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Back That Light Up - TV Tropes

  • ️Sat Jun 07 2008

Back That Light Up (trope)

Top: GBA version.
Bottom: Original SNES version.

When the presentation of a work displayed on the screen is adjusted internally to compliment the intended display. Different viewing methods and screen types, and even how the screen is lit will affect how the image appears on them, and was a particular problem for handheld gaming platforms in the 20th century.

There are three types of screen lighting that apply here:

  1. Ambient - Ambient light such as room lights or the sun illuminate the screen.
  2. Front lit - A light source is placed in front of the screen to illuminate it.
  3. Back lit - A light source is placed behind the screen to illuminate it (the screen can't be opaque, of course).

While back lit screens will provide the best picture, until the mid-2000s this wasn't standard on handheld devices. Before that point screens used either ambient lighting or, if you were lucky, were front lit. To compensate for this, the colours used in the game's graphics would be chosen to appear most clearly on the handheld's screen.

The Donkey Kong Country image on this page is a good example: the SNES graphics below would be too dark on a Game Boy Advance screen to be playable, so for the Game Boy Advance remake, the graphics are brightened significantly so the game can be seen. This then causes an interesting effect when these games appear on different platforms later on: many GBA games appeared on the Wii U and Nintendo Switch, but since their graphics weren't being seen on a GBA screen anymore they appear pale and garish, like the top half of the page image probably does for you right now.note 

One effect of this is that in an office presentation, you would likely use different colors for the same graphs, depending on if they'll be on printed paper or on a PowerPoint slide.

Compare and contrast Green Boy Color, which is when video game graphics emulate the Game Boy's iconic monochromatic green palette. Contrast Who Forgot The Lights?, games where you can't clearly see what's going on without adjusting your monitor's brightness.

Examples:

open/close all folders 

Gaming Consoles 

  • Game Boy:
    • The original has no light and a monochrome color setup. Thus almost all games were dark colors on a light background. This was also true with the Neo Geo Pocket. There was, however, a short-lived Game Boy Light which came with an electro-luminescent screen; however, it was a power guzzler, and it never left Japan. Various third-party devices, such as the Handy Boy, also attempted to introduce some light sources, with mixed results.
    • The Game Boy Color doesn't have a light, but a full-color scheme. Some games were also dark on light, such as Pokémon Gold and Silver/Crystal and the versions of Dragon Quest, II, and III. Other games were light on dark, particularly NES versions. Same with the Neo Geo Pocket Color. There were, however, a lot of unofficial lights that could plug in the Link Cable port.
    • Game Boy Advance:
      • It has either no light (original model), a frontlight (first SP line AGS-001), or a backlight (second SP line AGS-101 and Micro). This can actually affect the contrast of the colors. No light is actually harder to see than the other systems. Front light is easy to see but washes out all the colors a bit. Back light is most like a regular TV. Games made specifically for the GBA also had different color setups than ports, remakes and/or versions from the SNES and other home systems.
      • The early development kits for the GBA did not display colors the way the GBA itself would display colors, resulting in the earlier games appearing too dark and harming the reputation of many early titles like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. Nintendo quickly learned of the problems and sent updated devkits to all developers to mitigate the problem until the SP came around. Unfortunately, this resulted in these games looking oddly bleached when played with a backlit display; this was an especially big issue when porting or remaking SNES titles (as pictured above), with audiences arguing that games like Final Fantasy VI had their entire atmosphere altered for the worse as a result of the bleached graphics.
  • Game.com: The Pocket Port includes a backlit screen with a considerably better rendering of graphics.
  • Handhelds that always had backlights, such as the Atari Lynx, Game Gear, Nintendo DS, PSP, have generally the same color setups as home console games. Unfortunately, backlit displays wash out completely in bright sunlight. At least you can see okay indoors, eh?
  • Other Sega Systems: The Sega Nomad was a quite powerful handheld (for the time) because, among other features, it had a backlit screen.

Video Games 

Action-Adventure

  • Boktai: Inverted. All of the GBA games require sunlight and the DS game can use sunlight. (There was an actual UV sensor in the cart that affected gameplay. After all, you are killing vampires in this game.) Anyone who has used a TV knows that sunlight + screen = glare. However, if you play it on the original GBA (or SP1 with the backlight turned off) the screen and colors are best in direct sunlight.
  • Castlevania
    • Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: It's difficult to play on the original GBA because the colors are too dark in the beginning, and using a light accessory doesn't help. Later systems and subsequently direct ports lack this issue.
    • Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance:
      • It attempts to correct this by having much more color saturation and giving Juste Belmont a blue glow that is hand-waved by stating in the supplementary guides that the Belmont and Belnades bloodlines mixed sometime shortly after Castlevania, giving Juste magical powers including the glow.
      • For 200% map completion, you may have to switch to a lit system just to see the castle map better, since it is hard to tell which rooms you've missed on the original GBA.
      • This over-saturation causes blood to look pink.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: The GBA remake makes the cracks in the walls, which you have to break through occasionally, too hard to see. Fortunately, it can be played with the SNES palette.
    • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: Several color settings are included to account for the different ways the game can be played. On television with the GameCube's Game Boy Player, on Game Boy Advance, on Game Boy Advance SP, etc.

Driving Games

  • F-Zero: Maximum Velocity: As one of the earliest GBA games, it uses an extremely high contrast between the road and the scenery. No matter how badly you are lighted, you can always see the road.

Platform Games

  • Donkey Kong Country: Even though they all were released after the GBA SP, the remakes for GBA were extremely brightened up from the originals. In particular, this makes Glimmer's Galleon in 2 and Floodlit Fish in 3 much easier due to the brighter lights.
  • Sonic Advance 3: It has different color settings to suit different Game Boy Advance backlight arrangements.
  • Super Mario Advance: Compared to Super Mario All-Stars, as well as the original releases of Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island, the remakes of these games significantly brightened up the color palette to account for the original GBA's lack of a backlight. The middle and bottom rows of this image◊ depict the specific palette shift involved from SNES to GBA.
    • Super Mario Advance 4: Part of its upgraded graphics is attained thanks to the Game Boy Advance SP's front/backlit screen. This allows the inclusion of an original graphics mode in which the colors aren't washed out.

Role-Playing Games

Shooters

  • Doom:
    • The Game Boy Advance version has more than one color scheme to compensate for the different lighting possibilities of that system.
    • An early patch adds several "gamma correction" settings to lighten the game, to help compensate for the terrible backlighting of CRT monitors commonplace at the time.

Web Video 

  • Outside Xbox: In "She-Ra and the Link's Awakening Model Challenge", Ellen converses this trope with regard to the GameBoy. She explains that old models could only be played in the light because they lacked a backlit screen.

Western Animation