copy of Blue and Gold or if we were transferring stuff between three or even four carts total, but we were doing a lot of swapping carts to SPs and trading. At one point, I stuck a cart - don't remember which; it doesn't matter - into the SP. I stuck it in pretty swiftly. Then, the screen did its normal change-of-tint - except it became a very light gray, almost white. This was abnormal. A little freaked out, I promptly unceremoniously yanked the cart out of the system...
... And the Game Boy logo came up. With the power switch off.
After about five minutes of refusing to touch the damn thing, I finally grabbed it and flicked the switch to on, then off, then back and forth and the Game Boy screen just remained there (never progressing anywhere cause there was no game in the system; this is normal for the system, but usually only when you turn the damn thing on!) throughout. I finally fixed this by putting the cart back in, which made the screen go back to gray, and from there it was able to function as normal. I don't remember if the system was set to on or off when I stuck the cart back in. I want to say it was on, and then I just turned the system off after the screen went back to gray, but I don't remember.
Here's the thing, though - and why I'm able to remember it so long later - it happened again. With my friend's system, and with whichever Pokémon cart was the one I had not used mine for. Same results. From there, understanding that we had happened upon some sort of freak occurrence, we tried to recreate it (not for "pictures" though probably; this was before cell phones or computer cameras or anything that would have made it easy for two ten-year-olds to prove it to anybody). It didn't happen. I'm guessing the reason it didn't happen was because we were just sitting there shoving the same carts in and out of the systems without playing them or using different carts. I feel like it might be related to something I once read about the N64 holding RAM data for up to 60/30 seconds after being turned off, and something happening where the SP was kind of having a fit because the game put in didn't match the RAM - or something; don't ask me, I've got no clue how technology works. I've not been able to recreate it since; I tried a few times with Gold a couple minutes ago, but this was on the newer model (I still have the SP that the glitch happened on, but I'm not sure where it is because it's not in my drawer like it normally is, which is odd since I never play it, and Blue's missing from my game box as well) and there isn't a Link Cable involved (which for all I know may have been relevant).
This is something that happened ten years ago but even now I still can't make sense of it. Anyone who wants to put my mind at rest with some techno-babble, I'd love it if you could do so.
