Beer Monkey
Member
I love my SGB2. Ditched the SGB. The speed on it feels all wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alV7QTMewSA
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GB/GBC/GBA Collecting Thread
- Thread starter tiggerkiddo
- Start date
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
Are the Super Game Boys just a GB board fitted to a cartridge like how the GB Player is literally just a GBA board?
NormalFish
Banned
I don't think it's as 1:1 as the GBP, as it seems to have more interplay with the SFC/SNES, but I think that's still essentially the case. It's definitely not emulation, so it's gotta be analogous hardware.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
I wonder if it would be possible to replace the GB hardware with GBC hardware in a SGB. I imagine it would be more trouble than its worth though.
NormalFish
Banned
Well I always thought this sort of deal should be possible in theory, but every similar device I know of has its own video out (generally with only composite) which greatly reduces my interest. A GBC-on-a-chip for the SFC that runs at the correct clock speed and uses the console's video/audio/etc. out would be amazing.
sixteen-bit
Member
Do GBC and SNES have compatible color palettes? IIRC palette incompatibility is why there was no Game Gear player for Genesis.
NormalFish
Banned
I never even considered this, honestly. AFAIK, the palettes used in a lot of the SGB-enhanced games should be the same. I think there are black cart games that use the GBC palettes when played on the SGB.
I was cleaning up and stumbled across my box of game boy stuff, which lead to a bit of a nostalgia trip. For fun I took a day trip to a few local retro shops around and bought some random Gameboy stuff, including Mole Mania, which I'm quite enjoying so far.
My GBA Micro and GB Pocket and GB Color all have this very prominent buzzing noise when plugging in headphones. Is this an incredibly common deficiency with these devices that comes along with age or was it always like this and I never noticed? Maybe our earbud technology is just better now and it picks it up better?
My GBA Micro and GB Pocket and GB Color all have this very prominent buzzing noise when plugging in headphones. Is this an incredibly common deficiency with these devices that comes along with age or was it always like this and I never noticed? Maybe our earbud technology is just better now and it picks it up better?
D.Lo
Member
It's because the Game Gear has eight times as many colours. So there's no way to play GG on MD and it look good without mapping colours from games individually. In a simple analogy, if you have an orange colour, in a lower colour palette do you map that to yellow or red?
SNES to GBC wouldn't have quite the same issue. I think they're identical, many emulators of GBC games can use both SGB and GCB features on the same game (Eg ZeldaDX with both borders + full colour graphics).
MikeHattsu
Member
PumpkinSpice
Banned
The way SGB colors stuff is also super dumb. It does regions of the screen in 8x8px tiles in a 4 color pallet rather than sprites or bg tiles. This is why most SGB games have awful colorization -- unless you have a static screen you're pretty much limited to a static color palette for a whole level/area. In Pokemon for example they co-opted one of the two grays to be "blue" permanently outside of battles so that water would look like water. Unfortunately then the tall grass, which used both shades of gray, then looks like a fugly mess of low contrast blue and green.
If I remember right it also works by using Super Nintendo opcodes, so even if Nintendo wanted to reuse this colorization in GBC they wouldn't be able to since it doesn't have a SNES CPU.
If I remember right it also works by using Super Nintendo opcodes, so even if Nintendo wanted to reuse this colorization in GBC they wouldn't be able to since it doesn't have a SNES CPU.
Beer Monkey
Member
There are emulators that use the SGB palettes and borders without emulating the SNES CPU.
Interestingly the GBC (and GBA and GB Player, since they support GBC games) beats the SGB in one respect. Some games like Donkey Kong (1994) actually get a fifth color in the actual playfield by using a different palette for the sprites than the playfield itself. On the SGB it uses the same palette for the sprites and the playfield (though it does add splashes of bright color to the score/status bar.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
There are ways to hack this out without needing full stack Super Nintendo emulation. Higan does the best with this though since it just does SNES / GB emulation at a low level when in Super Gameboy mode and you get color, borders, animated borders, sound, and everything else.
