Custom Game Boy Design - Revitalizing Broken or Hard to See Portable Systems

It is a fact that the original Game Boy, its four widely available successors and its contemporary competitors had many excellent games but some truly awful screens by modern standards.  Handheld screen technology has advanced extraordinarily far since the rose-tinted glass days of 1989.  Today modding kits are available to fix or "upgrade" these machines with replacement screens, so let me discuss my own experiences with one.  

Game Boy Link Ports & Cables & Peripherals

When Nintendo released its first handheld console, the Game Boy, it provided a Link Port to allow two players to play games with or against each other.  That Link Port is a simple bidirectional synchronous serial port and was not very fast but it was sufficient to allow two consoles to communicate with each other over a Link Cable.  In subsequent Game Boy models the Link Port became faster but it also took on different shapes.  The Link Port was carried over to the Game Boy Advance, but there were some differences.  In this article I will go over the various cable connectors, the official products which used the Link Port or converted one kind of link port to another and how Link Cables are wired.

The EverDrive GB X7 - The Ultimate 8-bit Game Boy/Color Flash Cart?

EverDrive GB vs. EverDrive GB X7

For too long, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color had been rather neglected by the flash cart builders.  The old cartridges by companies like Bung faded out of existence as Nintendo sued Bung out of existence.  There were a few more recent cartridges like the 64MB EMS Smart Card, but it was really klunky to use and had poor game compatibility.  A few cartridges were more focused on music production than game playing.  In 2014 Krikzz released the EverDrive GB, a flash-based device with an FPGA with enough resources to handle basic games.  I bought one then and was satisfied with it, as I indicated in my review.  Three years later he released the SRAM-based EverDrive GB X-series.  Having finally acquired an EverDrive GB X7, let me share my thoughts and views of the device and try to answer the question, "Is it the Ultimate GB/GBC Flash Cart?"

Early Efforts at Online Interaction on Nintendo Consoles

We tend to think that Nintendo consoles first entered the online arena with the GameCube, its Modem and Broadband Adapters and Phantasy Star Online.  In the west, this is the case, but every Nintendo home and portable console (except that hunk of eye-straining junk called the Virtual Boy) has had some way to access the non-local world.  Sometimes these methods were first party supported, sometimes third-party exclusives and there was even an unlicensed publisher or two in the mix.  This blog entry will give an overview of the subject.  I will describe briefly each device or method, As this blog entry's purpose is not meant to give a comprehensive review of each of these devices.  I will include links for more information to sites and videos with more information.  

Game Boy Interface Revisited

A few years ago, I discussed a piece of homebrew software called Game Boy Interface (GBI).  GBI was written and is maintained by a GameCube enthusiast who goes by the handle Extrems.  Extrems intended to replace the official Game Boy Player (GBP) Start-Up disc for the GameCube which, when combined with the attachment that is fitted underneath your GameCube, allows you to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges using genuine GBA hardware.  Before GBI, if you did not have the official disc, your GBP attachment was useless.  GBI quickly made the official disc essentially obsolete, but the software has been radically revised since I first profiled it.  Let's return and see what's changed and I will give my own personal take on how I like to use the software.  This will not be a fully comprehensive guide because there are features geared toward hardware I do not own and uses I do not put GBI, but if you are new to GBI you may find something here instructive.

Three High-Quality 1080p Game Boy "Consolizing" Solutions Compared

For some reasons, probably strange, many people like to play Game Boy or Game Boy Color games outside their portable confines.  One reason is that the games are good but the original screens for these devices are terrible to look at by modern standards.  Nintendo has on certain occasions tried to satisfy the need to play portable games as though they were home console games, but those solutions are old.  Pure software emulation can easily take the GB to 1080p and beyond, but software is wholly divorced from original hardware.  There are software emulators with dumping cartridge slots like the RetroN 5 and Retro Freak, but they are only 720p solutions.  A promising new mod called the GBA Consolizer is an FPGA-based upscaling solution for the Game Boy Advance but is limited to 720p output.  There was a mod called the HDMYBoy a few years ago but it never got beyond a few prototype units.  For this blog article, I will focus on hardware-based solutions which I have some ability to experience personally and can deliver a 1080p experience.

Game Boy Colorization Examples

In a previous blog entry discussed the various tools developers had when they sought to colorize Game Boy games.  http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/01/getting-out-digital-crayons-color-and.html  The two main hardware methods were the Super Game Boy and the Game Boy Color.  In a followup to that blog entry, this blog entry let's talk about and show examples of how each method was used.

