At 0:39 I say that some older games detected they were running on the SGB to display in a limited colour palette, but this wording could be misleading. It's not the games that detected the matchup, but the SGB unit itself, as it could recognise some older Nintendo-made games. Later in the video, at about 9:54, I clarify that this is what is actually going on (Metroid 2, Super Mario Land and Tetris all did this). Thanks to @OM19_MO79 for pointing this out.
I personally knew about the color and sound enhancements, particularly with GB Donkey Kong, and also knew about there being a whole SNES game with Space Invaders thanks to Rerez! But when I put in Animaniacs way before I saw this video, I was surprised to hear a whole new soundtrack for it, though not new sound effects which I was bummed about honestly
@@hudde814 Animaniacs absolutely has some new sound effects too. Not every sound is replaced, but some definitely are. The jump sound is one, and there's a few others like the crash sound the spotlights make when they hit the ground. Have another listen when you get the chance :)
Animaniacs also makes great use of the fixed regions for color. For example, there's a stage on a boat, on the bottom of the screen is colored blue for the water. One stage even changes the color mid way through, and that's after you jump down from a building, there is green color added to the bottom of the screen.
Fun fact : You can easily use the Super Gameboy 2 on US SNES by just snapping off the 2 prongs inside the cartridge flap area. That's all there was to block Japanese carts from functioning on the NA SNES; 2 little plastic "blocks". You can see where these go on US carts; there's 2 slots on the back near the board.
@@_lun4r_ It wasn't really region "locking" in the case of the Super Game Boy, more just accounting for the different designs of the cartridge slots in different regions. The original Game Boy was not region locked, and neither was the Super Game Boy - both could play games from any region. The SGB's internal hardware was identical in Japan, NTSC and PAL, the only difference was the shape of the device to fit the cartridge slot.
Fun fact: Super Game Boy wasn’t a Game Boy emulator in 1994 because there was no such thing until Marat Fayzullin released “Virtual Game Boy.” It blew my mind in 1996 but, unfortunately, it wasn’t free. No mention of mouse support for the custom border? SGB definitely supported the SNES mouse! Also, being able to write on the screen can actually help… like a reticle for aiming, a jump point, or mark things you already checked. It also supports the SNES multi-tap for 4-player Bomberman GB/Wario Blast and there’s a Super Game Boy controller with extra functions like Mute and Speed toggle.
The space invaders part at 19:03 was legitimately mind-blowing. The level of effort and skill on display from the devs/artists of Animaniacs shown just before that is awesome, and that’s not even doing it justice.
I still have my Super Gameboy alongside with my Super Nintendo here. It's not been long since I played Wario Blast on it which also had a cool feature for the Super Gameboy: it enabled a 2 player mode which I still love today :)
Wario Blast! could even use the SNES Controller Multitap for 4-players! For single player I remember figuring out that you could switch from Bomberman to Wario and vice versa by reversing your password. :)
Just a small odd fact to add about the super game boy that I remember from years past is that the Super Nintendo mouse will work on the super game boy if plugged into controller port 2. You can open and close the menu by clicking both buttons at the same time and use the mouse to control the cursor in the menu.
Donkey Kong also benefited from improved sound effects with the Super Game Boy. When Pauline cries, you could actually kind of make out that she cries -"Mario! Mario!"- "Help! Help!" (been a while, it actually sounds like she's meowing).
Pauline was suppose to say Help! Help! in the arcade game but, the audio came out garbled. It sounded like she was saying kelp! kelp! The Rom still contains the Sound clips. She also was suppose to say nice! when Mario jumped over a barrel. They abandoned the idea for her saying help! help! until the remake of DK 94.
I remember my brother picking up a second hand SGB from somewhere, quite possibly a Cash Converters, and I spent hours trying out all the games I had. I've still got the booklet that came with it that has lots of colour codes and ideas for things (e.g. drawing on the screen to remember where you needed to go in Zelda: Link's Awakening, and covering up the Next box in Tetris). I still remember coming home from the city (we were staying the night in a hotel somewhere, and so we weren't able to play it immediately), plugging it in and firing up a game and having a great time seeing my favourite Game Boy games on the big(-ish) screen. Now I've got a boxed SGB and want to add a SGB2 to my collection. I rarely use it, because I've got a fancy modern GBA with a backlit screen, but it's cool having one in my collection.
I remember as a kid when I heard about the Super Gameboy that's when it dawned on me, "How come Sega never made something like this and call it the Gear Base Converter?" You had the Power Base converter for Genesis and the Master Gear for Game Gear to play Master System games but not in reverse. Now that I'm older, I understand it wouldn't be a simple conversion because both the Master System and Genesis have tiny color palettes compared to Game Gear's 12-Bit or 4,096 colors. Even if Sega took a minimal hybrid approach by adding the Game Gear's VDP with extended color ram to the Game Gear converter cartridge while turning the Z80 from slave to master and pass-through the video output from the cartridge to the TV that would have easily boosted the cost of the kit and cartridge beyond $100 USD I'd imagine. Because of the Gameboy's modest hardware, Nintendo could pull it off and beat Sega to the punch but went above and beyond with it's customization features.
Not to mention, the Game Boy was 5 years old at this point, so it was cheap enough to be put into a cartridge and still be seen as a steal. Remember, this was a time where a whole game cartridge could cost $100, so getting a whole system for $60 was quite a value. (And thems 1990's dollars, nearly twice the number in today's money)
There is such a cartridge adaptor for the Retron 5, which allows you to plug games for Game Gear, Master System, or Sega Card into the Genesis slot on the Retron 5.
I guess Sega was more worried on releasing 4 different 32-bit systems than caring about the little success they managed to had. Although, when you think about it, maybe the Genesis wasn't able to output external video or enhance its graphics through the cart port or expansion connector. After all, the 32X needs the Genesis video output to be connected to the unit so it can output a composite of both. @@SalvadorButtersworthIt works for the Retron 5 since it just can switch to the proper mode in emulation after detecting the game. If you put that adapter in a Genesis, these are the results: My Card/Japanese Sega 8-bit: if it's a Mark III/SMS one, except for F-16, it runs as normal. If it is an SG-1000 card or cart, it will only have sound and no video. The Genesis doesn't have the video modes for SG-1000 compatibility. Game Gear: Unlike the above, you'll get video... with the wrong palette. This is because the GG uses a modified SMS VDP which is not backwards compatible palette-wise but it is executable-wise. But that's not all, the Start button is not the Pause button. You won't be able to start a game as it expects the input from somewhere else. The Game Gear maps the Pause button to the Start button when in SMS mode but not the other way around. The only GG games you would be able to run are Castle of Illusion and Outrun Europa, since they are actually SMS games on GG cartridges.
