Talk:Super Game Boy

Untitled
I removed the comment about the Wideboy being cased in "smoked plexiglass" - for starters that link said it was opaque (i.e. solid-coloured), it could be any variety of plastic, different revisions of the Wideboy could have been cased in different materials, and honestly I don't think it's all that important - it seems out of place in such an article. --Zilog Jones 16:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deleting "The Super Game Boy was favored by software developers and testers because they could use a larger television screen while working, instead of the small Game Boy screen." Cant believe developers used the device itself, instead of a PC based environment.


 * Actually, I think you've misunderstood this, and it would probably be more correct to reinstate it. In the late 80s / early 90s, it's quite likely they would have used a combination system - the coding, of course, was done using a cross-compiler on a PC or Mac, or maybe a PC-88, MSX or X68000, but to playtest you would have had to transfer the code to a cartridge inserted in an actual gameboy (either a RAM cart with a serial cable connected to the dev machine, or burning it to an EEPROM cart) and try it on the actual hardware. I doubt there was anything even vaguely resembling an effective GB emulator on any system that early; the oldest Z80-machine emus I know of are one for the ZX80 and ZX81 on the Atari ST (early 90s) and for the Sinclair Spectrum on the PC (around 1994 or so), so even if they were modified for Gameboy emulation they would have come far too late. Plugging it into a SGB, however, even if you only had a little 12" black and white portable, would have made the testing process a lot easier on the eyes, less reliant on lighting conditions, and allowed you to spot/hear graphical/audio errors much more easily - as well as providing a more reliable connection if you were using a cable-download setup... and it wouldn't even have been particularly expensive. 31.185.235.109 (talk) 16:30, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Super Game Boy Controller
Believe it or not, there is actually a controller designed especially for the Super Game Boy. I saw a picture of it in the March 2006 issue of Tips & Tricks. Does anyone else know about this controller and where I can get a picture of it? (Plainnym 18:03, 16 June 2006 (UTC))

Picture
A picture of a game of screen would be nice (Gnevin 16:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC))

What SGB Games?
I see this on the page but it doesn't tell, is there a list of specific games that won't allow you to change the color or border?


 * Donkey Kong Land 2 for example, won't allow color scheme change. The color scheme button will be dimmed. Game & Watch Gallery 3 won't allow border change.

Controls
What are the controls to play a game on the Super Game Boy compared to the Game Boy's controls? --PJ Pete
 * DPad, Y, B, Start, and Select for the actual game; although you can change the control scheme. L+R for Super Gameboy options.  --Notmyhandle 05:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The default is B and A instead of Y and B. I find that rather silly. --Libertyernie2 18:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Save Game Issues
I dont know if this is a widespread issue, so I'm not adding a section to the article about it. But in my experience using two different SGBs, they ALWAYS erase saved games when you save, although they load them fine. I lost quite a bit of Zelda data this way. I have never gotten an SGB to save without wiping that save from the memory instead.75.7.206.9 04:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's unfourtanate :( but I've used my SGB to save on Zelda DX, so I think it's fine. Libertyernie2 16:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Strange. I've never had this happen in my years of using SGB with various saving games, so I'm not sure what happened in your case. ::Travis Evans 08:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Super Game Boy 2 and Game Boy Color
I'm pretty much convinced that SGB2 runs GBC games fine (in GBC, not GB or SGB mode). If there's anyone who can, please confirm this, so the page can be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hippy Tesla (talk • contribs) 21:34, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I deleted that part. I made sure that people knew to provide sources. Redjedia (talk) 00:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Article Notes
Don't care to edit the article myself, per WP:NOR and WP:COI. I've successfully emulated the Super Game Boy, and I believe that can be used to improve this article.

1. "as well as the ability to display special background sprites on the screen as seen in the Mario's Picross title screen"

Mario's Picross does not make use of the OBJ_TRN command to place special sprites onscreen. It is using standard sprites, along with custom palette colors, and a specially drawn border to make it look like it's one big sprite. I can tell this by observing the commands it transmits in real-time. I do not know of a game that uses OBJ_TRN at this time.

2. "The Super Game Boy plays the audio for games, and the program of the games, about 4% faster than the original hardware."

