| paleface [sys=SNES; cat=Hardware; reg=JPN] |
| | | A SNES cart into which you plug Game Boy carts, allowing you to play them on your TV.
I've just dumped the cart (JP version, which is a few bucks cheaper on eBay; the interface is all pictures, so no localization necessary) and am playing the ROM emulated in MESEN, so I'm not sURE, but it looks like if you were watching this on a say NTSC TV, with its slightly wider than tall pixels, the GB games would come out slightly too wide.
Super Game Boy version 1, which includes the one that came out in the States, runs GB games 2.4% faster than a Game Boy. This was corrected in a SGB version 2--but that one only came out in Japan.
Press both shoulder buttons to bring up the interface after having booted it up with a GB game in it; the GB game will keep running while the SGB interface is up; the SGB interface runs mostly in a border around the GB graphics, and is all pictograms, so they didn't have to do any localization of the game I suppose. But it does take a little figuring to work some of it out without the manual.
You can change the border graphics, although most of them are pretty lame; supposedly some later GB games made specifically with the SGB in mind came with their own specific borders!
You can change color palettes, although curiously only four colors for everything; no changing the sprite colors separately from the background. A lot of them look bizarre or washed out in something more realistic like Double Dragon II, whereas they might look great in something abstract like Tetris.
In fact this thing and its color-changing ability is now a necessity for me for Tetris. ^ _^ And I was thinking the 2.4% speed-up wouldn't be a bad little boost for most GB games...but it would only make Tetris harder so eh that's why I had to order a SGB2. : P
SGB is noisy! There's some hum and static while playing GB games in it, even in an emulator. Funky.
You can edit four-color palettes and are given a password to "save" them--or share them with others. You click on the password alphanumerics to toggle them--and this is a funky way to choose semi-random colors. Color editing is weird anyway; you start from I think 60 pre-set colors, but can make each one three shades darker or lighter. An awful lot of them are varieties of brown.
You can draw on the screen! And then play the game behind the drawing.
And there's an option to do a button toggle because eh the button arrangement is kinda weird between SNES and GB for some reason I dunno; I find I have to switch it in some games to get the buttons to come out right. |
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| | | | The Mesen emulator has a cool option that lets you remove the SGB's border from the display, so the GB game you're running in it displays full screen. |
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| | | | I suppose SGB doesn't let you change sprite colors separately from the background because probably lots of games used sprite/bg mixing tricks to pull off certain effects and changing them separately could mess with the intended visual design of the game. |
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