Super Game Boy
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The Super Game Boy is an adaptor cartridge for the Nintendo Super Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as the Super Famicom in Japan. The Super Game Boy allows one to play game cartridges designed for use on the Game Boy on a TV display using the SNES/Super Famicom controllers. In 1994 the Super Game Boy sold for under $60.
The Super Game Boy would only run cartridges that are compatible with the original monochrome Game Boy. The unit could map the four shades of grey to various colors on the TV. Later Game Boy games had additional color information and background borders. The adaptor could support up to 256 colors in static screens (i.e the title screen) and 12 colors in the normal game.
It was also possible for Super Game Boy games to make use of the SNES hardware for extra effects. For example, Asteroids/Missile Command and Donkey Kong all had expanded sound when used with the Super Game Boy. In the most extreme case, Space Invaders allowed players to play a full 16-bit version of the game that took over the entire screen.
The link port needed to connect two Game Boys together was not present on the Super Game Boy, although it was added to the Super Game Boy 2, which was sold in Japan and through mail-order in the US. Beside the link port the Super Game Boy 2 also added a green game link LED and a red power LED indicator.
The Super Game Boy was a later version of Intelligent Systems' Wide Boy (which connected to the original NES) favored by software developers and testers since they could use a larger television screen while working, instead of the small Game Boy screen. One difference between the Wide Boy and the Super Game Boy is that the former did not use any part of the NES other than the video memory. Even the controller, a single NES controller, was hardwired directly into the Wide Boy. The Wide Boy would continue running even if the reset button were held down on the NES. The Game Boy had twice as many tiles as could fit in the NES's video memory, so the Wide Boy had to refresh the NES's video memory halfway down the screen.
A Wide Boy 64 AGB was subsequently released which allowed Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games to be played on the Nintendo 64. It cost $1400 and, like the Wide Boy, was only available to developers and the gaming press[1] (http://www.zyx.com/chrisc/wideboy64.html).
The Super Game Boy was followed by the Transfer Pak for the Nintendo 64, which allowed one to play Game Boy Color Pokémon titles in Pokémon Stadium in a Super Game Boy fashion. No version of the Super Game Boy is capable of running games that are designed for the Game Boy Color, although they will run dual mode cartidges in Game Boy mode. The only official way to run Color Game Boy cartridges on a TV set is using the Game Boy Player on the Nintendo GameCube.
Sega never made a Game Gear to Genesis/Megadrive converter, although one was supposedly in the works.
Trivia
The Super Game Boy actually consists of the same hardware as the Game Boy; inside the cartridge a separate CPU processed the games while the SNES only provided means for user-input, output of graphics to the screen and the additional coloring.
See also
- List of Super Game Boy games - a list of Game Boy games which make use of the enhancements the Super Game Boy has to offer.
External links
- The Super Game Boy Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/snes/peripherals/sgbfaq.txt)fr:Super Game Boy