I had a super gameboy many many years ago, and I have just repurchased it off ebay this week, I was so happy to find my old games not only still worked but for example Metroid 2 still had the save data from back when I got it at release
I bought an obscure Famicom RPG game in Japan, which still-working saves two years older than I am! Somebody put it down in September 1982 and never picked it up again
Me too - and my 3rd party SNES controllers with turbo buttons actually significantly helped me in getting Abra from the casino, as I just used the turbo buttons to purchase enough tokens while having dinner 😀 Link's Awakening also was a blast on the TV. But the lacking Link Cable Port was a huge flaw when it came to Pokemon - no trading - no battling without borrowing an actual Gameboy from someone 😒
I never had a Super Game Boy (or a SNES in general) but I always thought it was really cool. I got the Game Boy Player for GameCube but it had a lot less interesting features than the Super Game Boy.
Amazing video. I consider myself to be the type of person who has to know everything about this kinda stuff and I was delighted to learn a few new things - specifically the audio enhancements and the Animaniacs/Picross situation with the border layer covering up parts of the GB game display. Love your delivery too. Keep it up.
I've briefly explained this in a few of my videos before, but this is the first dedicated video I've seen on the subject. Pretty much everything that needed to be covered was covered, good job!
Glad you mentioned the pitch change where games sounded higher pitched. A lot of people don't even notice, and there was an emulator years back, Snes9X 1.51 that had lower pitched sound, but nobody addressed this. Only when I found a TASing version for that version that had the correct pitch did I replace the INI file from original 1.51. Most people had no idea
Overall great video! Only thing I wish you would have touched more on the technical details like how the game detected it was on the SGB or how it controlled the border graphics and palette.
The original GB was a little before my time, and I'll be honest, I find monochrome games to be a bit depressing, but like... The Super GB Absolutely Fascinates me! There's like, a whole library of GB games released between 1994 and 1998 that have not only some colourisation, but even some extra features that you can only get by playing them on Super Nintendo! And also like, I LOVE the idea of seeing how much you can do to squeeze more colour, more detail, more sound, more everything out of a GB game on the SGB!
0:39 The other way around. The Super Game Boy, as well as the Game Boy Color, were able to assign a palette to games with specific headers, namely, all Nintendo-made games. In the case of the SGB, it will switch to one of the preset palettes instead of palette 1-A. In the case of the GBC, it had distinct palettes programmed for each, some being egregiously terrible, such as the three original Pokémon, have the grays changed to its namesake color.
@@WhitePointerGaming Not quite, though. Maybe I'm just nitpicking but you said: "Metroid 2: Return of Samus *did* this", so you still imply the game did it when it's the SGB what does it. Also, you say, "some games", when you can actually narrow it down to all pre-SGB Nintendo-made games as no other type of games would trigger the feature, even those sold by Nintendo but not made by Nintendo or its second parties. And it's the same for the GBC, only that time, they did include SGB enhanced games but are treated as any other B/W game, they put no effort in trying to replicate what the SGB did even though it can apply different palettes to different layers. There is many other neat stuff about this almost forgotten and hated (because of the clock speed) hardware, which you probably left out for time constraints or for the sake of the flow and length of video. There are many games that have multiple borders, but another game that also features as many borders, if not more, than SFII, for every stage is (arggh!, I hate this localization name) Tetris Attack. Although SFX could be software defined, like the music, most of them seem to be part of the ROM in the SGB since the sounds were reused in games across many companies. Takara actually made use of plenty of them for their fighting games and they even allow you to have a sound test of all of them. The extra music was seldomly used, but the funny part about it is that the company which did most of the SGB soundtrack enhanced games is one of the most hated developers (probably no.2 after Micronics). Yes, most of Tiertex developed games added SNES music to their games. I know, I'm being terribly nitpicky, but one game that's not a good example of an SGB compatible GBC game is Wario Land II. This is because it was originally a GB/SGB enhanced game and was re-released as a GBC game which appears to have two separate versions of the game in the ROM. Conker Pocket Tales seems to be the same. Tetris DX is a better example because it seems to run the same code in all systems. There are other games which pretty much do on the GBC the same (or similar) to what it was done in the SGB and try to replicate that, as best as they could, on the SGB. Most GBC games, though, either didn't add SGB colors or had a permanent monochrome SGB palette. It's very disappointing to try compatible GBC games on the SGB since they dropped the support almost overnight with the GBC. R-Type DX was one of the launch titles and features 0 SGB enhancements despite barely having CGB enhancements.
You're not being nitpicky, what you say is valid. I acknowledge that the way I worded it in the intro could be a bit misleading and you're correct to point it out. At around 9:54 in the video, I do clarify that it's the unit itself, and not the games, that detects the matchup and sets up the default colour palette for those older games.
Not sure how good a business decision it was, but I loved my Super Gameboy. Didn't need a Gameboy and Gameboy games were an easier sell to my parents at random dept store visits.
I would say in hind sight it was a very good decision. Proof is in the pudding too cuz they replicated this a few years later on the n64 and GameCube and finally decided you didn’t need separate hardware for home gaming vs portable gaming and gave us the Switch.
@arsenicjones9125 Well, the N64 had no official equivalent, which actually supports what I was trying to get at. GameCube games were priced much closer to GBA games compared to their cartridge based predecessors. Also, them streamlining their line down to one product supports what I was saying as well.
There's a number of technical details missing that I would have loved to hear about. How are the Game Boy graphics sent to and displayed by the SNES? How is tear-free graphics output achieved (I doubt the refresh rate of the Game Boy's LCD is the same as for CRTs)?
Glad you covered this as virtual nobody has, awesome video. Shame the palette shifting ability wasn't better like up to NES level but pretty hard to plan for such things after the fact. I got a SGB late so pretty much brand new to me much like the SNES, but did have some borrowed hours of time on the first GB bitd. Kind of disappointed about the clock speed difference in the SGB since it sounds like it was totally preventable and not too much cost difference.
I still own a PAL SuperGameboy and unsurprisingly my favroite game on it was Pokemon Silver (there was fewer color than with the gameboy color of course but it was as good as Pokemon Yellow). Nice video btw :)
That has nothing to do with the tech inside the SuperGameBoy but I think the Game Booklets that instruct you which color pallete to use in which area of a plethora of games old and new deserve a shout-out. If you were to ask me the old artworks of how the Siren Intruments in Link's Awakening are supposed to look like are better than their in-game art of the recent remake...
