My Experience
When I first added a SNES to my collection back in 2020 the Super Game Boy was one of the main reasons. The ability to play Game Boy games to my TV was something I couldn’t resist. Mainly playing Pokemon on a home tv as well as the Super Game Boy enhanced games that really intrigued me as a new angle to play some of my favourite classics with new features/functions.
About
The Super Game Boy was a SNES peripheral released in June 1994. It supported the original Game Boy cartridges, the Game Boy Camera and backwards compatable Game Boy Color cartridges. This device mapped the four shades of green to various colours on screen, turning original Game Boy games into colour.
Additionally later developed games that were optimized for the Super Game Boy were able to override the displayed colours, add additional borders and additional sprites for example. These games had a small “Super Game Boy Game Pak” logo on the boxes and cart to highlight this.
It is also possible for Super Game Boy games to make use of the SNES hardware for additional effects such as; expanded sound effects, seperate verisons of the game (Space Invaders includes a SNES version of the games as well as a colour version of the Game Boy game) and mutliplayer via the controller ports and even multi-tap allowing some games to support four players.
Hardware
The Super Game Boy is an actual copy of the original Game Boy hardware that processes the game while the SNES provides user-inputs, output to the display and the additional features (colouring).
The original Super Game Boy is known to play the game program and its audio 2.4% faster than other Game Boy hardware. This is due to the use of the SNES’s clock speed divided by 5, which ends up being 4.295 MHz instead of 4.194 MHz.
While not released globally a Super Game Boy 2 was released in Japan in 1998, this adds a number of new features; a link-port for two-player mode via link cable, a green game link LED and a red power LED, additional default borders (these can be replaced with the originals via a code). However this version did nothing to address the difference in the speed of the device still running at 2.4% faster.
Blurb
Super Game Boy.
BRING GAME BOY GAMES TO THE BIG SCREEN.
Bring the excitement of Game Boy games to the big screen, in brilliant colour, with Super Game Boy. Crank Game Boy action up to the max with big screen graphics, big screen colour and big screen sound. Simply slot ANY Game Boy pak into the Super Game Boy cartridge and insert this into your Super NES.
Game Boy games will appear clearer, brighter and even more action-packed; for more people to see and even more gameplay fun. You can change background colours or even create your own. Super NES controllers can be used as usual, for maximum play control. Lock into the hugh library of Game Boy games – with Super Game Boy.
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