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For those of you who don't know, the Super Game Boy is a peripheral for the Super Nintendo that allowed you to play Game Boy games on the SNES. It is shaped like an unusually tall SNES cartridge, with a GB cartridge slot on top.

I have one of these things. I used to play it quite a bit to play Pokémon using the TV. Handy little thing. The most useful function of it, for me, was to put the action on a much larger and more comfortable viewing screen. (My parents especially appreciated this.) As a secondary measure, it added color to GB games.

Even back then, I knew to ask "how would they know what colors to put on GB games made before the SGB was made?" And sure enough, old GB games default to a certain palette (I think it's the slightly-off-yellowish one, but I'm not sure), just like playing old GB games on a GBC makes them look red. But playing new(er) GB games sometimes produced an SGB palette and background.

That said, I never contemplated just how the SGB gave GB games color, and how the ones with built-in color (such as the first-generation Pokémon games) got their color.

Turns out that it involved very creative solutions to highly-constrained problems, as detailed in the following multipart essay written by Christine Love: "F*** the Super Game Boy". Pardon the language of the title; it actually is a very informative and intriguing read. She explains things like defining a large variety of palettes in order to piece together a complex, picturesque static landscape, and how designers learned to choose palettes and design sprites very, very carefuly so that they'd show up right -- for example, using only light color, mid-tone color #1, and black for the sprites, and light color, mid-tone color #1, and mid-tone color #2 for the background, thus making the foreground stand out.

I think the examples contain some lessons that people who draw sprite art for retro-style indie games could draw upon these days (seriously, some of this stuff is better-looking than the art of some indie games today). It also explains why my Pokémon game would pause for a moment when entering a new area -- that's when the palette was switching. (I was actually disappointed when I found out this didn't happen on the GB itself.) As well as why I heard this mysterious piece of SNES-quality music playing after a Donkey Kong '94 walkthrough on Youtube...(note that this feature -- playing back 16-bit music -- still hasn't been implemented in GB emulators, last I checked).

All in all, I never knew you could do so much with that thing.

Do you have an SGB? Do you have an SGB2, the SGB "sequel" that was only released in Japan? What about the similar GameCube peripheral that let you play GBA games?

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I own the Game Boy Player for the GCN. Wonderful peripheral, get one if you can.

Incidentally, I just did this past weekend.

I have yet to check whether it works, though.

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 29th June 2013 01:53)

Incidentally, I just did this past weekend.

I have yet to check whether it works, though.

It's really nice, because it's practically a game boy advance, just lacking the ability to connect with the GameCube (duh) and use some cartridges, like WarioWare: Twisted. I use it very often.

Why does it not work with those certain cartridges?

And yeah, I like the ability to play portable games on a bigger screen (though my typical approach is emulation).

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 29th June 2013 15:03

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 29th June 2013 16:02)

Why does it not work with those certain cartridges?

Some of them have built in functions. WW:T has a gyroscope or something, and other games have other built in features, making it impractical. Not many of those, though.