Video: Remembering The Super Game Boy For SNES

I still use it! Actually still the best way to play OG Game Boy games, in my opinion.

Loved the Super Gameboy! Good times 👍🏼

It was a nice product and being able to play the complete Game Boy library on the big screen was a nice touch. Even better was the SGB enhance games which had even more bonus contents for Super NES owners to enjoy. The only two minor issues was that the clock speed on it was a tad faster than the Game Boy and there's no link cable support, both issues which were fix for the superior Japan only Super Game Boy 2.

Playing Pokemon on a Super Gameboy in the late 90s blew my freaking mind. I have one sitting in my milk crate full of SNES games.

Omg I have this I just don't have the cords for the snes

Was a big deal for me at the time, to play Game Boy games on a big screen and in colour. And the drawing you could do was awesome.

Rather than merely being a port, Donkey Kong Land was an extension of Country, so to play that in that vein was really cool.

Wario Land looked really sharp on it I remember.

@Franklin The same applies to regular Donkey Kong as well. At first it starts out the same as the arcade game but after level 4, everything change and then you go beyond the arcade levels.

The union of portable and console gaming has always been Nintendo's endgame. The Switch was just the moment where it became feasible financially and technically.

Had one for my SNES, loved it. In recent years I picked up the overseas blue version and modded my unit to accept the device

shout out to the SNK/Takara fighting games that were brilliant on Super Game Boy!

I have it but what I don't have are Game Boy games other than Kirby's Dream Land 2, Japanese Mario's Picross and a dead battery Pokémon Blue Version. I need to get more GB games in general, but sadly this year my focus (when it comes to retro gaming) is on N64 and GC.

Somewhere I read that on a technical level, the Super Game Boy is apparently a Game Boy without buttons, speakers and screen.

It got to the point that if I was at home, I played my Game Boy games on the Super Game Boy and only played on the Game Boy while traveling. My parents loved it, saving a fortune on batteries.

@HammerGalladeBro You're not wrong, the GameCube's Game Boy Player itself was basically just a GBA without buttons, speakers, batteries, and screen as well. Infact if you want you could have four GameCubes hook up to four TVs, with four Game Boy Players link together to multiplay a 4-player session of Mario Kart: Super Circuit, F-Zero GP Legends, Advance Wars, or Bomberman Tournament provided all four player each had a copy of those games. Remember that none of those games had split screen so sharing a screen (maybe with the exception of Bomberman Tournament) in multiplayer isn't possible.

I splurged all of my birthday money on a Super GB and DK in ‘94. Absolutely amazing piece of kit. My friend and I used to try and complete Marioland with the screen completely covered by the pen tool. Only ever made it to the end of the first level!

The TV ads were class too. Nintendo at their best.
https://youtu.be/TLtf7-utywc

Back in the day this was a not only revelation but a revolution. Nintendo were way ahead of the game with this.

Playing Link's Awakening on my TV screen was a blast.
Why did you use the ugly US version for the picture above, bleh!

Loved the Super gameboy and GBA player. I often wish Nintendo released the opposite for Switch, a Dock you plug the Switch into, that helps it to play games at high res, solid framerates and access to all past Nintendo console libraries.

If only Nintendo would release a controller with a small screen & 3DS/DS style cartridge bay.
It would plug into both usb ports, one for the controller inputs, the other is for the games feed.
We would call it the Super DS Pad, & it would go for &129.99 to $149.99.
I'd buy it.
Though, Scalpers would sell it for $450 to $1200.

The granddaddy of the Switch.

Ah, how times have changed.

I so would have loved a SGB back in the day. I had no idea that they even existed until the early to mid 2000s.

I missed the SNES (parents got us a NES when the SNES had just come out) but I remember thinking that this and the Super Scope were two of the most amazing inventions ever when they came out.

SuperGameboy Donkey Kong is the BEST Donkey Kong..

