Mario Land
Image: Nintendo

For years, we've wondered what it might look like to see our favourite Game Boy games in colour. And now thanks to Input, we don't have to wonder anymore.

Recently, the freelancer Steven Wright did an interview with the romhacker toruzz, going over his incredible Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2 colourisation hacks. These hacks transform the games from grayscale into colour, and are a joy to behold, rejuvenating the world of Sarasaland and making us want to jump straight back in.

As Input reports, toruzz isn't the first person to accomplish this kind of hack. There have been others including EJR Taime's Metroid 2: Return of Samus, Marc Robledo's Snoopy Magic Show DX, Drenn's Pokémon Red hack. But that doesn't make toruzz's work any less impressive to see in the action.

The Spanish-speaking hacker started back in 2016, with a hack of The Frog For Whom The Bell Tolls, a Japan-Exclusive Zelda-like, but eventually started working on his Super Mario Land conversions after receiving requests to do more popular titles.

In order to colourize these games, he had to teach himself Game Boy Assembly language, as well as use a debugger to correct any faults. If you're worried about the legality of this, don't be. As Input reports, while distributing or downloading ROMs is illegal, there's no law against modifying a ROM as long as you own the game in question.

toruzz told Input:

"I like my hobbies to be challenging, and romhacking is one of the best ways I've found to challenge myself. And it may sound silly, but I love that once you overcome all the hurdles, you're rewarded with one of your retro gaming 'what ifs' becoming real. On top of that, you get a lot of fans telling you that your work has made them happy. So, overall, it's very satisfying."

In the future, toruzz has announced he was hired to officially colourize a game for a company, though he can't disclose who. He also has some other Game Boy titles he wants to colourize too. This includes his favourite game - Donkey Kong 94. So far, he has only made a few mockups of how this would look, and is yet to pull the trigger on making the hack.

If you're anything like us, you'll be wanting to keep an eye on what toruzz does next. To do that, we recommend heading over to his Twitter and giving it a follow.

[source inputmag.com]