#FF: @toruzz

I only learned of Ivan ‘@toruzz’ Delgado’s existence recently when, in a rare win for the Twitter algorithm that normally fills my feed with all manner of political downers, I spotted an article about him. The article, titled “Meet the hacker colorizing the Game Boy games you forgot” about, talks about how native Spanish speaker Ivan originally got into ROM-hacking after being disappointed by the quality of fan translations for The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. He made his own, and then–after discovering another hacker’s color patch for Pokemon Red–shifted his focus to adding color to grayscale games.

Job one for me this weekend is checking out Ivan’s color hack for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, which I have fond memories of playing but never finishing on my original Game Boy. Check out his Twitter feed and you’ll see that, in addition to offering updates on his own projects, Ivan enthusiastically promotes other hackers’ work.  

“This one needed a bit more than color.” - @toruzz, April 2019

Scrolling back through Ivan’s Twitter posts has been a voyage of discovery for me. There’s a whole world of colorized Game Boy games out there that I was barely aware of, and I can’t wait to explore it. Ivan’s next project is apparently the first official colorized game that he’s been hired to work on for a commercial release. No word just yet on which game it is, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Pinball: Revenge of the Gator.