Random: Game Boy Compatibility Warning Screens Are The Best

A selection of some classics? Without Pokémon Crystal Version as an example? 😱

@jswhitfield8
Was just about to say that

At a time when peoples weren't buthurt all the time for not paying attention to the warning properly.

I never got a game boy color. I had the light and magnifying screen and metroid 2, technobowl, and countless others. I kept it and used it until the ds came out. Now I have a 3ds that has been upgraded since then so I have well over 150 cart and download games. I can't eee myself getting rid of that. But nx is coming...

I never knew that !

Wait. Weren't the black GBC carts the ones compatible with both, and the clear ones GBC only? Pretty sure that's how it worked in Australia at least? Could be wrong, though!

@jswhitfield8 As well as the SGB (mentioned by @RuppeClock) the locking tab was missing from the GB Pocket and GB Light as well. So there were a few opportunities for people to stick them in the wrong Game Boy.

@Chunky_Droid No you've got it right. The black carts were indeed dual mode.

@Damo Actually, the black carts were ones that were compatible with the regular Gameboy but had a special colour-mode too (I played "Legend of zelda: Link's awakening DX" just fine on my gameboy pocket), only the transparent cartridges with the bump were colour-only.

Some of those are really good. I never knew these screens existed.

What is etched on the cartridge is what it plays on. If it is a see through cart with Game Boy Color on it, then it was a GBC exclusive. If it just had Game Boy on the cart, then that cart was compatible with all Game Boys systems, regardless of cart colour.

From what I know, black carts were 100% compatible with the GB. The clear ones are the only ones that say "only for GBC"

I'm sure the addition of a static picture reduced the anger of realising your hardware is basically obsolete!

I remember the Dark Duel Stories one... though I am the most familiar with Pokémon Crystal.

For some reason, though, the Shelly Club catches the most attention from me in the gallery sample here.

@Damo Yes they were, all the black cartridges are compatible with the old Gameboy but have colour graphics when played on a GBC (The GBC also displayed the mildly-enhanced visuals of Super gameboy cartridges), Nintendo only did black carts at first (to smooth out the transition, i guess), but then the transparent bump-cartridges showed up which were marked on the cart and box to be GBC-only.

@shaneoh i thought about breaking that little plastic lock to be able to play gbc games on my old gb. I guess that's what would happen.

@Damo The Black ones we compatible with both GB and GBC, The see through carts were GBC only.

"Monster Rancher Explorer works only with CGB". CGB? Came Goy Bolor?

@Damo Your mind is definitely playing tricks on you. The black ones were compatible on both the gameboy and the gameboy color but would be in full color on a gameboy. This backward compatibility is why the black carts still have the tab on the top. meanwhile the clear ones were all the Game Boy Color only titles, thats why none of them had a tab on the top. I promise you, any black cart is going to run on a regular game boy as well, while all the clear ones will not.

Game Boy Pocket didn't have the nub that slid across, only the original Game Boy models did.

@Kutal - The product code number for Game Boy Color was CGB (Color Game Boy). Nintendo was often weird with their codes & acronyms. The GBA has AGB on its back (Advance Game Boy) and Gamecube was GCN (GameCube Nintendo).

I skipped the GameBoy and went straight to GameBoy Colour, so I missed out on these.

@duffmmann

You are correct. The black cartridges work on both Game Boy and Game Boy Color. But it is worth noting that sometimes when a save file is created on a GBC system, it may no longer work on a GB. This happened with Wario Land II. But once that save file is deleted, it will work on both again.

I never noticed this

@Damo
Anything in black, or ones that had a solid color shell (like the Pokemon games, except for Crystal) could work on both onsoles.

I even remember seeing a gray GB-only version of Wario Land II. It might have been a bootleg now that I think about it though.

Surprisingly good sprite work for something you should hopefully never see

The original Dragon's Lair for Gameboy was such an awful game I wish it would have just came up with a warning screen that said "This game shouldn't be played on Gameboy at all." I didn't even know they made another one for GBC but it wouldn't have mattered. Fool me once...

@BYTZ007
But then you'd be missing out on a pretty amazing port of the game...

@SmaMan Well shame on me anyway I guess... That looks awesome! I can't believe that was on the GBC especially when the GB version was so awful. I did really miss out on that one.

Bwaha! Who knew that a humorous screen like that lurks on my old Dark Duel Stories cartridge? I only ever had a GBC on up and never got to see it.

Overall there are five different Game Boy and GBC cartridges: the original GB cart which had no special feature like Tetris, Super Mario Land, and Final Fantasy Adventure, then there are GB cart with Super Game Boy support like Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, then we had GBC black cart which are GBC games that could also work on original GB, Super Game Boy and GBC such as Dragon Warrior I & II, Pokemon Gold and Silver, and Revelation: The Demons Slayer and finally there's the exclusive clear GBC games which can only work on GBC like Legend of Zelda: Oracles of Ages and Seasons, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Resident Evil Gaiden, and Duke Nukem. The fifth cart are those special motion and rumble cart like Kirby's Tilt and Tumble and Pokemon Pinball.

@Damo aren't the black ones the with GB compatibility and the transparent ones the GBC only carts?

