Recently i've become somewhat curious about the function/design of products such as the Super-Game boy, GBA player, and the in-house development prototypes wide-boy and wide-boy64, all of which were devices created to play Game-Boy, Game-Boy Color, and Game-boy Advance games on the NES, Super-Nintendo, Nintendo64, and Gamecube, depending on your generation. In particular, I am curious about the Super-Gameboy and the wide-boy, and how they work.
Obviously they are more than a device that makes a GB game simply "run" on the console hardware. I don't know a lot about how the different consoles work, but I do know that the programming languages the games are written in are incompatable with each other.
I'm not certain about the super-game boy, but I understand the wide-boy was actual game-boy hardware re-designed to display on the TV through the NES.
Are there any technical documents or forums posts explaining how these devices work in greater detail? How is it possible for a gameboy game to run on NES, Super Nintendo, or N64 hardware? If the gameboy playing device contains actual gameboy hardware, how are the video signal/controller inputs re-directed through the home console system? Are some of them software based and others hardware based?
Just wondering. Any information anyone has would be great - I spent a few hours searching around the internet, but I was unable to find the information I was looking for, or any in-depth information, really.
Doh. Now I feel a little dumb. I kept searching and I found a little information, although the schematic is a little beyond my comprehension.
For instance, Super GameBoy schematic -
http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/Tech/SuperGameBoy.gif
and hardwaare description -
http://www.devrs.com/gb/files/sgbhard.txt
both found at
http://www.emu-docs.org/?page=Game%20Boy
Wideboy and Demovision boxes both have the actual GameBoy hardware inside, then a NES with extra hardware to display to the screen. One or both of them uses the MMC5, likely to get extra chr tiles. The NES just reads the GameBoy screen and outputs to the TV. With modern (aka smaller) chips it should be possible to put the whole thing on a NES cart. I have a full GameBoy kiosk (Demovision) but haven't looked more closely at it. I would expect the other GameBoy playing hardware works the same. Building a GB emulator on those systems without extra hardware would be hard/impossible.
Why would it need an MMC5 if the NES program could just use sprite 0 hit to switch to the bottom half of the display?
I wish I knew more about the gameboy/nes and electronics. I'd love to take a gameboy color and some old cartridges to make a NES or Supernes game boy color player. (None of the commerical units can play the color only games, with the exception of the GBA player, and I don't have a gamecube anymore.)
too bad I don't have that kind of knowledge right now.
A nes or snes wouldn't be able to display GBC games.
Dwedit wrote:
A nes or snes wouldn't be able to display GBC games.
Really? I thought that a NES might not be able to, but I'm a bit surprised that the SNES wouldn't be able to. I though tit would if one were to build a Super Gameboy Device using a GBC. I admit, that I don't understand exactly how the Super Game Boy uses the video memory to do what it does, but i figured it was powerful enough to handle it. I don't suppose you could give me a brief overview of why it's unable to do GBC?
I do remember the Super Game Boy playing the black-cartirdge GBC games, but I can't remember if it played them in "old gameboy" mode, or if was able to use the GBC color pallets.
Game Boy has 4 colors per screen-aligned 8x8 pixel area, which is how Wide Boy and Super Game Boy can buffer tiles in VRAM. But on Game Boy Color, it's easy (using some hblank raster effects and some sprite overlapping) to display 56 different colors within one such area. And I've seen GBC demos that update palettes on each scanline, causing even bigger problems. That's why Game Boy Player for GameCube just sends all sprite pixels as a 16-bit texture.
The "black cart" games had both Game Boy and Game Boy Color programs. The system BIOS would set up the registers differently before jumping to the Game Pak ROM. Either the game would jump over updates to EXRAM when in Game Boy mode, or it would use a separate game engine. Conker's Pocket Tales took the latter approach to an extreme: the GB version was a limited demo of the GBC version.
I have a Wide Boy without a built in GB called the "TV Monitor", other than that it's the same though. Looking at the chips, it works by shifting pixels into dual port CHR-RAM so I don't think tiles are even in the picture.
The Demovision which has the NES built in as well is the only one with a MMC5. The reason for it is to display the GB border image around the normal LCD picture, presumably using the "vertical split mode".
tepples wrote:
Game Boy has 4 colors per screen-aligned 8x8 pixel area, which is how Wide Boy and Super Game Boy can buffer tiles in VRAM. But on Game Boy Color, it's easy (using some hblank raster effects and some sprite overlapping) to display 56 different colors within one such area. And I've seen GBC demos that update palettes on each scanline, causing even bigger problems. That's why Game Boy Player for GameCube just sends all sprite pixels as a 16-bit texture.
The "black cart" games had both Game Boy and Game Boy Color programs. The system BIOS would set up the registers differently before jumping to the Game Pak ROM. Either the game would jump over updates to EXRAM when in Game Boy mode, or it would use a separate game engine. Conker's Pocket Tales took the latter approach to an extreme: the GB version was a limited demo of the GBC version.
Thanks! I think i understand what most of that means, and my questions are answered,. I didn't know the gamecube player worked that way.
I've looked around for more info, and now i'm a little more confused. Dwedit posted this when I asked about getting GBC to run off an adaptor for SNES or NES:
Dwedit wrote:
A nes or snes wouldn't be able to display GBC games.