New Accessories and Ideas for the Game Boy Camera

Courtesy of Wikipedia

The Game Boy, while a modern marvel in and of itself, had a very unique peripheral released for it toward the transition from the monochrome Game Boy to the Game Boy Color.  That device was the Game Boy Camera, a cartridge with an twistable camera lens capable of taking four-color photographs in a 128x112 resolution surrounded by borders.  It could save up to 30 user-taken pictures to its battery-backed memory.  The program included some rudimentary editing tools, simple games and many little touches which were weird by Nintendo's standards.  Nintendo also released the Game Boy Printer, a small thermal printer which functioned as the only official way to memoralize photos outside the cartridge.  While the Camera was considered a modern marvel itself in its day, the Camera has had a cult following ever since.  Let's look at some of the ways in which continued interest in the Game Boy Camera has manifested itself.

Compatibility Issues within the Game Boy Line

In the beginning, Nintendo released the Game Boy and it took the world by storm.  Since 1989, Nintendo has released no less than 9 major followup products in the Game Boy line sold to the public in the eighteen years to follow.  The Game Boy line has a reputation for rock-solid backwards compatibility, but here we will explore issues with backwards compatibility in as much detail as I can find.

SNES "Port"pouri

Space Invaders and the Super Game Boy

Super Game Boy Mode

Arcade Mode

Space Invaders was released for the Game Boy in 1994.  It indicated that it supported the Super Game Boy.  It did so in a unique way, when you selected the Arcade Mode, it launched a slightly cut-down version of the SNES Space Invaders port which had been previously only been released in Japan.  The only thing missing from the game as run transferred from the Super Game Boy and the game that was released on cartridge in Japan in 1994 and the U.S. in 1997 is the VS mode.

Rise From Your Grave : The Game Boy Interface

The Game Boy Player (GBP) is a genuine Game Boy Advance (GBA) console that attaches to a Nintendo GameCube (NGC),  It allows you to play Game Boy (DMG/MGB), Game Boy Color (GBC/CGB) and GBA games.  The device fit on one of the expansion ports on the underside of the NGC and could be screwed into it for a permanent attachment.  It was a very popular purchase, essentially the Super Game Boy 1/2 (SGB) two generations later.  Unfortunately, the GBP does not boot or do anything without the Official Boot Disc (OBD) that came with the system.  While the GBP is frequently sold with a NGC, the disc was often lost.  Burning a replacement disc involves finding an image, modding the NGC with a modchip to bypass its copy protection.  Relatively few people have the skill or the inclination to do that.  However, there is an alternative solution these days, and it is a magnificent one.  In this blog entry, I am going to describe my experiences with the Game Boy Interface (GBI) software.

The Amazing Technology in the Nintendo Game Boy

Truly nothing like the Game Boy had ever been seen before by the general public when it was released in 1989.  Handheld gaming prior to that was confined to simple, single hand-held games like the Coleco mini-Arcades, the Nintendo Game and Watch series and the ubiquitous Tiger Electronics Hand-helds.  These were simple games that were driven by pre-programmed microcontroller chips and drove an LCD display that was only capable of displaying a series of fixed patterns.  Although the patterns could have a high level of detail, the limitations of the display severely limited the complexity and longevity of these games.

The Game Boy's best-known predecessor, the Milton Bradley Microsivion, used a 16x16 display.  The Microvision was not very successful and its games were put on pre-programmed microcontrollers that plugged into the main unit.  These microcontrollers operated at a very low speed of 100KHz, and provided only 64 bytes of RAM and 1-2KB of ROM for a game.  The low resolution of the display also placed severe limitations on the games that could be made for this system.  The Epoch Game Pocket Computer was released in Japan in 1984 and used a 75x64 resolution display, but it was not very successful and only had five games released for it.

Nuby Game Light - Best Contemporary Light Source for the Game Boy

The Nuby Light alongside the Game Boy

The Game Boy was better than its competitors in many ways, more compact, longer battery life, better sound (against Game Gear), more buttons (against Game Gear), higher resolution (against Lynx), lower price, first to market, superior pack-in game.  Otherwise, the screen was its achilles heel : poor contrast, four color monochrome, difficulty in displaying fast moving objects and non back-lit.