While the GBC only screen itself isn't interesting, Pokemon Puzzle Challenge has a hidden mini Panel de Pon version on b/w GB by pressing A 24 times and then B 24 times at the GBC only screen.

"Both Monochrome and black-and-white consoles".

Think about that phrase for a second

checks in Oh jeez what's with that horrible warhammer ad. It throws the whole site out of what little alignment it had.

@BYTZ007 Back in that era I had a couple friends at the time who were part of the team at Digital Eclipse. I felt the same as you, screw that awful port until I found out early on it was a laserdisc conversion. To fit in a 4MB space if I recall right they took the game down to 2bit color, minimized the music, very shortened the death and resurrection cut scenes, and shortened the smithy by removing 8 moves to fit it all. The entire game otherwise is intact, stunningly so, even with a 10 map(random mostly) training mode to teach you timing as it will put up prompts.

GBC was mind blowing on the games made only for it, the charcoal/smoke transparent carts. The black games were just original GB games that had full color schemes made up for the GBC pretty much (as old games had none unless it was a few with them pre-programmed into the GBC bios like most 1st party titles like Metroid II and Kirby's Dream Land 2.)

The games made only for GBC did insane stuff. Want another mind blowing title? Try Warlocked out. It's essentially warcraft 1 with added wizards you find on the map that have a special spell to punish the other side. Somehow even with 2 buttons it works, smoothly, you can command large armies. The AI is decent, everyone talks, everything has sound effects. Both sides have like a dozen stages plus to play and it has multiplayer too.

@retro_player_22
By your logic there should be a 6th cart if you're going to call special feature (rumble/motion) a notch in the belt. Some GBC games were GBA hybrid. If you threw a game like Shantae into the GBA you got more colors on screen and a little bit added to the game. There's not a lot of them, but there are some games that do this, another would be Dragon Warrior III.

@tanookisuit Except we don't count GBA cart or cart with GBA feature here otherwise the Oracle Zelda games would be their own cart too. Both Tilt and Tumble and Pokemon Pinball are GBC cart with special feature added which the many others didn't have so they are categorized as special cart.

I don't see the difference, they're GBC carts with added GBA features. They're hybrid carts of a sort just as much as the black carts that go between both 8bit Gameboys.

Legitimately you just have a few as far as the real world (ie: Nintendo) is concerned.
GB, SGB, GBC Hybrid, and GBC Only. They don't even factor in the accessories on board (rumble, motion sensor) nor do they include the GBA detecting software boots of Shantae and DW3.

To keep splitting further is just personal taste and splitting hairs. By the way if you're going to muddy it over Pokemon Pinball be aware there are many rumble games and some of them are GBC ONLY carts too that won't work in a GB at all. So there is a class1 and class2 version of the rumble board. Pokemon Pinball works in both, Ready 2 Rumble and SW Ep1 Racing for example are GBC only.

@SmaMan
That's... way better than I thought it would be.

..whenever this would happen.. I think Donald and Q-bert said it best..

@SmaMan There were indeed two versions of Wario Land II. But since they were both released the same year (and without any explicit indication, just the cart color), most people probably didn't notice.

I remember the Pokemon Crystal GB screen, as one of my friends had an original GameBoy and really wanted to try this game out - let's say he was "a bit" dissapointed, when he found out Poke Crystal was incompatible with the good ol' GameBoy.

@tanookisuit
This is a very cool piece of information you shared with us, I like such facts!

One slight correction, though - the good ol' GBC features a bootstrap ROM, not a BIOS. (it's often mistakenly called a BIOS, but it doesn't really feature any basic in- or output operations).

I have the Game Boy Color Homebrew Chunkout. The developer posted a screen that said this game is only compatible with gameboy color. Here's a game to play while you save up to buy one...

Then it went to a little ball and paddle game Easter Egg only accesible on a gameboy classic or a Super Game Boy.

@Waninoko Fair enough and you're right it is, but as you said most see it as the other. I'm just familiar with the format as once upon another lifetime I worked in the gaming industry for a couple years right around the GBC/GBA period were changing over and then for a 4 year stint after that in media with GBA into early DS. I'm not technical in the last bit so I try and keep things even if wordy on the simple side.

@SH007ME Seems like a lost opportunity on Mission Impossible not writing, this message will self destruct in five seconds. So either you're freaked into flipping it off, or after 5 seconds the screen goes blank or something amusing.

@tanookisuit ..yea, ikr...that'd been great...lol
..& don't forget the theme song w/fuse..
duh, duh, du-du, duh, duh, du-du, duh, duh, du-du, duh, duh, du-du.
doodledoo, doodledoo, doodle doo, doo-doo .........*

@Damo You're remembering incorrectly, there were a few of the games in the clear case and no tab even at the beginning, there just weren't nearly as many exclusive GBC games at first, there was a lot more games that could be played on both hardware at first, yes.

ahh, very cool to finally comprehend this fully. I knew the details regarding certain cartridges being compatible with color, oldschool or both, but DIDN'T know there were specific screens for every game! I recall my friend snapping off the tab on his original Gameboy, and putting Super Mario Deluxe in, and getting the screen it displays. It had a few koopas and maybe coins (I was 8!), so I thought, it being Nintendo themed and all, that it was a standard screen.