The GBC does way better than the SGB in many, many respects even in just plain old GB/GBC cross compatible games (black carts). You can actually define palettes at the sprite/bg tile level rather than just section of screen. There are some restrictions, like there are tiers of palettes to work with, but the colorization in GBC games was genuinely great. This was helped along by GBC release criteria having good use of color as a gating issue preventing release -- it's why Super Gameboy "enhanced" games often look like someone threw a couple colors on the screen and tacked on a nice border and GBC games look like a whole 'nother platform.
The list of titles I'd rather play on a SGB than GBC+ hardware is extremely short. It's pretty much just Donkey Kong 94, Space Invaders 94 (it invades your SNES!), and Kirby's Dreamland 2. Even Pokemon, where the battle screens look genuinely good in SGB mode, the rest of the game is so butt ugly due to palette choices that I'd rather just play on GBP or GBC+ with it set to grayscale -- the game was really designed around the 4 shades of gray and it works well.
If you want to read about how broken the SGB was, take a look at this rather lengthy rant/blog.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
You can't force GB games to run in grayscale on the SGB rather than use special color palette?
PumpkinSpice
Banned
You can in most games but some games completely prevent this. You can press X or Y I think to shift the palette on the fly in Pokemon between default crummy colors and another one, which I did for a while in my last Red runthrough when going from battle to overworld, but it's pretty annoying to do so. You also lose custom palettes at power off and well the default alt palette in Pokemon is also not good. Eventually I just switched to using my GBPlayer when I was at home to play that.
Beer Monkey
Member
I pretty much agree. Well,I would throw in some additional exceptions, Mega Man V comes to mind, I really like the Galaga colors on the SGB (Galaxian, not so much).
I REALLY like playing Donkey Kong (1994) on the SGB. It's a game I replay often. Otherwise I'd probably sell my SGB2 and just have the Game Boy Player (with GBi LL version).
I've read that whole series twice. The SGB isn't broken nearly as much as the support for it was. Tons of untapped potential!
The GBC had a totally different problem: hardly any excellent games (relative to GB)!
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Let me guess, you're not into RPGs?
I know I have an undying fondness for GBC and its games but I honestly think there are way more games worth playing today on GBC than on original GB. It's especially impressive considering the very short lifespan of that system.
God those first 5 or 6 years after Pokemon came out were just crazy for handhelds. Just soooooo many great games.
Beer Monkey
Member
This is true. That could easily explain our different positions regarding the GBC library. To each their own.
JamesJoyce1882
Member
You probably just didn't notice back then, I don't think it's an age issue. All gameboys have this, for me the regular Advance is the worst. The way to play GBA games without static hissing is the DS lite. For Gameboy and Gameboy Color, Prosound hardware mods exist that remove the hissing.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
I don't remember using headphones once with my GBC as a kid. It was either the sound was on or it was off. I put hundreds of hours into Pokémon so I knew I wasn't missing anything by having it muted.
NormalFish
Banned
DMG is clean as hell. GBC and AGB are worst.
alf717
Member
Since we are talking about audio are there any mods in the works to clean up GBA audio? I don't think it is horrible or anything but this forum post over a Sega Retro had users ripping the audio and using foobar for playback with some really nice / cleaner results.
Beer Monkey
Member
I just booted up my SNES Mini + SGB2 combo, ran the audio out from the SNES through a Headroom headphone amp with Sennheiser HD580 headphones.
Honestly, I think the audio output is fine, at least on my hardware. There's a tiny amount of noise I can hear during silent parts in games, but only if I play at a loud volume, and the signal to noise ratio is very good. I used a real cart and an Everdrive. Now, the Everdrive is noisy as hell, but only during the menus and loading. Once the game has been selected and booted the noise volume drops by a good 95% (subjective, of course).
YMMV.
