Super Game Boy: How a $59.99 SNES Cartridge Put Handhelds on TV in 1994

Long before Nintendo folded a home console and a handheld into one machine with the Switch, it had already tried something similar with a plastic SNES cartridge. The Super Game Boy is a peripheral that allows Game Boy cartridges to be played on a Super Nintendo Entertainment System console. It launched in Japan in June 1994, reached North America and Europe by that September, and sold for under sixty US dollars.

Released on June 14, 1994 in Japan, on July 22, 1994 in North America, and on September 24, 1994 in Europe, it retailed for US$59.99 in the United States and £49.99 in the United Kingdom. That price bought a way to play the entire handheld library, from Tetris to The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, on a proper television.

A Handheld Bolted Onto a Home Console

The trick was not clever emulation. Because the SNES is not powerful enough to emulate Game Boy games, the Super Game Boy contains a Game Boy inside. The cartridge itself carried a cartridge slot on top, and the SNES simply passed the handheld’s video and audio through to the television.

The Super Game Boy was a cartridge for the Super Nintendo home console that had a slot for Game Boy games, and with it, you could play Game Boy titles on a TV. Players used their SNES controller as the input device instead of the handheld’s own buttons, turning single-player pocket games into a living-room experience overnight.

Color Palettes, Custom Borders and a 2.4% Speed Quirk

Playing on a bigger screen came with bonuses the original grey brick never offered. When some games were played on the Super Game Boy, the hardware applied enhancements, usually special borders and palettes, occasionally designed by the player, and every game could be shown in a variety of color palettes. Certain titles went further: the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong would receive color and other enhancements when played on the Super Game Boy.

There was also a visual perk nobody advertised much at the time. The use of a television screen eliminated the motion blur present in the LCD of Game Boys and Game Boy Colors. But the convenience carried a hidden cost. The original Nintendo Super Game Boy ran games 2.4% faster than the Nintendo Game Boy. The unit had no clock of its own, so it borrowed timing from the SNES it was plugged into, nudging every game and its music very slightly out of sync with the handheld original.

Super Game Boy 2: A Japan-Only Fix in 1998

Nintendo eventually addressed the speed problem, but only for one region. A revised model, the Super Game Boy 2, was released in Japan in January 1998. The Japan-only Nintendo Super Game Boy 2 corrected this irregularity with exact parity.

The redesign was not just an internal tweak. It added a link port so two players could trade or battle using their own Game Boy cartridges through their televisions, something the original SGB never supported. It shipped in a translucent teal shell rather than the boxier grey of the first version, and it still could not touch Game Boy Color exclusives. It cannot be used to play any Game Boy Color-exclusive games.

Retired in 1998, Reborn as the GameCube’s Game Boy Player

The Super Game Boy line was discontinued in 1998, the same year the Game Boy Color arrived and made the whole concept of a black-and-white pass-through feel dated. Nintendo did not abandon the idea, though. It resurfaced years later in a new shape. It was the precursor to the Game Boy Player on the Nintendo GameCube, which functioned in a similar manner.

The accessory’s footprint on the software side was larger than most players remember. In total, there are 524 games available for the Super Game Boy with some form of enhancement, border or custom palette built in. That is a sizable slice of the entire Game Boy catalogue, all built around a piece of hardware whose core purpose, stuffing a handheld into a cartridge, quietly rehearsed the hybrid idea Nintendo would return to in 2017.