[ Retro Scan of the Week ] King Kong’s Super Game Boy
August 6th, 2012 by Benj Edwards
Gaming fun in the palm of your gigantic hand.
For me personally, the Super Game Boy (1994) was one of the most exciting video game peripherals ever released. It liberated Game Boy games from that unit’s blurry, dark screen, opening up a whole new world of gaming to those who preferred gaming on a TV set.
The fact that it also included a remake / extension of Donkey Kong, one of my favorite games of olde, made it a must-buy. I still remember the day I got it — my family drove to a local shopping mall, and I decided to stay in the car playing Donkey Kong on the Game Boy (even though not in color) instead of going inside. I haven’t been that excited about a new game in a long time.
(By the way, I first talked about the Super Game Boy in an early Retro Scan way back in March 2006.)
Discussion Topic of the Week: When did you first get a Super Game Boy? Did you have any Super Game Boy enhanced games for it?
August 6th, 2012 at 1:54 pm
I got my Super Game Boy, along with a bunch of games and an original Game Boy, from a friend of my brother’s about 15 years ago, when this friend decided to quit video gaming and just gave everything he had away. (That group of games included a near-mint, complete-in-box copy of SNES’s Earthbound that I still have today.) He didn’t have any enhanced games himself, but my brother and I had just bought the Red and Blue versions of Pokemon, new to North America at the time, as well as Metroid II: The Return Of Samus, so we did get to see some of the extras that the peripheral had to offer.
August 15th, 2012 at 1:35 am
Never had one, but always wanted one. Instead, I used the “Game Boy Player” for the Gamecube. Sort of the next incarnation of the SGB. It works wonders, but what I wouldn’t give to play Metroid II with the SNES controller instead of the GC one…
August 15th, 2012 at 8:50 am
Alexander,
As soon as I bought a Game Boy Player back in the day, I bought one of these Hori GameCube pads:
http://www.ncsxshop.com/cgi-bin/shop/HGC-11/12.html
It is shaped like a SNES controller but has a GameCube-like face button layout on the right side. It made playing GBA games much more fun. It is an awesome controller, and I recommend it if you can find one.
Or, if you want to use a real SNES controller, you can use a SNES to GameCube adapter made by RetroUSB:
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=31
You can also use a Game Boy Advance unit plugged into a link cable as a controller, which is what I used before I got the Hori pad seen above. It was a great use of one of the older non-SP GBAs I had lying around.
August 16th, 2012 at 1:04 am
Actually, I typically use my old GBA with the link cable as my controller. But it just isn’t the same as the legendary SNES controller. That SNES adapter looks perfect.
Thanks for the links, Benj! I’m glad to know that you read comments, as I’m sure your other readers do too.
August 16th, 2012 at 11:56 am
No problem, Alexander. I always read the comments. Without the feedback and community, I wouldn’t have much reason to keep updating this site.