Game Boy Camera Photo Transfer with Mega Memory

Here's how i transfer photos from my Game Boy Camera to my Mac.

I've basically followed Pat Hawks' guide but I've written it down here as a reference for myself, and in case Pat's page or any other references disappear off the internet.

What I Use

Game Boy & Game Boy Camera

I've got a Game Boy Pocket. It's yellow.

Mega Memory Cartridge

Designed for backing up and restoring multiple save games. I managed to find one for around £25 on Amazon.

GB USB Smart Card 64M

Basically a USB Game Boy Cartridge, designed for playing with homebrew games/software on an original Game Boy (such as LSDJ). I got mine from Retro Towers for around £35, though I think they're made in small batches and regularly out of stock.

EMS Flasher

A command line Mac/Linux utility for reading from / writing to USB Game Boy Cartridges by Mike Ryan. I downloaded the Mac OS X binary from his EMS Flasher page, but the source code is available too.

GB Camera Dump

A windows program which exports photos from the Game Boy Camera save file to bitmaps, by Bob Baffy. I've stuck the .exe and Bob's GBCameraDump Source Code on my Github because he's released it into the public domain. The .exe is mirrored by Pat and Gareth.

Winebottler

GB Camera Dump is a Windows program and I've got a mac. I use WineBottler to run it.

How I Use It

1. Take Photos
2. "Back up" photos off the camera onto the Mega Memory cart.
3. Use Mega Memory cart to "restore" photos to GB USB Smart Card 64M
4. Plug GB USB Smart Card 64M into mac via USB
5. Run EMS flasher to read the 'savegame' (photos) to a file
   • $ ems-flasher --read --save --verbose GBCamera_photos.sav
   • (takes a couple of attempts to work, but copies in a few seconds when it works. My USB cable may be dodgy though.)
6. Run GBCameraDump in Wine
7. Open GBCamera_photos.sav, and click save all pictures. If they look corrupted, try going back to step 2.

My Photos

Have a look at my Game Boy Camera photos on Flickr