Super Game Boy Review

Where to buy?

Super Game Boy is a fairly common accessory. You can find it on almost any used marketplace: eBay, Avito, niche forums, and retro shops.

Since it isn’t especially rare, pricing is usually reasonable — typically around 2,000 to 3,000 rubles (depending on condition and completeness).

You can even buy Super Game Boy on AliExpress nowadays:

What’s in the box

Super Game Boy came in a nice box with bright, colorful printing.

Inside, you usually got:

1. The Super Game Boy cartridge itself;

2. The manual and other paperwork (sometimes with promo leaflets).

In some countries, Super Game Boy bundles included extra “bonuses”. For example, in the US and Canada, Super Game Boy often came with an official Nintendo Player’s Guide — a large 72-page illustrated book with tips, compatible game notes, secrets, palettes, and other SGB features. These bundles usually highlighted the guide right on the box.

Setup

Despite how simple it looks, the whole thing truly works “out of the box” only if your entire setup is from the same region.

For example: if you have a US-region SNES, an NTSC-capable TV, a US Super Game Boy, and a Game Boy cartridge bought in the US — then it’s максимально straightforward.

But if even one part of the chain is from a different region, you can run into issues:

• TV: if your SNES outputs NTSC but your TV supports only PAL, the image can roll or not appear at all;
• Super Game Boy: a Japanese SGB won’t physically fit into a US SNES slot — without an adapter or a shell mod it won’t work;
• Game Boy cartridges: different regional versions of the same game may or may not have enhanced Super Game Boy support;
• European-region SNES (PAL): if you have this console, it works only with the European SGB and only with “native” cartridges — other combinations almost always lead to errors and a black screen.

So if you’re just starting out and want to build a set “from scratch”, be sure to read these articles:

Super Game Boy: nuances with Game Boy cartridges.

Super Game Boy: regional restrictions and compatibility.

Which Super Famicom (SFC) / Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) should you choose?

And if you don’t want to dive into the details, just keep everything from the same region.

Using it

So, you have everything you need: a compatible console, a Super Game Boy from the right region, the “correct” Game Boy cartridge, and a TV that supports this setup.

All that’s left is the last step — insert the Game Boy cartridge into the Super Game Boy, then plug the adapter into the console.

Power on — and the Super Game Boy menu appears on the screen. You’re ready to play!

You can already play normally. As you can see, the game automatically got the default color palette. Even though this title doesn’t support enhanced Super Game Boy features, it still looks much more vivid than on the classic “gray” Game Boy.

But SGB doesn’t stop there — it can do a lot more than just “colorize” games (like GBC, GBA, or the Game Boy Player on GameCube).

Let’s start with controls.

A standard Super Famicom (or SNES) controller has noticeably more buttons than a classic Game Boy.

The D-pad, A, B, Select, and Start buttons fully mirror the Game Boy controls.

The Y button is completely disabled and does nothing.

The X button quickly switches the palette between the default palette (either a developer preset, or A1) and the palette you selected.

The L and R buttons do nothing on their own, but if you press them together, the SGB settings menu opens.

Note: opening the SGB menu does not pause the game. So it’s best to pause first (with Start) and then open the SGB menu.

Another interesting detail: player two (with the second controller) can also open this menu and change palettes and borders “live” — or even mess with you while you play.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s available in the SGB menu:

In the upper-left corner, there’s a gamepad icon with the number “1”. It means the first controller is used for menu navigation. If you use the second controller, the number changes to “2”.

At the bottom of the screen, there are five large icons:

1. Palette selection (changes screen colors);

2. Border selection (changes the decorative frame around the game window);

3. Control settings (button remapping);

4. Create your own palette (manual color setup);

5. Create your own border (draw your own frame).

You navigate this menu using only the A button. To open a submenu, highlight the icon and press A.

To return to the main menu, highlight the submenu icon again and press A one more time.

Now let’s look at each option in more detail.

Palette selection.

In this submenu, you can pick a color palette for your Game Boy game from the standard set.

1. The little face icon is a preset “custom palette” built into the game itself (not in every game, but when it’s there, it usually looks better than the standard ones).

