Blog:Monopoly (Game Boy Color)

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CRV (talk) 19:22, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Back in 2010, I interviewed programmer Scott Marshall, who worked on Ghoul School, R.C. Grand Prix, and Genesis Frogger, among other games. He also adapted the Game Boy version of Monopoly (originally developed by Sculptured Software) to the Game Boy Color. I posted his comments on Frogger years ago, but not Monopoly. Here's what he had to say about the "colorization" process:

Colorizing Monopoly involved:
1) Disassembling the BW game.
2) Figuring out how it worked.
3) Adding subrouting jumps to the code (sometimes programming in binary -- below assembly language!).
4) Adding or modifying graphic data.
5) Rewriting all screen access.
6) Adding color tables.
I also found a bug in the original code and fixed it (don't remember what exactly).
We also added some animation screens that were not in the original game, just to give a little extra value.

Monopoly was one of several monochrome Game Boy games re-released for the Game Boy Color by Majesco. (See our Morning Star Multimedia entry for more adaptations.) This Cutting Room Floor article compares the different versions of Game Boy Monopoly including another Game Boy Color update that came out in Japan months before the US release. (I did not ask Marshall if he had anything to do with that.)