Today we have mods that can fix most of the Game Boy's screen problems.  Backlight kits can be installed and the contrast issues can be dramatically improved with a bivert mod.  However, these innovations were not available during the monochrome Game Boy's official lifespan (1989-2003).  You had to put up with the screen, and the best you could do was either buy a light peripheral or play your games on the non-portable Super Game Boy.

Metroid II - Return of the Sidescrolling Action/Adventure Exploration Game

Original Game Boy Palette

Metroid II was released during a relative drought of quality first party titles from Nintendo for the Game Boy.  Nintendo had released all the launch games for the system in July of 1989, Alleyway, Super Mario Land, Tennis and Tetris, but after that its releases had dropped substantially while its third party licensees like Konami and Capcom picked up the slack.  While Nintendo released other games like Golf, Solar Striker, Qix, Radar Mission and F-1 Race during 1990 and 1991, it was not until Metroid II was released in November of 1991 that one was really reassured that Nintendo was going to give its handheld system its best.  More classics, like Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land, Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Donkey Kong would follow about once a year thereafter.

Original Game Boy Palette

Metroid II helped cement the fact that certain premium games would have battery backed RAM.  Almost every classic game Nintendo developed for its cartridge systems thereafter would also have the extra battery backed RAM. The extra RAM allows for a more forgiving saving system than passwords.  The original Metroid, whether played on cartridge or disk, did not save your current health and did not save your location except at an elevator (Famicom Disk System Metroid always restarts you at Brinstar.)  There are save points liberally scattered throughout Metroid II's SR388.

Original Game Boy Palette

Graphically, the smaller screen resolution (160x144 vs. 256x240) and limited number of colors available (4 vs. 52), when compared to the NES, required certain compromises.  The graphics artists could scale down Samus compared to her NES sprites, or keep the NES scale and show a smaller screen area.  Nintendo had scaled down the graphics for Super Mario Land, but the result looked rather simplistic and lacked detail.

Original Game Boy Palette

The designers made the right choice in keeping the scale the same.  With a larger scale, they could show more detailed backgrounds and enemies.  This is important in a large game that is limited to a four color monochrome palette.  As a result, while most parts of SR388 look natural, other parts look like they were designed by intelligent beings.  Samus' armor is much more detailed, especially after she acquires the Varia suit.  Also, her left/right facing sprites are not totally mirror images of each other, now her arm cannon is always on her right arm.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

The enemies too take on a greater variety.  Most look like the planet's indigenous life, but some enemies look and act like constructs or robots gone haywire.  The same enigmatic power statutes appear in both Metroid and Metroid II, but their connection to each other, the Metroids and the Space Pirates is not detailed until later games in the series.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

The sound and music in Metroid II is often underrated.  The music starts out fairly jaunty and adventurous, not unlike the Brinstar music of the original.  When dealing with the Chozo-inspired structures, the music is rather clinical not unlike the music for the Chozo rooms in the original game.  Metroid encounter music sounds appropriately frantic.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

After that, the games sharply diverge.  Metroid has a distinct musical theme for each area.  Metroid II does not.  In many areas, you will only hear something akin to ambient noise.  The noise tends to become more ominous as you descend deeper into the planet.  Finally, toward the end of the game, you get new music, but it evokes an undercurrent of dread and foreboding.  The final areas are almost completely devoid of non-Metroid lifeforms.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

Gameplay wise, the smaller screen gives a more claustrophobic feel to the game compared to the vast, empty spaces of Metroid.  Control has improved in many ways. Samus can now duck and shoot and shoot downwards from the air.  These additions eliminate much of the frustration of the original Metroid.  There are no longer cheap hits when you pass through doorways.  The new items are the space jump, spider ball and jump ball.  All prove very useful.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

The space jump allows you to keep jumping after you jump in a somersault.  Controlling the space jump is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. If you wait until you start to dip from the maximum height of your somersault, you will nail the next jump every time.  It is much easier to space jump against a straight wall.  You can also do something like a space jump if you touch an enemy in mid air and press jump.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

The spider ball is a bit tricky to maneuver.  If you let go of the directional you are pressing, you may have to press more than one directional to get going in the right direction again.  Although it allows you to climb on any wall, you will get knocked off if you hit an enemy, spikes or are too close to a bomb blast.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