For some reason, I remember being able to have separate colours for background and sprites. Maybe it wasn't a custom option, maybe it was only available for special SGB games, as that Fatal Fury game you showed was definitely doing this.
Nah the SGB unfortunately didn't work like that. While the real Game Boy technically had a different palette for the sprites, window and background (even though they all used the same four shades of green), the SGB didn't work this way. As explained in the video, the entire GB image was rendered to a single SNES background layer so it couldn't differentiate between sprites and background. You'll notice that with King of Fighters 95 that's shown in the video, the characters are using the same palette as the background (and you can even see them briefly change colour when they jump in front of the health bars as that's using the per-tile trick to change the palette).
I feel like there must be a way in modern times to do an adapter like this to let people play physical NES games on a SNES. I expect the physical hardware might look like something like some of those old convertors that were used to play US and Japanese SNES games in UK systems and so on. I think that would be rather cool to have, so you could play both Game Boy and NES games directly on the SNES too.
The adapter would probably also need to do less work, as both consoles share a similar code base. SNES was built with backwards compatibility in mind, but was never used.
@@whydoIneedAchannel2024 Yeah, exactly. And there's even current hacks that let you play NES roms directly on SNES, albeit not quite perfectly for the most part yet. So there's surely some way to do this like that there.
If I'm not mistaken, I think Nintendo opted for that slow 16-bit processor because it was fully compatible with the FC one but they dropped compatibility at some point in development. I remember reading there were Taiwanese adapters that partially worked, I think they had to generate the sound to send it to the SNES.
The only thing wrong with this idea is output resolution. The SNES graphics chips are pushed to the max with Super Gameboy. It outputs at pretty much the max resolution (not including the border) for "live" 30fps. You'd have to shrink to fit most NES games in that same area. It may make some hard to play, or maybe even cause some graphical artifacts. An alternate would be to reduce the frame rate, but I'm sure a larger subset of games would be unplayable then. Project Nested got around this limitation by effectively decompiling a given NES title, modifing some instructions to match the updated SNES instruction, then repackage the whole thing into a SNES ROM. This is not something that can be done "on the fly" as every game is different. Even by doing this, it never had full compatibility due to missing mappers and expansion chips. The SNES would never have enough processing power to emulate those.
Thanks for explaining how it added extra colors for enhanced GB games. I knew about it adding custom sfx (In Donkey Kong, Pauline will actually yell "help") and Space Invaders containing a SNES game inside. But I didn't know it could replace the whole soundtrack like what Animaniacs did. Also didn't know you could do multiplayer with some games via 2 controllers. I'm really curious what the homebrew community can do with the Gameboy Player
As far as I know, all the GBP could do that a GBA couldn't was to make use of the GCN controller rumble or block the game from running by enabling regional or content locks. Most of what the homebrew community has done over the years is on the video part bypassing the official GBP software, which is quite terrible to sync the refresh rate and has very noticeable screen tearing.
The Super GameBoy was cool for so many reasons but especially the color borders and being able to play those games without needed a freaking lamp next to you
Really great what they did with 'enhancements', and really makes one wonder what could have been if budget allowed. But I can imagine it would have been a really hard sell at the business meeting -- "I want to do a SECOND soundtrack just for the SNES!" The idea was probably shot down immediately. Sad.
The Super Gameboy fitted into the space between the classic Gameboy, & the Gameboy Color. America drops the letter "u" in the English spelling of the word "Colour", however the American spelling, stuck. A new Cartridge module is out with a Bluetooth & IR link module. Bluetooth cannot work alone, the Gameboy has to boot a modified BIOS from the cartridge. The cartridge shares similar functions as an Ever drive & has its own PC app which includes a code compressor of sorts. It doesn't compress the code, its dumped, then converted, & it generates a text file that is only a few kilobytes big from the unmodified code which is 60+ kilobytes for example. When converting back to original code through the Gameboy , or the Super Gameboy, it has a loading bar screen which is peculiar. The converter module has 2 ROM chips, 1 to store all the converted ROMs, & the second being the reconverted ROM files. It has AAAA battery backup for the SRAM in order for games that require it to keep compatibility, unless you want to modify a ROM to use software save states. Enough secrets for now, I need to keep my gob shut!
I bought a Super Game Boy 2 from a comic shop in Adelaide! All I need now is a US SNES II and a 'no-mod' 3D Printed cart rack without those intrusive notches! That way, you don't compromise its resale value (especially on a one-owner console i.e. been within the same family since they got it brand new, shortly after leaving the factory!) A bit pricey but as the old saying goes; "You Get What You Paid For."
My biggest regret in visiting the US last time, was that I didn't try and find a US SNES. They look so different and I really want one for my collection, but for some reason I didn't look for one.
I still have the SGB and I installed the timing crystal mod you mentioned. I can't really tell the difference for the sound and speed but the one thing that I really wanted to fix is the frame drop every second. Basically the games run at like 61-62fps but the Snes displays 60fps. Every second there is a frame that is just skipped. In some games you can't see it much. In other games it's horrible once you notice it. The timing crystal fixes that.
7:40 To be clear, the SGB is just tapping into the clock timing of 21MHz and dividing it for it's own timing. It's not underclocking the SNES. I hope...
Good call, it sure does. So that makes two games :) EDIT: Another commenter mentioned Pocahontas also does it, so that makes three games. I wonder if there are any more.
How did the image get copied to VRAM in time whereas a game like Star Fox couldn't? Was it due to the images being 2-bit and smaller than the Star Fox screens and thus faster to copy over to VRAM?
Star Fox needed a lot of CPU cycles to draw the tiles that made up the 3D polygons into a framebuffer. The SGB worked more like a normal game cartridge.
Super FX games are limited by the bottleneck of transferring data from cartridge RAM (where the Super FX's framebuffer is located) to PPU VRAM (where the tiles reside that the final TV picture is composed of). Traditional SNES games rarely need to change tiles in VRAM on a massive scale (e.g. only when entering a new level in the game), but Super FX games need to do this all the time due to their framebuffer nature (i.e. whenever framebuffer contents change, tiles in VRAM need to be updated accordingly).
Mario's Pie Cross, eh? 😜 (It's Pic Cross.) Anyway... I'd completely forgotten about the Space Invaders situation, and I wonder if GB Studio supports making games with SGB features...
