Super Game Boy

The Super Game Boy is an adapter cartridge designed for use for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and its Japanese counterpart, the Super Famicom. It has a cartridge slot where a Game Boy cartridge can be inserted and then played on a television using a Super Nintendo Entertainment System Controller. The accessory was released in 1994. The only Metroid-related game compatible with the Super Game Boy is Metroid II: Return of Samus, as it is the only Metroid game for the Game Boy. Although this is the case, the box cover shows an enlarged gameplay picture of Samus Aran and her Star Ship from the game, with the monochromatic green being phased out in favor of a color mode supported by the Super Game Boy.

The Super Game Boy consists of the same hardware as a Game Boy, meaning that it runs a Game Boy game natively instead of emulating it. Dual-compatible Game Boy Color games are also playable via the accessory, although they are forced into Game Boy mode. The Super Game Boy has a separate CPU that processes the games while the Super NES only provided means for user-input, output of graphics to the screen, and additional coloring. The unit could map the four shades of gray to various colors on the screen. The adapter could support up to 64 colors for the border, and 12 colors for the screen. Colorization was applied to the screen itself, and did not scroll with the background. Static screens could display all 10 colors.

Around the same time of the Super Game Boy's release, a Super Game Boy Player's Guide was packaged with an issue of Nintendo Power. It consists of several codes to change the colors for certain parts of the game. Six pages of the guide are dedicated to Metroid II: Return of Samus.

On January 30, 1998, a successor to the Super Game Boy was released, the Super Game Boy 2. It was released exclusively in Japan, and has little difference from its predecessor aside from having Game Link Cable support and additional border features.

The Game Boy Player accessory for the Nintendo GameCube is similar in that it uses Game Boy Advance hardware to play Game Boy Advance games. By extension, this means that Game Boy and Game Boy Color games are backwards compatible with the Game Boy Player.

System menu

The game is recognized internally as "METROID2" and uses the 4-G color palette.

The system menu is accessed by pressing the and buttons at the same time; the menu has five options to choose from:

• Color Palette: Choose from one of 32 pre-made color palettes, the Super Game Boy enhanced palette(s) (if available), or a user-created palette (if available). A few Super Game Boy games will not allow the palette to be changed. Internally, the Super Game Boy includes special palettes for several games that came out before the release of the Super Game Boy, for example Alleyway, Yoshi's Cookie, Kirby's Pinball Land and Solar Striker have one 1 of the 32 default colors by default.
• Border: Choose from one of 9 pre-made borders, the Super Game Boy enhanced border(s) (if available), or a user-created border (if created). A few Super Game Boy games will not allow the border to be changed due to having a special Border, ex. Pokémon Trading Card Game and Wario Land II.
• Button Setting: Switches between two controller mappings. A few Super Game Boy games will not allow the controller to be changed.
• Custom Color: Create a custom color palette and get a password to retrieve it later.
• Graffiti: Create a custom border by using several painting tools.

Gallery

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  North American cartridge

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  Super Famicom cartridge

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  Nintendo Player's Guide

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  Super Game Boy menu

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  Instruction booklet

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	スーパーゲームボーイ Sūpā Gēmu Bōi