Anniversary The Super Game Boy Is 30 Years Old

I had a original Super GB, not sure when late 90's early 2000's ish.
Kinda want to pick one up again these days.

I have a couple of the original still in the basement. I did fire it up a few years ago and wasn’t feeling it at the time. I might just dust it off as I’ve had a hankering to play Balloon Kid

@NinChocolate
Oh, go on do it.
What have you got to lose ?

I got mine a few months ago. It's a great product and shows that Nintendo love a bit of innovation. The main problem I recall at the time it was originally released was that price wise it was in line with the actual Gameboy (and I couldn't afford both!).

In hindsight given the additional features and lower cost of manufacturing game boy cartridges, this should have been pushed more as a way to deliver SNES games at a budget price (super space invaders is a good example of this where it contained the full SNES ROM on the GB cartridge).

I remember using the Outdoor border for games that did not include themed borders and I loved how most of those borders had idle animations if you kept the controller down. Cutest one being the cats who come to life and run across the screen one by one.
And ofc, being able to play Pokemon on TV was great (until Stadium came for the fast forward & connectivity benefits)

@rob7979
Don't forget that Nintendo at heart is a toy company.
Or was a toy company and that's hard to shake even now.
And toy companies love gimmicks.
( I'm a Transformers fan Hasbro loves dem gimmicks)

I do agree with you, that they should have pushed this harder a way for budget games to be released.

@KitsuneNight lol well I’m never out of the GB scene for too long, so chances good 👍

I always forget this accessory existed tbh.
Still, happy 30th anniversary.

Additionally, some of the "black cartridge" / Dual Mode GB/GBC games released from the late 90s-early 00s had Super Game Boy Enhancements. These include the not-physically-black Pokémon Gold and Silver, which have the borders. For A Bug's Life, Tiertex went as far as putting in a SNES SPC700 music soundtrack.

@Bonggon5

"fpga"?

@Mario500 Field-Programmable Gate Array - a chip that starts out "blank" and can be programmed (by the device manufacturer) to function with their desired exact logic (if programmed accurately) of multiple vintage chips.

An FPGA allows hardware-based emulation of older consoles and computers, that is, it's not what is typically thought of as "emulation" (that would be software-based emulation, which runs on a CPU usually of a different instruction set architecture to the system being emulated).

There are several devices in the retro gaming scene that use an FPGA - for a start, Analogue's systems such as the NT series (FC/NES), Super NT (SFC/SNES), Mega SG (Mega Drive/Genesis), Duo (PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16) and their handheld Pocket (Game Boy/Color/Advance, but can also run other systems' games with its openFPGA feature). There's also the MiSTer, which is intended to run multiple systems' games from the start.

Also, Krikzz' Mega Everdrive Pro and TerraOnion's MegaSD flash carts for the Mega Drive/Genesis use a Mega CD/Sega CD core running on their FPGA (in conjunction with the real hardware Mega Drive/Genesis) to run Mega CD/Sega CD games without a physical Mega CD/Sega CD add-on present.

A hardware-based-emulated system on an FPGA device is known as a "core", therefore to run Super Game Boy games on an FPGA device, a Super Game Boy core that one or more people have written is required.

Hope this helps!

Somewhat related ROMhack:
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6449/

This free online tool that lets you rather easily add your own created borders to Super Game Boy games is rather awesome:

https://x.com/marc_robledo/status/1756017924286845403

Make it even more fun replaying these games in modern times.

Here are a couple of example images people have created with it:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJs6GpeXEAAIacp?format=png&name=small

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKfaaR8XIAAxlq0?format=png&name=medium

I've beaten Super Mario Land 1 for the first time on a japanese SGB, using a Super Famicom, decades ago.

I also remember calling a local shop after seeing an ad that stated it was a "cartridge that allows you to play more than 450 GameBoy games on your SNES", genuinely convinced that it shipped with all these games, like a multi-cart. 😛

I had skipped the SNES until gifted one, but had upgraded my Gamecube completely with the high speed modem and GBA Player. I stupidly sold it back when I got a Wii around 2014 as the Wii could play the Gamecube games. Back when I had the setup though, the Gamecube was my ultimate Zelda box. I think I was only missing a couple of the Game Boy games to have a complete set, even having the Collectors disc.