Kinda annoying they didn't carry forward the game specific palettes and borders to future things like the Game Boy Player for Gamecube, virtual console, or Switch Online. It should be laughably easy for them. I remember even seeing some odd third party device for playstation that could do it (I think it was on My Life In Gaming's channel).
I recently started moderating for a few Gameboy titles and I let people play on the Super Gameboy, but I do convert their times, as if they played on SGB2, GB Player, etc.
Well explained, but i wish you talked about the object mode of the supergameboy because it was probably never used at all, am mean if even mario’s picross doesn’t use it, how abondened is that. I do own the supergameboy and it’s a cool device on paper but i got mixed feelings about it. I wish i could colorized sprites saperately from backgroubds because that would,ve been cool. The gameboycolor can just do that. Now if we could combine the best of both worlds into a supergameboy 3, that would be great😆
well we all theought that mario picross used it but no because as you have said in your video, that title logo just turned out to be a snes background and not a sprite. What a letdown and it is beyond me why on eart nintendo did this. They could,ve used a sprite instead. I don’t know why they used a background instead, probably for more colors? Otherwise it wouldn,ve make any sense other then being a gimmick🥲🥲 Well am curious what honebrewers could pull off with the supergameboy including using obj mode or certain color tricks. Or even better, how about hacking existing sgb games by replacing those sprites with snes sprites of it to make them look more colorful. Just imagine those donkeykong land games getting such treatment. Or even better turn them into full 16bit versions of it😁😁 @@WhitePointerGaming
If you used the SNES object mode feature, your new sprite tiles will need to fit in the same video memory that's also being used for border graphics. Maybe if your character has few enough unique graphics that would fit within that video memory, it could work. You also lose the bottom 8 scanlines of the screen. (Did the SGB allow you change the border for games if they installed custom borders? I honestly don't know. If you could change the border, that would overwrite the graphics that the sprites would use, and the feature wouldn't work.)
I don't know where you got this "master clocks" from, but its CPU clock cycles. A master clock, in this context, would be 1 clock cycle of the main clock circuit, and provides the assumption there is some secondary clock circuit... which there isn't unless you have something like the SGB plugged in... which you don't have in the original description, until the end where you mention the SGB clock rate, and that's the only point in your explanation where using "master" clocks would be valid
I've heard the term "master clock" used to refer to situations where you have one faster clock which is not used directly by the CPU, then a clock divider to drive the CPU's actual clock speed. The master clock is generally going to be a multiple of the NTSC Color Subcarrier (3.57945MHz). For instance, NES has a master clock speed of 21.477MHz, but the clock is divided by 12 to have the CPU run at 1.79MHz. NES needs the faster master clock because it's used by the PPU to generate the composite video signal. PPU also divides the master clock speed by 8 for its memory accesses.
I wish I knew about the Super Game Boy as a kid. I would have saved myself a buttload of Money from batteries. Also, I wouldn't have had to fight with my brothers to sit right next to a lamp light to play at night.
Nintendo have released numerous consoles that were inferior to the competition at this point. The DS was inferior to the PSP, the 3DS was to the Vita. The Wii was to the Xbox/Playstation and so was the Switch.
It absolutely could and I expand on it more later in the video starting at about 14:27. It couldn't play *all* GBC games, but it could play any GBC game that was backwards compatible with the original GB (which usually had black cartridges, aside from a few exceptions like the Pokemon games). Basically, any game that worked on the original GB would work on the SGB, and that included a good amount of GBC games.
Super Gameboy adding a faster processor and new graphics features is technically closer to what Switch is doing. But even that's nowhere near the same thing. And I can't think of any other portable library that was designed for two different specs depending on how you play it.
@@NinjaRunningWild The Turbo Express doesn't had a dock though. It also doesn't had any TV output and you can't even use a controller on it unlike the Nomad and the Super Game Boy 2.
At 0:39 I say that some older games detected they were running on the SGB to display in a limited colour palette, but this wording could be misleading. It's not the games that detected the matchup, but the SGB unit itself, as it could recognise some older Nintendo-made games. Later in the video, at about 9:54, I clarify that this is what is actually going on (Metroid 2, Super Mario Land and Tetris all did this). Thanks to @OM19_MO79 for pointing this out.
This was a pretty solid video! Wonder if you’ll cover the gameboy player in a future upload?
I was going to say something but you got it right later in the video. :)
I knew about most of the enhancements, but the new soundtrack and even a SNES game, I wasn't prepared for that.
I personally knew about the color and sound enhancements, particularly with GB Donkey Kong, and also knew about there being a whole SNES game with Space Invaders thanks to Rerez! But when I put in Animaniacs way before I saw this video, I was surprised to hear a whole new soundtrack for it, though not new sound effects which I was bummed about honestly
@@hudde814 Animaniacs absolutely has some new sound effects too. Not every sound is replaced, but some definitely are. The jump sound is one, and there's a few others like the crash sound the spotlights make when they hit the ground. Have another listen when you get the chance :)
Animaniacs also makes great use of the fixed regions for color. For example, there's a stage on a boat, on the bottom of the screen is colored blue for the water. One stage even changes the color mid way through, and that's after you jump down from a building, there is green color added to the bottom of the screen.
Fun fact : You can easily use the Super Gameboy 2 on US SNES by just snapping off the 2 prongs inside the cartridge flap area. That's all there was to block Japanese carts from functioning on the NA SNES; 2 little plastic "blocks". You can see where these go on US carts; there's 2 slots on the back near the board.
N64 games are the same, it's just some plastic tabs blocking the cartridges from being slotted.
lol Nintendo region locking back then was just some damn plastic
@@_lun4r_ Most consoles were, SEGA Genesis/MD was a plastic tab in the cartridge preventing the power switch to be flipped.
@@_lun4r_ It wasn't really region "locking" in the case of the Super Game Boy, more just accounting for the different designs of the cartridge slots in different regions. The original Game Boy was not region locked, and neither was the Super Game Boy - both could play games from any region. The SGB's internal hardware was identical in Japan, NTSC and PAL, the only difference was the shape of the device to fit the cartridge slot.
Fun fact:
Super Game Boy wasn’t a Game Boy emulator in 1994 because there was no such thing until Marat Fayzullin released “Virtual Game Boy.” It blew my mind in 1996 but, unfortunately, it wasn’t free.
No mention of mouse support for the custom border? SGB definitely supported the SNES mouse! Also, being able to write on the screen can actually help… like a reticle for aiming, a jump point, or mark things you already checked.
It also supports the SNES multi-tap for 4-player Bomberman GB/Wario Blast and there’s a Super Game Boy controller with extra functions like Mute and Speed toggle.