Honestly, I think the audio output is fine, at least on my hardware. There's a tiny amount of noise I can hear during silent parts in games, but only if I play at a loud volume, and the signal to noise ratio is very good. I used a real cart and an Everdrive. Now, the Everdrive is noisy as hell, but only during the menus and loading. Once the game has been selected and booted the noise volume drops by a good 95% (subjective, of course).
YMMV.
NormalFish
Banned
It's not about the game or cart. It's about the actual console you're using. The SGBs and DMGs are good, the pocket is okay, everything else is pretty bad though I find my micro to be acceptable.
There's a way to run audio directly to the output for most consoles, which greatly reduces intereference ("prosound" mods) but they're of varying quality, with the most effective ones requiring a hole for an entirely seperate audio out.
It's odd your everdrive is giving you noise. might be a quirk of the higher power consumption.
There's a way to run audio directly to the output for most consoles, which greatly reduces intereference ("prosound" mods) but they're of varying quality, with the most effective ones requiring a hole for an entirely seperate audio out.
It's odd your everdrive is giving you noise. might be a quirk of the higher power consumption.
A Black Falcon
Member
Note: below I compare playing black-cart games on a Game Boy (NOT color or advance) or grey-cart games on any system, to how those games play on the SGB. Clear-cart GBC games, or black-cart games playing on a GBC or GBA, are games for a different system which cannot be compared to the original Game Boy.
Advantages of each:
- SGB: Any game with a custom border probably looks better on SGB. Custom borders are great. Games which support other SGB features such as enhanced sound (maybe the most subtle enhancement, but it is there), custom palettes that switch between areas (I love this!), up to 4 player multiplayer wiith SNES controllers (this is really great in games such as Takara fighting games, Wario Blast ,and Bomberman GB!), and such are also best on SGB. Those colorful status bars and the like in games like Kirby 2 also look great.
- GBC: Games which either have too-busy backgrounds that make telling sprites from backgrounds hard are made much more playable here thanks to the GBC's ability to color sprites and backgrounds in different palettes. See -- Donkey Kong Land, primarily. Having sprites and backgrounds different colors also allows you to "cheat" in games like Link's Awakening and see which statues will come to life without having to touch them, as those will be red (by default, since the default palette is red sprites on a blue/green background) and thus easy to spot.
But otherwise, for games other than Donkey Kong Land? The SGB is better for sure!
You also cannot switch palettes on-the-fly on the GBC, so each game has only one palette. This is a HUGE limitation! It's really cool to see SGB games change palettes for each level, so water levels are blue, jungles green, and the like. It adds to the immersion and graphics. But on the GBC... all just one generic palette that isn't going to fit everything as well.
And as I said earlier, the GBC has only a fraction of the number of possible palettes, too. For games which don't have a default, which is most games, there are only 12 palettes you can choose from! That's a quarter the number of palette options you have in the SGB, and more titles have SGB-enhanced colors, too.
Now, as I said earlier, sure, there are specific cases where having the sprites clearly stand out from the backgrounds is an advantage. I do find the DKL trilogy much better on GBC because of that, and it would be nice if the SGB had allowed for sprites and backgrounds to have separate palettes. But overall, SGB coloring is better despite that because of the ability to auto-switch palettes from level to level and put more colors on screen.
In practice I do use GBC or GBAs for playing Game Boy games, most of the time, because it's more convenient to play handheld games handheld, and not on a TV. But the SGB is absolutely better overall. I do agree it was under-utilized, but it's still great, and enough games use its features to make it a really good way of playing Game Boy games.
Each of the two colorization systems has its own plusses and minuses, but overall I like the SGB's more.
Advantages of each:
- SGB: Any game with a custom border probably looks better on SGB. Custom borders are great. Games which support other SGB features such as enhanced sound (maybe the most subtle enhancement, but it is there), custom palettes that switch between areas (I love this!), up to 4 player multiplayer wiith SNES controllers (this is really great in games such as Takara fighting games, Wario Blast ,and Bomberman GB!), and such are also best on SGB. Those colorful status bars and the like in games like Kirby 2 also look great.
