Super Game Boy

The Super Game Boy (スーパーゲームボーイ, Sūpā Gēmu Bōi^?) is a 16-bit adapter cartridge for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (known as the Super Famicom in Japan). It was the first Game Boy-based add-on to a Nintendo console. The Super Game Boy allows game cartridges designed for use on the Game Boy to be played on a TV display using the Super NES controllers. When it was released in June 1994, the Super Game Boy sold for $59.99 in the United States. In the United Kingdom, it retailed for £49.99. It is the precursor to the Game Boy Player on the Nintendo GameCube, which functions in a similar manner.

The Super Game Boy is compatible with the original monochrome Game Boy cartridges, Game Boy Camera, and the black Game Boy Color cartridges although it would display the latter in their monochrome compatibility mode. The unit could map the four shades of green to various colors on the screen. Later Game Boy games that were optimized to use the Super Game Boy had additional color information and could over-ride the ability to change the on-screen colors, and the ability to display a graphical border around the screen as well as the ability to display special background sprites on the screen, as seen in the Mario's Picross title screen. Those games would have printed a small "Super Game Boy Game Pak" logo on the box and cartridge. The adaptor could support up to 64 colors for the border, and 12 colors for the screen. Static screens could display all 10 colors.

It is also possible for Super Game Boy games to make use of the Super NES hardware for extra effects, as demonstrated in Contra: The Alien Wars, Donkey Kong, Kirby's Dream Land 2, A Bug's Life, Animaniacs and Toy Story; these games had expanded sound when used with the Super Game Boy. Wario Blast and several other titles even allowed the second Super NES controller to be used for two-player action. The title screen changed to show that these games had a two-player option, rather than a connection status. Using the Super Multitap, some games even supported four players. The original Super Game Boy does not support game link multiplayer because, according to a Nintendo spokesman, a two-player configuration would interfere with the RF signal from the television.

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