The space invaders part at 19:03 was legitimately mind-blowing. The level of effort and skill on display from the devs/artists of Animaniacs shown just before that is awesome, and that’s not even doing it justice.
I still have my Super Gameboy alongside with my Super Nintendo here. It's not been long since I played Wario Blast on it which also had a cool feature for the Super Gameboy: it enabled a 2 player mode which I still love today :)
Wario Blast! could even use the SNES Controller Multitap for 4-players! For single player I remember figuring out that you could switch from Bomberman to Wario and vice versa by reversing your password. :)
Just a small odd fact to add about the super game boy that I remember from years past is that the Super Nintendo mouse will work on the super game boy if plugged into controller port 2. You can open and close the menu by clicking both buttons at the same time and use the mouse to control the cursor in the menu.
I'm impressed with the technical details, especially at 19:03.
I never worked with this hardware, but I did program for the SNES and Gameboy Color.
Donkey Kong also benefited from improved sound effects with the Super Game Boy. When Pauline cries, you could actually kind of make out that she cries -"Mario! Mario!"- "Help! Help!" (been a while, it actually sounds like she's meowing).
She says “help”.
It also uses the SNES sound chip for the credits music.
@@raymondtwiner1283A Bug's Life used it as well for the entire soundtrack, iirc.
Pauline was suppose to say Help! Help! in the arcade game but, the audio came out garbled. It sounded like she was saying kelp! kelp! The Rom still contains the Sound clips. She also was suppose to say nice! when Mario jumped over a barrel. They abandoned the idea for her saying help! help! until the remake of DK 94.
What a nice surprise to have a nice video on this! I have seen the MVG one, but that was much less technical than I would have preferred.
I remember my brother picking up a second hand SGB from somewhere, quite possibly a Cash Converters, and I spent hours trying out all the games I had. I've still got the booklet that came with it that has lots of colour codes and ideas for things (e.g. drawing on the screen to remember where you needed to go in Zelda: Link's Awakening, and covering up the Next box in Tetris).
I still remember coming home from the city (we were staying the night in a hotel somewhere, and so we weren't able to play it immediately), plugging it in and firing up a game and having a great time seeing my favourite Game Boy games on the big(-ish) screen.
Now I've got a boxed SGB and want to add a SGB2 to my collection. I rarely use it, because I've got a fancy modern GBA with a backlit screen, but it's cool having one in my collection.
Cash Converters, do I detect another Aussie in the comments? :)
@@WhitePointerGaming hell yeah! Melbourne 🤘🤘
Always nice to find another Aussie :)
I remember as a kid when I heard about the Super Gameboy that's when it dawned on me, "How come Sega never made something like this and call it the Gear Base Converter?" You had the Power Base converter for Genesis and the Master Gear for Game Gear to play Master System games but not in reverse. Now that I'm older, I understand it wouldn't be a simple conversion because both the Master System and Genesis have tiny color palettes compared to Game Gear's 12-Bit or 4,096 colors. Even if Sega took a minimal hybrid approach by adding the Game Gear's VDP with extended color ram to the Game Gear converter cartridge while turning the Z80 from slave to master and pass-through the video output from the cartridge to the TV that would have easily boosted the cost of the kit and cartridge beyond $100 USD I'd imagine. Because of the Gameboy's modest hardware, Nintendo could pull it off and beat Sega to the punch but went above and beyond with it's customization features.
Not to mention, the Game Boy was 5 years old at this point, so it was cheap enough to be put into a cartridge and still be seen as a steal. Remember, this was a time where a whole game cartridge could cost $100, so getting a whole system for $60 was quite a value. (And thems 1990's dollars, nearly twice the number in today's money)
There is such a cartridge adaptor for the Retron 5, which allows you to plug games for Game Gear, Master System, or Sega Card into the Genesis slot on the Retron 5.
I guess Sega was more worried on releasing 4 different 32-bit systems than caring about the little success they managed to had.
Although, when you think about it, maybe the Genesis wasn't able to output external video or enhance its graphics through the cart port or expansion connector. After all, the 32X needs the Genesis video output to be connected to the unit so it can output a composite of both.
@@SalvadorButtersworthIt works for the Retron 5 since it just can switch to the proper mode in emulation after detecting the game. If you put that adapter in a Genesis, these are the results:
My Card/Japanese Sega 8-bit: if it's a Mark III/SMS one, except for F-16, it runs as normal. If it is an SG-1000 card or cart, it will only have sound and no video. The Genesis doesn't have the video modes for SG-1000 compatibility.
Game Gear: Unlike the above, you'll get video... with the wrong palette. This is because the GG uses a modified SMS VDP which is not backwards compatible palette-wise but it is executable-wise. But that's not all, the Start button is not the Pause button. You won't be able to start a game as it expects the input from somewhere else. The Game Gear maps the Pause button to the Start button when in SMS mode but not the other way around.
The only GG games you would be able to run are Castle of Illusion and Outrun Europa, since they are actually SMS games on GG cartridges.
the super gameboy was super dope!!!
I remember replaying all my gameboy games on the big tv back in the 90s
Thankfully I bought the 2 enhancement fixes (clock speed fix, Link port addition) for my Super Gameboy.
I had a super gameboy many many years ago, and I have just repurchased it off ebay this week, I was so happy to find my old games not only still worked but for example Metroid 2 still had the save data from back when I got it at release
I bought an obscure Famicom RPG game in Japan, which still-working saves two years older than I am! Somebody put it down in September 1982 and never picked it up again
The Super GameBoy was how I played Gen 1 PokéMon. It's neat seeing other people that had similar experiences.
Me too - and my 3rd party SNES controllers with turbo buttons actually significantly helped me in getting Abra from the casino, as I just used the turbo buttons to purchase enough tokens while having dinner 😀
Link's Awakening also was a blast on the TV.
But the lacking Link Cable Port was a huge flaw when it came to Pokemon - no trading - no battling without borrowing an actual Gameboy from someone 😒
I never had a Super Game Boy (or a SNES in general) but I always thought it was really cool. I got the Game Boy Player for GameCube but it had a lot less interesting features than the Super Game Boy.
Amazing video. I consider myself to be the type of person who has to know everything about this kinda stuff and I was delighted to learn a few new things - specifically the audio enhancements and the Animaniacs/Picross situation with the border layer covering up parts of the GB game display. Love your delivery too. Keep it up.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it :)
I've briefly explained this in a few of my videos before, but this is the first dedicated video I've seen on the subject. Pretty much everything that needed to be covered was covered, good job!
