Big Blue Box and Lionhead’s classic Xbox RPG Fable celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this year, so, to celebrate, one fan went the extra mile and decided to try and recreate the game as a Game Boy Color title (h/t: Gamesradar).
“Growing up I played Fable a lot and I often used to visualize how Fable would be on lower hardware,” wrote its creator James Grice on Reddit last week. “I had some free time so I spent the last 4 days making my first Gameboy game, what better game to make than to try to reimagine on the hardware than Fable for its 20th anniversary!”
It’s important to note that the recreation isn’t currently a full port. After all, we don’t expect Grice to have rebuilt the entire game in GBstudio in just four days. Instead, it simply covers the game’s opening section in Oakvale, where players go around collecting coins to buy their sister a present before all hell breaks loose and bandits attack their village.
Grice has expressed some interest in continuing the port if it gets enough interest, and is currently accepting suggestions for how to map all of the game’s complex commands and actions to just the d-pad, A/B, and select if he does go ahead with trying to expand it further. He doesn’t intend on porting the entire game over if the demo does become popular, but hopes to add more sections of the game periodically over time. So we may one day hope to see Bowerstone and the Arena.
If you’re interested, you can watch a playthrough of the demo below or download it here to experience the game in all its retro glory.