- GBC: Games which either have too-busy backgrounds that make telling sprites from backgrounds hard are made much more playable here thanks to the GBC's ability to color sprites and backgrounds in different palettes. See -- Donkey Kong Land, primarily. Having sprites and backgrounds different colors also allows you to "cheat" in games like Link's Awakening and see which statues will come to life without having to touch them, as those will be red (by default, since the default palette is red sprites on a blue/green background) and thus easy to spot.
But otherwise, for games other than Donkey Kong Land? The SGB is better for sure!
No way!
By "can" here you actually mean "must". The GBC can ONLY color sprites one set of four colors, and backgrounds a different set of four colors. That is all it can do; it cannot put boxes of color on the screen to allow for things like Kirby 2's colorful status bar with your current power being appropriately colored for each power.
You also cannot switch palettes on-the-fly on the GBC, so each game has only one palette. This is a HUGE limitation! It's really cool to see SGB games change palettes for each level, so water levels are blue, jungles green, and the like. It adds to the immersion and graphics. But on the GBC... all just one generic palette that isn't going to fit everything as well.
And as I said earlier, the GBC has only a fraction of the number of possible palettes, too. For games which don't have a default, which is most games, there are only 12 palettes you can choose from! That's a quarter the number of palette options you have in the SGB, and more titles have SGB-enhanced colors, too.
Actual GBC games look like a whole nother platform because they are for a whole different platform. B&W GB games running on a GBC, however, look like 4 or 8-color Game Boy games. And of course, as you see in DK'94 you can put a lot more than 8 colors on screen on the SGB with good palette use, but on the GBC you cannot; 8 is the max, 4 each for sprites and backgrounds.
Now, as I said earlier, sure, there are specific cases where having the sprites clearly stand out from the backgrounds is an advantage. I do find the DKL trilogy much better on GBC because of that, and it would be nice if the SGB had allowed for sprites and backgrounds to have separate palettes. But overall, SGB coloring is better despite that because of the ability to auto-switch palettes from level to level and put more colors on screen.
In practice I do use GBC or GBAs for playing Game Boy games, most of the time, because it's more convenient to play handheld games handheld, and not on a TV. But the SGB is absolutely better overall. I do agree it was under-utilized, but it's still great, and enough games use its features to make it a really good way of playing Game Boy games.
NormalFish
Banned
Is this not what Pokemon Yellow does on the GBC?
I don't see how this is congruent with your post, but clearly I'm missing something. Were you talking about grey cart original GB titles?
A Black Falcon
Member
Pokemon Yellow actually uses the GBC's hardware, even though it doesn't have the "Game Boy Color" logo on it. It released after the GBC and is secretly GBC-enhanced. That's how it has its "limited-color" support.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
We're very clearly comparing apples to oranges. I was talking about colorization GBC black/clear cart games vs SGB enhanced gray carts. In that case, GBC comes out ahead due to flexibility of colorization (you can actually use it effectively on scrolling screens) and massive adoption of the platform by both developers and users.
Yes on SGB you can do borders, music, effects, overlays, multiplayer, and if you have almost completely static screens do a LOT of color in SGB, but in practice there are only a tiny number of games that did anything other than borders + a poorly chosen palette that was often worse than just running in grayscale.
D.Lo
Member
Lol yep. Many SGB games I force to greyscale when using it.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
It's entirely in Japanese but Arino of GameCenter CX (not DX) is trying to catch all 151 Pokemon in Red/Green. I can't imagine they'll film all of that but I'm 10 mins in and this is already pretty good.
Just saw one of the RCG Super Famicom GBAs pop up on eBay and... well, they don't seem to last for long:
Really thought that the quality would've been better than that, given how much they were charging for them.