There are two new weapons in addition to the ice and wave beam, the spazer and plasma beams.  Each beam cannot be used with another beam, but the beams are easy to find (the wave beam is not easy to find in Metroid).  Each have their strengths and weaknesses, and when you need the ice beam at the end, you can find another one in the final area without having to backtrack.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

Enemies are very similar to Metroid, with the exception of the Metroids themselves.  The Metroids act like a string of mini-bosses.  Six forms of the Metroid are present in the game.  The Alpha Metroids have no attack and are easy to kill.  The Gamma Metroids are annoying, have a lightning bolt barrier and always seem to be found in inconvenient places.  Zeta and Omega Metroids are hard to hit, breathe fireballs and take lots of missiles to kill.  You have to remember how to kill the non-mutated Metroids from the first game.  The Queen Metroid takes up most of the screen, attacks with her jaws and fireballs and has a long neck.  Killing her takes a lot of missiles, but there is another way to do it.  Ironically, non-mutated Metroids are more dangerous than Alpha Metroids.  In a nice touch, the game will often warn you if there is a Metroid nearby with a Metroid shell husk.  You also can see Metroids molt into their final forms.

One criticism that can be leveled at the original Metroid is "where are the Space Pirates?"  The Space Pirates, other than their bosses Kraid and Ridley, are not introduced until Super Metroid.  Many of the enemies in Metroid, although they appear natural, are aggressive toward you.  Most of the enemies in Metroid II seem more indifferent to your presence, especially the robotic enemies.  There is no need to explain away the lack of Space Pirates on SR388.  Between the spartan graphics, minimalist music and naturalistic enemy designs and behavior, this game gives a rare sense, for the era, of being totally alone as you explore the caverns and ruins of SR388.

Metroid II allows you to have 5 energy tanks and 250 missiles (compared to the 5 and 255 of Metroid).  You start with 30 missiles and the ball and the long beam, so you are not totally unpowered when you start the game.  While most enemies give energy balls, some only give missiles.  If you know which enemies give missiles, you can replenish your supply more quickly.  Also, there are rechargeable energy and missile spots throughout the planet.  Missiles dropped from enemies in Metroid II give you 5 missiles instead of 2 as in the original Metroid.  This means you will waste less time replenishing your missile supply.

One criticism of Metroid II is that it sacrifices the non-linear gameplay of the original.  The game is controlled by earthquakes that affect the lava present throughout the planet.  Each time you clear a certain number of Metroids, the lava level will change.  The Metroid counter is useful to tell you how many Metroids you need to kill in each area and how far you have progressed in the game.  There are four main areas where you can acquire items, missile and energy tanks.  When you open a new area, all the previous areas remain open to you.  So you are given as much exploration as the original Metroid, just not all at once.  Moreover, even in the original Metroid many areas are sealed off unless you find the appropriate items or defeat the mini-Bosses first.  Even so, you can do everything you need to do in each area without having to backtrack to an earlier area.

The Metroid series is notable for being more popular in the US than in Japan, even though most games in the series were made by Japanese teams.  Metroid II was released two months earlier in the US than in Japan, which was almost unheard of at the time.  The game contains no substantial English text, making it unnecessary to make any changes to localize it.  The ROM is the same for every region the game was released in.  Future Metroid games would always be released first in the US with the exception of Super Metroid.  Super Metroid was released in Japan only a month earlier than the US, which was practically a simultaneous release in those days.  Both cartridges contain the same ROM, and English speakers have the unusual option of choosing to have Japanese text for the menus and subtitles for the opening.

Although Nintendo may have been working on a colorized version of Metroid II for the Game Boy Color, it was never released.  The Game Boy Color has a custom palette built into the unit for Metroid II, and it looks pretty nice.  The blue backgrounds look distinct against the red and yellow of the sprites.  At times, some sprites use green instead of red.  The Game Boy Color supports up to 10 colors for certain Game Boy games, including Metroid II.  Nintendo's choice of default palette for the Super Game Boy is not bad, but is a bit cartoony and needs a bit of tweaking to look best in my opinion.  Some of the alternate palette options given in the Super Game Boy Player's Guide are decent.  Even turning the green to black makes a big difference.  The Super Game Boy only supports 4 colors for non-Super Game Boy enhanced Game Boy games.

Super Metroid picks up where Metroid II left off, and Metroid Fusion has something of a "virtual" return to SR388.  Metroid games were AWOL after Super Metroid's release in 1994.  Eight years would pass before another Metroid game would grace either a home or portable Nintendo console.  The success of Metroid II meant that future quality games in the series would be made for the portable consoles.