Tepples explained the matter in a little more detail:
tepples wrote:
Game Boy has 4 colors per screen-aligned 8x8 pixel area, which is how Wide Boy and Super Game Boy can buffer tiles in VRAM. But on Game Boy Color, it's easy (using some hblank raster effects and some sprite overlapping) to display 56 different colors within one such area. And I've seen GBC demos that update palettes on each scanline, causing even bigger problems. That's why Game Boy Player for GameCube just sends all sprite pixels as a 16-bit texture.
All seemed well and good - GameBoy Color only games won't run on the SNES for technical reasons. While poking around the internet, I found a post on the BenHeck forums about a guy that wanted to play GBC on his TV, and another poster suggested finding a Super Game Boy 2. From what I read about that unit, it seemed to be the same as a Regular super-game-boy, except it had a link-cable port. That poster informed me that it also played GBC games, and cited Pokemon Crystal as an example.
Still not convinced, I looked around and found this on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAkVeJimXGk
Now I understand this can be faked easily, but two people on benheck seemed convinced it plays GBC games. I have not been able to find any more conclusive proof, and I asked someone else you youtube with a SGB2 if it did, in fact, play color games. I have yet to receive a response.
Can anybody here provide more information about this?
EDIT: Play-Asia reviewers claim that it can play "some" gameboy color games, but does not specificy if they play in color, or in "game boy" mode like the normal Super Gameboy.
The super game boy is a monochrome game boy which renders output to a 2-bit frame buffer which the SNES can display. After the SNES has the GB image, it can apply effects to the image, such as colorizing the entire image, colorizing each 8x8 tile of the screen differently, drawing a border, etc.
It just so happens that some GBC games also support super game boy enhancements when run on a super game boy, but they run as monochrome game boy games, and can not take advantage of the GBC's features, only the SGB's features.
The youtube video shows Wario Land 2 running on an emulator which shows the border it would display on a SGB, but actually runs the game in GBC mode. Only emulators can do this, not a real SNES+SGB.
I'm aware of that in the case of the Super Game Boy, however in a Japan Only Release (and very limited TV sales release in the US) there was a predecessor to the SGB called the Super Game Boy 2 that added extra features. It supposedly contains a different processor than the original Super Game Boy, and some additional features. Do you have any information specific to that unit? You did not mention it in your last reply.
Edit: Please note that I acknowledge and agree with the assessment, that any implications that super game boy 2 plays color games are probably the result of hoax or poor communication, but I would still like to explore the result to a certainty - as I have found one and am trying to decide if it's worth adding to my collection.
EDIT2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-AH4YkZXio
Yup. Looks like you are right. I don't know what the guys on that other forum are smoking. Too bad though.
I have a Japanese SGB2 and can tell you with 100% certainty that it does not support GBC-only carts. It's not much different from the original SGB, aside from the link cable port, different backgrounds, and fancy case.
Something interesting i discovered last night:
I have a imported SNES from japan, Super Famicom, and as a result i have to use a "super converter" when I play american cartridges that don't fit becuase the plastic gets in the way.
When the Super-Gameboy is used with the adaptor, the 16-bit graphics are fine, but the gameboy graphics display garbage, scanlines, and are jumpy, If you remove the super-gameboy from it's plastic casing and plug it into the Super Famicom directly, it works perfectly.
Just an interesting little quirk about the SGB. A little annoying though, I prefer to keep my games in their cartridges.
Your adaptor probably doesn't connect all the "outer pins" on the snes cart. That should cause glitches with super gameboy. Or those pins are dirty. If this is correct starfox shouldn't work either.
That's werid. I'll have to see if I can test that with a multimeter when I get home. The connector has a slot and an output for the "outer pins," (by which i assume you mean the seperate pins "floating" to the sides) but it may just be there as an anchor. Thank's for the heads up though, if I could find a different connector that works with the Super-Gameboy, it would be preferable to using it outside of the case. (Failing that, I was planning to build a custom case for it out of a spare cartridge.
Jeroen wrote:
Your adaptor probably doesn't connect all the "outer pins" on the snes cart. That should cause glitches with super gameboy. Or those pins are dirty. If this is correct starfox shouldn't work either.
I checked with a multimeter, all of those connections seem to work, on both sides of both outer portions of the connector. The connector appears to connect everything just fine. And it's not dirty, because the first thing I did when the problem arose was extensively clean everything with proper solutions and supplies, not just water and a q-tip. (At least proper in that I bought them from a shop selling them specifically for cleaning Nintendo cartridges.
Are there any other causes that come to mind? It seems odd that a connector would create that kind of interference if it was working properly.
on a related note, does anyone know why i can't run LSDJ on my SGB?
i'm using one of the latest versions (3.8.7 i think)
Jeroen wrote:
Your adaptor probably doesn't connect all the "outer pins" on the snes cart. That should cause glitches with super gameboy. Or those pins are dirty. If this is correct starfox shouldn't work either.
Not true. StarFox contains its own clock crystal. It doesn't need the clock from the SNES like later SFX games. This means StarFox will run through various adapters while other chip games will fail. I noticed this on my Game Doctor SF3, which plays StarFox when plugged in, but not any other chip games.
Doesnt it stil need the outer pins?
Maybe, I'm not really sure. But I do know that the Clock pin isn't needed on StarFox unlike other SuperFX and chip games. It's the only one that has its own clock inside I believe. If I recall the outter 16 pins connect to the B-Bus as I think a clock output from the SNES. But it's been awhile. Byuu would probably know this.
I can't think of a superfx game that doesn't have it's own crystal. I've replaced a number of them with faster crystals to overclock, so I think at least most don't use the snes clock.