Still got mine, but it's the much prettier PAL version 😋

I wanted one as a kid, and I still want one. haha

I'm like Zion, I used to own one but mostly played on my portable. Had I known my Links awakening had looked that pretty on the TV, I would have hooked it up! 😂😍

@samuelvictor You reminded me... there is this treatise that speaks a lot of the capabilities of the Super Game Boy (naughty language warning):
https://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/

I never had this, but I had the gameboy player for gamecube, which was awesome. I sold it years ago, which I still regret doing to this day.

I want something like this for DS and 3DS games SO. BADLY. T_T

I never used mine as much as I thought I would. I always felt I'd rather play better SNES games than Game Boy games if I'm at home. But in hindsight, it really was cool, and a precursor to Switch all the way back in the early-90s!

@samuelvictor From what I understand, Space Invaders could only really work by loading SNES program code into the SNES RAM and then running it there. (128KB RAM, which was a lot for a cart-based console of its day)
Still doesn't explain why Space Invaders needed 512KB (pretty large for a OG GB game, especially for a Space Invaders port. The Japanese version, which was a first year game and thus released LONG before the SGB, was only 32KB.)

I do have two of the European (GBC) Konami Collection carts.
Do those not support SGB enhancement as the Japanese versions did? (did they remove SGB in favor of GBC?)
I play them on my American SGB and they run in standard, non-enhanced GB mode.

It made a lot of sense to use this when you were a kid on allowance money, batteries don't grow on trees!

its still sad that a super game boy/gba player wasn't made for ds games with the wii nor one for 3ds games with the wii u or switch.

@Specter_of-the_OLED I've heard of that, and that's something I'd like to pull off one day. Imagine playing Pac-Man Vs. with Game Boy Players (that could be a good activation exercise if you need to move a lot), but I can only imagine how messy and expensive it might be.

One day I decided I wanted a Super Gameboy while we were at the flea market. Flea markets are really damn huge in New Jersey. An elderly Indian fella running a used games stall did not have one, but he called his brother who had a store a half hour away, and that guy did have one. The elderly Indian fella told him we were heading over.

We drove over there only to find that someone else had come in and bought it, the brother of the flea market guy thought that these mystery guests were the ones on the way from his brother’s stall. So this guy called his cousin, who also had a secondhand store another half hour away, and HE had one too. A half hour and $30 later I had my SGB and went home to enjoy Link’s Awakening on a tv screen a couple decades and change early.

My biggest complaint, and I wrote it in every survey during the 3DS era, was there was no Super Gameboy options on the GB Virtual Console. I loved being able to play stuff like Donkey Kong 94, Mega Man V, and Kirby’s Dreamland 2 on my 3DS, but I hated that they were without the SGB features. Sometimes it was more than a splash of color. Some screens were beautiful, or had added sound effects, and even different levels having various color schemes made a big difference and made those excellent games even more immersive. I was a SNES kid, and when I got the Super Gameboy with the guide that gave game hints and codes for certain colors on games, I was blown away. I played Link’s Awakening like that, among other classics. My dad finally played Super Mario Land 2 and Metroid 2 with me, because he hated the original Gameboy and its tiny LCD screen. If we ever get Gameboy on Switch, I really hope they bring these options back. Or at least the Gameboy Color options. Anything. It kinda drove me nuts seeing just one SGB option of color on the Konami Collections for stuff like Castlevania Adventure. Or the Final Fantasy Legend Collection not having any options. Once you start coloring your Gameboy games yourself, you can’t go back.

I absolutely loved this thing! I only had a regular gameboy so all my gameboy color games could only be played on the super gameboy

This was one of the main reasons I didn't have a Gameboy growing up. Even though I got a GBA when that came out, if I had of known the Gameboy Player was coming for GCN, I wouldn't have gotten a GBA lol.

I missed the likes of super gameboy and gameboy player during the DS/3DS era. am happy that switch keeps both options open (outside of lite)

have fond memories of playing the likes of Golden sun through the gameboy player on gamecube.