2. Palette tabs (4 tabs with 8 palettes each — 32 preset schemes total).

Note: if you selected, for example, 1D (the 4th palette in the first tab), you don’t have to move the cursor to switch to 2D — just press 1D again and it changes to 2D. Repeated presses cycle: 3D, 4D, then back to 1D.

A cycles palettes forward, B cycles backward.

3. Select a palette.

4. The canvas-with-brush icon lets you select and apply your own palette that you previously created manually.

Let’s move on to the next submenu.

Border selection.

Here you can choose one of nine borders for the game window.

By default, it uses a border that imitates the classic Game Boy look, but you can easily switch it — for example, to the cats border or any other option.

Just like in the palette submenu, there are extra buttons:

1. The little face icon is a developer-made custom border (found in many games, especially big Nintendo releases);

2. Nine preset borders to choose from;

3. The half-drawn face icon lets you apply your own border that you previously drew in the built-in editor.

Control submenu.

This menu lets you change button mapping on the controller. There are two options: Type A and Type B.

• Type B is the standard scheme: buttons behave as usual, like on a Game Boy.
• Type A makes the Y button on the controller duplicate the B button (useful if you prefer pressing Y on an SNES/SFC controller).

The B button will act as A, and the A button stays A.

Custom palette submenu.

In this submenu, you can fine-tune your own palette for the game — there are noticeably more functions than in the basic palette menu.

1. Brightness scale — shows the available brightness range and the current selected level for the chosen color. It’s just an indicator; you can’t edit it directly;

2. The “R” button — undoes the last action (only one step; there’s no history);

3. Brightness adjustment — changes the brightness of the selected color. The white button makes it lighter, the black one makes it darker. You’ll see the slider move in the brightness scale (item 1);

4. Palette selector — switches between five available palettes, each containing 12 colors. That gives you a lot of room to experiment;

5. Color selection — choose a specific color and move it to the brightness adjustment area (item 3), selecting one of four slots (i.e., you set colors for the four palette layers);

6. The “freeze frame” button — freezes the on-screen image so you can pick colors спокойно (important: the game itself continues running, but you’ll see one chosen frame);

7. The “C” (reset) button — clears all changes and returns the palette to default values;

8. Password — after creating a palette, you can write down this password (code) to restore it later or share it, or enter a code found online to load someone else’s palette.

Custom border submenu.

Here you can draw your own border for the game. The process isn’t the easiest (especially with a controller), but with some patience you can definitely create something unique.

Here are the main UI elements (left to right):

1. The “C” button — resets everything and clears the drawing;

2. Color selection — changes the drawing color;

3. The “R” button — undo (one step back);

4. Drawing tools:

4.1. Thin pencil — minimal line thickness;

4.2. Thick pencil — draws a bold line;

4.3. Rainbow finger — a weird “eraser tool”: you draw a rainbow line, then a “bomb” icon appears. Press the bomb and everything the line crosses gets erased (basically a “smart eraser” for large chunks).

5. Black and white squares — define where your drawing is applied:

Black square: you can draw only on the outer frame around the game screen;

White square: lets you draw directly on top of the game image (useful for fancy frames or labels).

Worth noting: drawing with a standard controller is… not exactly pleasant. Moving the cursor, selecting colors, and drawing lines with only the D-pad and buttons is for dedicated enthusiasts, especially if you want a neat result.

But if you buy the official SNES mouse, everything becomes much easier and more enjoyable — the interface immediately “comes alive”, and drawing borders or adjusting palettes feels much closer to using a computer.

And since we mentioned the mouse, it has a couple of quirks:

First, it works only in the second controller port — if you plug it into port one, it won’t work;

Second, the mouse can also open the SGB menu: just press the left and right mouse buttons at the same time.

Epilogue

That’s it. We covered all the main Super Game Boy features. Everything described above is the basic SGB functionality that works with any Game Boy cartridge without exceptions. But if that was all, Super Game Boy would be just another обычный adapter.

Super Game Boy isn’t just a physical converter — it’s a real bridge between Game Boy and SNES. Developers had almost unlimited customization options: exclusive color schemes, unique borders, alternate screens, special effects, and even full SNES games hidden inside regular Game Boy cartridges.

For all these features, secrets, and some wild real-world examples of what Super Game Boy can do, check the other articles on the site!