The Super Game Boy was a pretty remarkable product, given the era it was released in. It allowed you to run your Game Boy games on the SNES, adding colour to the visuals and – in some cases – unique border graphics.
There was one big issue with the device, however – the clock speed of the Super Game Boy was 2.4% faster than the original Game Boy. While most casual users probably didn't notice, hardcore Game Boy fans certainly did – and it also had the unwelcome side effect of removing the ability to connect the device to an original Game Boy via the link cable (the Super Game Boy lacked a link cable port, but even if it had one, the clock speed difference would have prevented it from working properly).
In Japan, Nintendo solved this issue by releasing the Super Game Boy 2, which fixed the clock speed issue and added a link port. However, this was never released in the West.
In more recent times, modders have hacked the Super Game Boy hardware to add these features, but there's never been a complete, all-in-one, single-board solution – until now.
Meet @BucketMouseBite's Super Game Boy Plus, an upgraded and unofficial variant of the device which comes packed with features:
- Allows for three separate clock options:
- the original "wrong" clock speed,
- the correct clock speed, or
- the correct clock speed with the ability to overclock and underclock in-game
- Incorporates the link port onto the board using a small daughter board to offset it into a perfect location on the edge of a standard SNES cartridge (if you are using an SGB2 shell, it will fit without the daughter board)
- Optionally allow you to lock the board to one specific Game Boy game instead of using the cartridge connector - save data can be transplanted to/from the cartridge via the FRAM chip
- Can be used in three different SNES shells with minimal shell trimming required:
- an original Super Game Boy shell with the cartridge connector,
- a standard 46-pin SNES shell (will require two cuts on the bottom of the shell for the extra cart edge pins), and
- a 60-pin SNES shell used for games that used enhancement chips like the SA-1 or SuperFX
On the downside, this is quite a tricky mod. It requires you to remove components from an original Super Game Boy cartridge and refit them to the new Super Game Boy Plus board. BucketMouseBite warns that people should not attempt this project without "sufficient soldering experience."
It's also a shame that original hardware has to be cannibalised to create this new cart, but alternative solutions may appear in the future.