Glad you mentioned the pitch change where games sounded higher pitched. A lot of people don't even notice, and there was an emulator years back, Snes9X 1.51 that had lower pitched sound, but nobody addressed this. Only when I found a TASing version for that version that had the correct pitch did I replace the INI file from original 1.51. Most people had no idea
Overall great video! Only thing I wish you would have touched more on the technical details like how the game detected it was on the SGB or how it controlled the border graphics and palette.
Yep, and how it passed SNES code to the SNES to be executed, for instance to play music through the SNES' sound chip
Great video, great channel. Memories of Autumn 1997 just came flooding back.
The original GB was a little before my time, and I'll be honest, I find monochrome games to be a bit depressing, but like... The Super GB Absolutely Fascinates me! There's like, a whole library of GB games released between 1994 and 1998 that have not only some colourisation, but even some extra features that you can only get by playing them on Super Nintendo! And also like, I LOVE the idea of seeing how much you can do to squeeze more colour, more detail, more sound, more everything out of a GB game on the SGB!
0:39 The other way around. The Super Game Boy, as well as the Game Boy Color, were able to assign a palette to games with specific headers, namely, all Nintendo-made games.
In the case of the SGB, it will switch to one of the preset palettes instead of palette 1-A.
In the case of the GBC, it had distinct palettes programmed for each, some being egregiously terrible, such as the three original Pokémon, have the grays changed to its namesake color.
Yeah, I elaborate and clarify on it more later in the video (around 9:54).
@@WhitePointerGaming Not quite, though. Maybe I'm just nitpicking but you said: "Metroid 2: Return of Samus *did* this", so you still imply the game did it when it's the SGB what does it. Also, you say, "some games", when you can actually narrow it down to all pre-SGB Nintendo-made games as no other type of games would trigger the feature, even those sold by Nintendo but not made by Nintendo or its second parties.
And it's the same for the GBC, only that time, they did include SGB enhanced games but are treated as any other B/W game, they put no effort in trying to replicate what the SGB did even though it can apply different palettes to different layers.
There is many other neat stuff about this almost forgotten and hated (because of the clock speed) hardware, which you probably left out for time constraints or for the sake of the flow and length of video.
There are many games that have multiple borders, but another game that also features as many borders, if not more, than SFII, for every stage is (arggh!, I hate this localization name) Tetris Attack.
Although SFX could be software defined, like the music, most of them seem to be part of the ROM in the SGB since the sounds were reused in games across many companies. Takara actually made use of plenty of them for their fighting games and they even allow you to have a sound test of all of them.
The extra music was seldomly used, but the funny part about it is that the company which did most of the SGB soundtrack enhanced games is one of the most hated developers (probably no.2 after Micronics). Yes, most of Tiertex developed games added SNES music to their games.
I know, I'm being terribly nitpicky, but one game that's not a good example of an SGB compatible GBC game is Wario Land II. This is because it was originally a GB/SGB enhanced game and was re-released as a GBC game which appears to have two separate versions of the game in the ROM. Conker Pocket Tales seems to be the same.
Tetris DX is a better example because it seems to run the same code in all systems. There are other games which pretty much do on the GBC the same (or similar) to what it was done in the SGB and try to replicate that, as best as they could, on the SGB.
Most GBC games, though, either didn't add SGB colors or had a permanent monochrome SGB palette. It's very disappointing to try compatible GBC games on the SGB since they dropped the support almost overnight with the GBC. R-Type DX was one of the launch titles and features 0 SGB enhancements despite barely having CGB enhancements.
You're not being nitpicky, what you say is valid. I acknowledge that the way I worded it in the intro could be a bit misleading and you're correct to point it out. At around 9:54 in the video, I do clarify that it's the unit itself, and not the games, that detects the matchup and sets up the default colour palette for those older games.
Not sure how good a business decision it was, but I loved my Super Gameboy. Didn't need a Gameboy and Gameboy games were an easier sell to my parents at random dept store visits.
I would say in hind sight it was a very good decision. Proof is in the pudding too cuz they replicated this a few years later on the n64 and GameCube and finally decided you didn’t need separate hardware for home gaming vs portable gaming and gave us the Switch.
@arsenicjones9125 Well, the N64 had no official equivalent, which actually supports what I was trying to get at. GameCube games were priced much closer to GBA games compared to their cartridge based predecessors. Also, them streamlining their line down to one product supports what I was saying as well.
Nice content and voice! Keep em coming!
There's a number of technical details missing that I would have loved to hear about. How are the Game Boy graphics sent to and displayed by the SNES? How is tear-free graphics output achieved (I doubt the refresh rate of the Game Boy's LCD is the same as for CRTs)?
Glad you covered this as virtual nobody has, awesome video.
Shame the palette shifting ability wasn't better like up to NES level but pretty hard to plan for such things after the fact. I got a SGB late so pretty much brand new to me much like the SNES, but did have some borrowed hours of time on the first GB bitd.
Kind of disappointed about the clock speed difference in the SGB since it sounds like it was totally preventable and not too much cost difference.
Heck yeah one of my favorite channels, always good to see a new vid
I still own a PAL SuperGameboy and unsurprisingly my favroite game on it was Pokemon Silver (there was fewer color than with the gameboy color of course but it was as good as Pokemon Yellow).
Nice video btw :)
I still have my super Gameboy for snes after all these years and my snes
That has nothing to do with the tech inside the SuperGameBoy but I think the Game Booklets that instruct you which color pallete to use in which area of a plethora of games old and new deserve a shout-out.
If you were to ask me the old artworks of how the Siren Intruments in Link's Awakening are supposed to look like are better than their in-game art of the recent remake...
I would love to see a list of all enhanced gameboy games that did more than just add color, there's a lot more to be addressed.
With a renaissance in people making new gameboy games, I hope some utilize more of the super game boy features.
For some reason, I remember being able to have separate colours for background and sprites. Maybe it wasn't a custom option, maybe it was only available for special SGB games, as that Fatal Fury game you showed was definitely doing this.
Nah the SGB unfortunately didn't work like that. While the real Game Boy technically had a different palette for the sprites, window and background (even though they all used the same four shades of green), the SGB didn't work this way.
As explained in the video, the entire GB image was rendered to a single SNES background layer so it couldn't differentiate between sprites and background.
You'll notice that with King of Fighters 95 that's shown in the video, the characters are using the same palette as the background (and you can even see them briefly change colour when they jump in front of the health bars as that's using the per-tile trick to change the palette).