Condition as shown; I've barely used it, but the paint has unfortunately rubbed off in a couple of spots. I'd say this is definitely better as a collector item than as a playable system: the screen is fine for most games, but very bright ones suffer from ghosting. There is also an issue with the audio jack where it sometimes won't output audio and you'll have to fiddle with it (i.e. power on/off cycle) a few times to get it to work.
Really thought that the quality would've been better than that, given how much they were charging for them.
NormalFish
Banned
Can't say I'm surprised RCG products don't hold up for long. Style over substance.
A Black Falcon
Member
I don't understand, why would you be comparing the GBC to the SGB? The Game Boy Color is an actual new console with more powerful hardware than its predecessor. Sure, it's a backwards-compatible iterative machine, but it is a new platform. The Super Game Boy, however, is not a full new platform. It's just a Game Boy, with some enhancements. So of COURSE the GBC is more capable than the SGB, but that's saying absolutely nothing. That's not too different from saying that playing a PS1 game on a PS2 (with the minor enhancements the PS2 allows for PS1 games) doesn't look as good as playing a PS2 game on a PS2 does. It's just stating the obvious, and doesn't mean anything. (Yes, I know SGB games have more enhancements than PS1-on-PS2, many built in to the games, but still, they're just somewhat-enhanced Game Boy games, they aren't for some new system! The only exception to this is that fullscreen SNES mode in Space Invaders.)
No, the actual interesting comparison is the one I made, between how Game Boy games look on the SGB to how they look on a GBC.
I disagree about palettes, some of them are pretty good. The games that switch palettes for every level are the best by far, of course, over titles that just choose one preset and stick with it.
NormalFish
Banned
I believe the origin of the whole conversation was talking about GBC-capable SGB-like devices. Hence the discussion of the SGB as compared to the GBC. Your comment is really hard to follow regardless though lol
PumpkinSpice
Banned
My point was that Super Gameboy enhanced games mostly suck.
This is probably the least interesting comparison. You should run in grayscale on both!
This is probably the least interesting comparison. You should run in grayscale on both!
El Pescado
Member
All I want is a consolized GBC with HDMI out that displays a nice crisp image. Is that so much to ask for?
PumpkinSpice
Banned
You can build one today using a GameCube, a Gameboy player, and an HDMI mod. Oh and preferably using GBI and a SNES controller with adapter.
Bit of a rabbit hole but worth it.
Either SGB2 with SNES outputting scart, or GameCube HDMI mod running homebrew software.
NormalFish
Banned
SGB2 can't do GBC, unfortunately.
Hell.
So GameCube is it then.
This video covers it well if you're interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVX81e6Ig-s&t=21m30s
A Black Falcon
Member
I almost never use greyscale on either, so it's a very interesting comparison!
NormalFish
Banned
In theory, you could put together a gameboy/advance with video out that would work, too.
Cloggerdude
Member
I found something pretty neat today while browsing around in Target:
Should fit 48 games comfortably. It could hold more, but I left a space in each row so that it would be easier to view the games.
The bottom piece fits a little snug, but it still closes.
Should fit 48 games comfortably. It could hold more, but I left a space in each row so that it would be easier to view the games.
Does anyone have information on how to obtain this in the US? I tried searching around and it is intriguing but I can't find information on it easily outside of the UK
That's pretty sweet. Tried finding them on amazon.ca but no luck.
Wow, that looks really cool. I could use something like this for my GBA games. I currently have them all in a cruddy little Tupperware container, it's a tight fit and doesn't look anywhere near as nice as that.
whiterabbit
Member
I use a shoe box for mostly GBA games and a little case specially for Game Boy games.
blast processed
Member
I have them lined up in the top drawer of my night stand. No need to be fancy.
Just read that they're planning a Kickstarter to develop their own GBA backlights and groaned. Given their petulant approach to being called out for poor quality, I can see crowdfunding ending remarkably well.
NormalFish
Banned
Are they really? They never struck me as being terribly well focused on that sort of thing. They'd be better off making proper micro faceplates.