Weapons in Mega Man 1, 2 & 3

The classic Mega Man games have always had a non-linear progression as a hallmark of the series.  Instead of following a set path from beginning to end, you begin the game by choosing which level you will tackle in any order.  Some levels may be easier than others.  Each level has a Robot Master at the end which you must fight and defeat to beat the stage.  When you beat a Robot Master, you will acquire his weapon for use in other stages.  Each Robot Master weapon has its own energy meter and its own attack.  One or more of the other Robot Masters will be weak to that attack.

Prior to Mega Man 4 (and Mega Man III for the Game Boy), which added the Mega Buster charged shot to the series, the weapons were very important in the Mega Man series.  However, not all were created equal.  In this blog entry, I would like to give my impressions of the weapons in each of the first three Mega Man games for the NES and discuss the Robot Master weaknesses.  Let's delve into the central design mechanic of the Mega Man series from the beginning :

The designers of Mega Man intended the Robot Masters to each be weak against a specific weapon taken from another Robot Master and stronger or invulnerable to others.  This rock-paper-scissors design would remain throughout the series.  Mega Man and each Robot Master has 28 units of life energy.  A weak attack may only take one unit, but a strong attack could take four or ten or fourteen.  Mega Man's Arm Cannon would always take at least one unit for a successful hit, regardless of enemy.

In the original Mega Man, each weakness had an easy to understand rationale.

Cut Man is weak against Guts Man's weapon*
Rationale : Rock blunts scissors

Guts Man is weak against Bomb Man's weapon
Rationale : Bomb blasts rock

Bomb Man is weak against Fire Man's weapon
Rationale : Fire detonates explosives

Fire Man is weak against Ice Man's weapon
Rationale : Ice/water extinguishes fire

Ice Man is weak against Elec Man's weapon
Rationale : Ice/water conducts electricity

Elec Man is weak against Cut Man's weapon
Rationale : Electricity cannot flow once its circuit is cut

* - Unlike every other canonical Mega Man game, the Robot Masters weapons are not named in the game or manual.  The manual also refers to the Robot Masters as one word, "Cutman", and identifies their and Mega Man's creator as "Dr. Wright."  In the sequel it was firmly established as Dr. Light.  Sometimes, the games refers to "Dr. Wiley" or "DR. WILeY", but the accepted spelling of the villain's last name is "Dr. Wily."

Not all of these weapons are equally useful.  Guts Man's weapon only works when there are rocks around to pick up.  Bomb Man's weapon does not travel far and does not deal damage instantly, so it is usually limited in its application.  Is it any wonder that these two weapons are nowhere to be found in the Gameboy game? Ice Man's weapon usually only freezes enemies and is useless against most Robot Masters.  Fire Man, Cut Man and Elec Man's weapons are much more general purpose weapons.  The latter two can cause even more damage to a boss by the select/pause button exploit.

Some Robot Masters were made easier to defeat with the Arm Cannon than others, after all, the player had to find a way to break into this weakness loop.  Most players usually start with Bomb Man or Cut Man.  The Arm Cannon takes two units from Bomb Man and three from Cut Man, but Cut Man has to be fought in closer quarters and is more aggressive of the two Robot Masters.  Guts Man and Fire Man can also be beaten with a little practice and a full health meter.  Ice Man is more difficult because you have to follow his pattern very precisely and his projectile attack hits for a lot of damage.  Elec Man is by far the hardest of the Robot Masters to defeat because he is aggressive and so fast that his patterns are harder to memorize.

There is a special item you can obtain in this game called the Magnet Beam.  It allows you to construct temporary platforms which you can use to walk or ascend the screen.  It is behind three moveable blocks in Elec Man's stage.  It is necessary in Dr. Wily's stages and extremely useful in Ice Man's stage.  It is also very useful in Guts Man's stage, but you need Guts Man's weapon to move the blocks.  Alternatively, you can defeat Elec Man and go back to his stage to retrieve the Magnet Beam using Elec Man's weapon to destroy the blocks.  Mega Man allows you to revisit stages, but Mega Man 2 and 3 do not.

Now let us turn to Mega Man 2.  Mega Man 2 introduced the standard eight basic Robot Masters. However, they no longer are as grounded in basic concepts like their predecessors.