Game boy color was able to do what you are describing, but only with certain color palettes
@@WhitePointerGaming Have to say it's the first time I've seen colour clash on something that wasn't a Spectrum.
I feel like there must be a way in modern times to do an adapter like this to let people play physical NES games on a SNES. I expect the physical hardware might look like something like some of those old convertors that were used to play US and Japanese SNES games in UK systems and so on. I think that would be rather cool to have, so you could play both Game Boy and NES games directly on the SNES too.
The adapter would probably also need to do less work, as both consoles share a similar code base. SNES was built with backwards compatibility in mind, but was never used.
@@whydoIneedAchannel2024 Yeah, exactly. And there's even current hacks that let you play NES roms directly on SNES, albeit not quite perfectly for the most part yet. So there's surely some way to do this like that there.
If I'm not mistaken, I think Nintendo opted for that slow 16-bit processor because it was fully compatible with the FC one but they dropped compatibility at some point in development.
I remember reading there were Taiwanese adapters that partially worked, I think they had to generate the sound to send it to the SNES.
@OM19_MO79 you are probably talking about the super Tristar 8.
The only thing wrong with this idea is output resolution. The SNES graphics chips are pushed to the max with Super Gameboy. It outputs at pretty much the max resolution (not including the border) for "live" 30fps. You'd have to shrink to fit most NES games in that same area. It may make some hard to play, or maybe even cause some graphical artifacts. An alternate would be to reduce the frame rate, but I'm sure a larger subset of games would be unplayable then.
Project Nested got around this limitation by effectively decompiling a given NES title, modifing some instructions to match the updated SNES instruction, then repackage the whole thing into a SNES ROM. This is not something that can be done "on the fly" as every game is different. Even by doing this, it never had full compatibility due to missing mappers and expansion chips. The SNES would never have enough processing power to emulate those.
Thanks for explaining how it added extra colors for enhanced GB games. I knew about it adding custom sfx (In Donkey Kong, Pauline will actually yell "help") and Space Invaders containing a SNES game inside.
But I didn't know it could replace the whole soundtrack like what Animaniacs did. Also didn't know you could do multiplayer with some games via 2 controllers.
I'm really curious what the homebrew community can do with the Gameboy Player
As far as I know, all the GBP could do that a GBA couldn't was to make use of the GCN controller rumble or block the game from running by enabling regional or content locks. Most of what the homebrew community has done over the years is on the video part bypassing the official GBP software, which is quite terrible to sync the refresh rate and has very noticeable screen tearing.
Damn in 25 years it has never dawned on me that Pokémon Pinball works on Super Game Boy
Cool. I love my Game Boy Player for my Game Cube.
The Super GameBoy was cool for so many reasons but especially the color borders and being able to play those games without needed a freaking lamp next to you
I just LOVED ❤ this period in videogame history!! 😁
Very informative! I need to play some Animaniacs on my SGB now :)
Really great what they did with 'enhancements', and really makes one wonder what could have been if budget allowed. But I can imagine it would have been a really hard sell at the business meeting -- "I want to do a SECOND soundtrack just for the SNES!" The idea was probably shot down immediately. Sad.
The Super Gameboy fitted into the space between the classic Gameboy, & the Gameboy Color.
America drops the letter "u" in the English spelling of the word "Colour", however the American spelling, stuck.
A new Cartridge module is out with a Bluetooth & IR link module.
Bluetooth cannot work alone, the Gameboy has to boot a modified BIOS from the cartridge.
The cartridge shares similar functions as an Ever drive & has its own PC app which includes a code compressor of sorts. It doesn't compress the code, its dumped, then converted, & it generates a text file that is only a few kilobytes big from the unmodified code which is 60+ kilobytes for example. When converting back to original code through the Gameboy , or the Super Gameboy, it has a loading bar screen which is peculiar. The converter module has 2 ROM chips, 1 to store all the converted ROMs, & the second being the reconverted ROM files.
It has AAAA battery backup for the SRAM in order for games that require it to keep compatibility, unless you want to modify a ROM to use software save states.
Enough secrets for now, I need to keep my gob shut!
I bought a Super Game Boy 2 from a comic shop in Adelaide! All I need now is a US SNES II and a 'no-mod' 3D Printed cart rack without those intrusive notches!
That way, you don't compromise its resale value (especially on a one-owner console i.e. been within the same family since they got it brand new, shortly after leaving the factory!)
A bit pricey but as the old saying goes; "You Get What You Paid For."
My biggest regret in visiting the US last time, was that I didn't try and find a US SNES. They look so different and I really want one for my collection, but for some reason I didn't look for one.
Always nice to see another Aussie in the comments :) Thanks for the reply!
*I got both and Space Invaders! I love it* ❤
Despite having the gameboy player disc, these are exactly the reason to keep the super gameboy around.
Awesome work keep it up
I still have the SGB and I installed the timing crystal mod you mentioned. I can't really tell the difference for the sound and speed but the one thing that I really wanted to fix is the frame drop every second. Basically the games run at like 61-62fps but the Snes displays 60fps. Every second there is a frame that is just skipped. In some games you can't see it much. In other games it's horrible once you notice it. The timing crystal fixes that.
7:40 To be clear, the SGB is just tapping into the clock timing of 21MHz and dividing it for it's own timing. It's not underclocking the SNES. I hope...
Correct, the SNES itself is unaffected, the SGB is just doing it to set its own CPU speed.
A Bug's Life also replaced all of its music on Super Game Boy, FYI.
Good call, it sure does. So that makes two games :)
EDIT: Another commenter mentioned Pocahontas also does it, so that makes three games. I wonder if there are any more.
Dude, now you GOTTA cover the super gameboy 2 and find out even more secrets PLEASE 🙏🙏🙏🙏
nice. thanks.
I wish they would add the Super Game Boy features to Game Boy NSO...
After burning through hundreds of batteries and suffering eye cancer this came in very handy.
So technically, with the gameboy player, you could make the worlds lamest snes flashcart
Were there any exclusive Super GameBoy titles?
No... not unless you count the version of Space Invaders I talk about in the video.
@WhitePointerGaming Ok, but I guess that makes sense as it was not really a console, just an add on. Thank you for the reply.
I only ever played Gen 1 Pokémon games on a SGB. :)
So this is basically a prototype for the future Nintendo Switch
How did the image get copied to VRAM in time whereas a game like Star Fox couldn't? Was it due to the images being 2-bit and smaller than the Star Fox screens and thus faster to copy over to VRAM?