It is 2.4% faster. The Game Boy clock rate is 4194304hz, and the SNES clock rate is 21477272hz. The Super Game Boy uses the SNES rate divided by five, or 4295454hz. 4295454 / 4194304 = 2.4%. This is for NTSC. We aren't 100% on the SNES PAL clock, but it is assumed to be roughly 21281370hz, making it run 1.477% faster.
 * Presumably this is the system master clock, not the bus or CPU clock, as I don't ever recall those parts being rated as operating at 21.3Mhz ... the SNES CPU is somewhat closer to 2MHz IIRC...? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.185.235.109 (talk) 16:24, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

3. "One of the flaws is the system's inability to change borders in some games which have built in borders."

I'm not confirming nor denying this, but a citation of games this affects would help.

4. "The system menu is accessed by pressing the L and R buttons at the same time"

You can also access it with a mouse by clicking both left and right buttons at the same time. This allows you to draw on the screen and such much easier.

5. Off-topic vibe

I don't see why this article goes into such detail about the Wide Boy, Game Boy Player, GB Hunter, etc. Shouldn't these be discussed in their own articles?

6. Screenshots

The screenshots appear to be taken from a hacked Super Game Boy BIOS image. They are notably missing the Nintendo logo, and it's not even possible to access the SGB menu at that point; plus the DQM picture has no in-game video. It might be nice to take some new screenshots now that the device is properly emulated. Perhaps showing off the SGB enhancements in the likes of Space Invaders (custom SNES game), Bomberman 2 (4-player mode with the SNES multitap), something with the menu open while playing a game, etc.

7. "I'm pretty much convinced that SGB2 runs GBC games fine (in GBC, not GB or SGB mode). If there's anyone who can, please confirm this, so the page can be changed."

This is definitely not true. The entire SGB BIOS design can only accommodate 4-color, 2-bpp tiledata. And that says nothing of all the extra hardware available only in Game Boy Color hardware. Many CGB games will work in monochrome mode, but that is it.

Anyway, just my notes. Hope this is helpful. Byuusan (talk) 21:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Dubious statement about how the colourising worked
There's a bit in there about how the background (and sprite?) colours were simply overlaid on the image and didn't "move with the background". Whilst I have no way to prove that this is patent nonsense at the moment, I still think it's highly unlikely, and so have left it in place but tagged with a "dubious" superscript.

My understanding of how it worked was that it took advantage of how the GB graphics system was a derivative of that in the NES (as is that of the SNES), i.e. instead of simply using each 2-bit code for a background or sprite pixel to directly assign a shade out of the four available, it still indexed into a changeable palette, with each of the 3 (sprite) or 4 (BG) entries for the palettes being assigned a 2-bit intensity. Thus you could have simple palette-rotating effects with very little bus traffic, and sprites with different tonal ranges even though they could only show three simultaneous shades each. Instead of the multiple BG palettes and several sprite palettes on the NES, the GB only had one for the BG and two for sprites - hence a max of 12 colours overall (with non-transparent sprites), and only really 10 in practice (4+3+3)... which would all be taken from the standard four greys on the actual GB, but on both the SGB and GBC each of the 10-12 entries could have any colour assigned from these machines' 32768-colour master palettes.

Naturally, this would mean that the colours would move with a scrolling background, but there'd be a very limited range of colours for both the background and the sprites, with a single set of 4 for the BG (with each brightness level having a single colour, unless some very clever hijacking took place such as changing the palette halfway down the screen) and e.g. any "dark" and any "light" toned sprites having to share their colours with any others of the same type on the screen, and sprites that would otherwise have been disguised against the background at first on the GB rather more obvious when colourised. This might be where the confusion comes from...?

(FWIW, GBC-enhanced games have a greater set of palettes but still all 2-bit only, so they have a total colour choice similar to that of the NES (~25 simultaneous colours) but with a larger master palette, though some would still have basically been a regular GB game with a built-in GBC palette (so still 10-12 total); GBC-only ones extend this to have more colourful sprites and BG tiles with upto 15 or 16 colours each for a much richer, near-SNES appearance, and hence the limit of 56 colours overall... I think. Erm. That or they have more colourful backgrounds only plus even more sprite palettes allowing them to take advantage of the NES trick of overlaying two 3-colour sprites for a 6-or 7-colour result (with more simultaneous sprites), along with making use of the higher clock speed and extra memory, which altogether prevents easy B&W GB compatibility... I'd have to go and read the actual GBC article again to be sure ;) 31.185.235.109 (talk) 16:47, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In any event, the statement was unsourced so I removed it czar  16:55, 29 May 2016 (UTC)