Star Fox needed a lot of CPU cycles to draw the tiles that made up the 3D polygons into a framebuffer. The SGB worked more like a normal game cartridge.
@ But Star Fox did the rendering on cartridge just like the Super Game Boy 🤔
Super FX games are limited by the bottleneck of transferring data from cartridge RAM (where the Super FX's framebuffer is located) to PPU VRAM (where the tiles reside that the final TV picture is composed of). Traditional SNES games rarely need to change tiles in VRAM on a massive scale (e.g. only when entering a new level in the game), but Super FX games need to do this all the time due to their framebuffer nature (i.e. whenever framebuffer contents change, tiles in VRAM need to be updated accordingly).
Mario's Pie Cross, eh? 😜
(It's Pic Cross.)
Anyway... I'd completely forgotten about the Space Invaders situation, and I wonder if GB Studio supports making games with SGB features...
I play vs games with two TVs using the Super Game Boy 2 and the GC Game Boy Player.
Kinda annoying they didn't carry forward the game specific palettes and borders to future things like the Game Boy Player for Gamecube, virtual console, or Switch Online. It should be laughably easy for them. I remember even seeing some odd third party device for playstation that could do it (I think it was on My Life In Gaming's channel).
Did Pocahontas not replace all the music as well?
Yeah, seems like it did. Another commenter also mentioned A Bug's Life did it as well. So that makes three games. I wonder if there's more.
@WhitePointerGaming Pocahontas was the only one I knew, so I learned something new from this video.
I recently started moderating for a few Gameboy titles and I let people play on the Super Gameboy, but I do convert their times, as if they played on SGB2, GB Player, etc.
Could Nintendo Switch Online use the same technology from the Super Game Boy for their Game Boy titles if they wanted to?
I don't see why not, and it's kinda annoying that they don't at least provide it as an option.
i knew space invaders was gonna appear in this video
You didn't mention Hori SGB controller.
I've got 4 Super Gameboys. Pal, US, Japanese and a SGB 2
It a shame the clone they released some time ago wasn't up to the quality of HORI. It disables the button mapping but adds other functionalities.
Well explained, but i wish you talked about the object mode of the supergameboy because it was probably never used at all, am mean if even mario’s picross doesn’t use it, how abondened is that.
I do own the supergameboy and it’s a cool device on paper but i got mixed feelings about it.
I wish i could colorized sprites saperately from backgroubds because that would,ve been cool.
The gameboycolor can just do that.
Now if we could combine the best of both worlds into a supergameboy 3, that would be great😆
Kinda hard to talk about it when no games used it :P
well we all theought that mario picross used it but no because as you have said in your video, that title logo just turned out to be a snes background and not a sprite. What a letdown and it is beyond me why on eart nintendo did this.
They could,ve used a sprite instead.
I don’t know why they used a background instead, probably for more colors? Otherwise it wouldn,ve make any sense other then being a gimmick🥲🥲
Well am curious what honebrewers could pull off with the supergameboy including using obj mode or certain color tricks.
Or even better, how about hacking existing sgb games by replacing those sprites with snes sprites of it to make them look more colorful.
Just imagine those donkeykong land games getting such treatment.
Or even better turn them into full 16bit versions of it😁😁
@@WhitePointerGaming
If you used the SNES object mode feature, your new sprite tiles will need to fit in the same video memory that's also being used for border graphics. Maybe if your character has few enough unique graphics that would fit within that video memory, it could work. You also lose the bottom 8 scanlines of the screen. (Did the SGB allow you change the border for games if they installed custom borders? I honestly don't know. If you could change the border, that would overwrite the graphics that the sprites would use, and the feature wouldn't work.)
I don't know where you got this "master clocks" from, but its CPU clock cycles. A master clock, in this context, would be 1 clock cycle of the main clock circuit, and provides the assumption there is some secondary clock circuit... which there isn't unless you have something like the SGB plugged in... which you don't have in the original description, until the end where you mention the SGB clock rate, and that's the only point in your explanation where using "master" clocks would be valid
I've heard the term "master clock" used to refer to situations where you have one faster clock which is not used directly by the CPU, then a clock divider to drive the CPU's actual clock speed. The master clock is generally going to be a multiple of the NTSC Color Subcarrier (3.57945MHz). For instance, NES has a master clock speed of 21.477MHz, but the clock is divided by 12 to have the CPU run at 1.79MHz. NES needs the faster master clock because it's used by the PPU to generate the composite video signal. PPU also divides the master clock speed by 8 for its memory accesses.
I wish I knew about the Super Game Boy as a kid. I would have saved myself a buttload of Money from batteries. Also, I wouldn't have had to fight with my brothers to sit right next to a lamp light to play at night.
New GB games should make use of super Gameboy 1 and 2.
While I agree colour can generally be spelled with a u, "Game Boy Color" should not. Thanks for understanding.
I have mine and recently imported a SGB2 only to find out that my SNES had died (can't output video) ;_;
4:35 Beatmania GB!
Nintendo have released numerous consoles that were inferior to the competition at this point. The DS was inferior to the PSP, the 3DS was to the Vita. The Wii was to the Xbox/Playstation and so was the Switch.
"If it was reading the controllers".
So the "fastest" games are the ones that don't use controllers?
0:27 It COULD NOT play Game Boy Color games
It absolutely could and I expand on it more later in the video starting at about 14:27. It couldn't play *all* GBC games, but it could play any GBC game that was backwards compatible with the original GB (which usually had black cartridges, aside from a few exceptions like the Pokemon games). Basically, any game that worked on the original GB would work on the SGB, and that included a good amount of GBC games.
It could play the ones that were backwards compatible like Zelda DX
Quit smoking.
Never smoked in my life, never intend to. That's just my natural voice.
This and the SEGA Nomad were the original Switches.
That's an interesting way to look at it :)
You mean the Turbo Express. That's a more accurate comparison.
Super Gameboy adding a faster processor and new graphics features is technically closer to what Switch is doing.
But even that's nowhere near the same thing. And I can't think of any other portable library that was designed for two different specs depending on how you play it.
@@NinjaRunningWild The Turbo Express doesn't had a dock though. It also doesn't had any TV output and you can't even use a controller on it unlike the Nomad and the Super Game Boy 2.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Yeah, but the Super GameBoy was Nintendo's first attempt at games being both handheld and console
I always want to see an upgrade released for the super Game boy, one that can play Game boy Color and Game boy Advance, I can't say that often enough.
That would be the Game Boy Player.
The Game Boy Player did exactly this, it was an add-on for the GameCube.
Love my sgb2