Metal Man is weak against Quick Boomerang
Wood Man is weak against Atomic Fire
Bubble Man is weak against Metal Blade
Air Man is weak against Leaf Shield
Crash Man is weak against Air Shooter
Heat Man is weak against Bubble Lead
Flash Man is weak against Metal Blade
Quick Man is weak against Time Stopper

The following assumes you are playing on the "Difficult" difficulty level, which is the only difficulty level in the original Japanese version.  In addition to the above, Metal Man is even weaker to his own weapon than to anything else.  The Time Stopper will only take half of Quick Man's life and thereafter the Crash Bomber is the weapon that will damage him the most.  As you may have noticed, Flash Man and Bubble Man share the same weakness. The Atomic Fire weapon can damage many of the Robot Masters more than the other weapons, but the fully charged shot takes half of its energy meter.  You can only defeat Wood Man using the Atomic Fire weapon alone.

Some of these pairings make some sense.  Time Stopper is a natural assumption to use against Quick Man.  Bubble Lead, a water-type attack, makes sense against Heat Man.  Moreover, Heat Man's attack pattern practically invites you to use Bubble Lead whereas Crash Man's pattern does not.  Fire burns wood, so Wood Man's weakness makes sense.  If you want to go out on a limb, I suppose you could say that the Leaf Shield can block the air intake of Air Man, who has a big fan in his chest.  The Metal Blades can cut through the swim gear of Bubble Man.  But why should Metal Man be weak against the Quick Boomerangs?  Why should Crash Man be so weak to the Air Shooter?  I don't really see the particular connection between Flash Man and the Metal Blades.

You may note some similarities between some of the weapons in Mega Man and Mega Man II.  The Quick Boomerang has an attack pattern nearly identical to Cut Man's weapon.  Fire Man and Atomic Fire have similar weapon properties, as do Bubble Lead and Ice Man's weapon.  Crash Man's bombs serve a similar function to Guts Man and Elec Man's weapons.

Weapons are more unbalanced in Mega Man 2 than in Mega Man.  The Metal Blade is easily the best weapon in the game, its fast, can shoot in eight directions, damage most enemies and takes quite a while to run out of energy.  The Quick Boomerang can be useful and lasts a while, but its range is short.  The Bubble Lead weapon has occasional uses.  The Time Stopper runs down its energy quickly and is best suited to Quick Man's stage and Quick Man itself.  Crash Bomber is best used for destroying barriers and is the only weapon that will work against the boss in Dr. Wily's castle, stage 4.  Heat Man's weapon is slow to fire and a fully charged shot takes half the energy meter, so it is usually reserved for Wood Man and Dr. Wily's first form.  Air Man's weapon is usually useless except against Crash Man and drains quickly.  Wood Man's weapon is almost certainly the most useless in the game, when does a skilled player need its protection and it is a pretty weak attack.  Even Air Man may go down faster to the Arm Cannon than to the Leaf Shield because his air jets can block the shield.

There are three acquirable Items in this game.  You acquire an Item by beating one of the Robot Masters.  Item-1 creates up to three temporary platforms which hover upwards for a short distance.  Item-2 allows you to travel across the screen in a flying platform.  Item-3 allows you to climb walls.  All three are necessary for Dr. Wily's Castle.  Items 1 and 2 are especially useful in Heat Man's stage to pass the areas with the disappearing blocks easily.

Although I do not find the original Mega Man to be overly difficult (anymore), Mega Man 2 added a password system and you could collect up to four disposable Energy Tanks that could refill your health meter at any time.  These two additions made the game much more forgiving.  For non-Japanese audiences, a Normal mode was added to make the game much easier to beat.  In Normal mode, everything takes twice as much damage from your weapons and the enemies give better item drops.  Mega Man 2's Difficult mode is the only mode in the Japanese version.

Finally, I will talk about Mega Man 3.  Mega Man 3 built on Mega Man 2's success and is a great game in its own right.  Nothing has changed on the weapons front.  Its weapons, however, leave even more to be desired.

Top Man is weak against Hard Knuckle
Shadow Man is weak against Top Spin
Gemini Man is weak against Search Snake
Needle Man is weak against Gemini Laser
Snake Man is weak against Needle Cannon
Spark Man is weak against Shadow Blade
Magnet Man is weak against Spark Shock
Hard Man is weak against Magnet Missile

Magnet Man is equally weak against Shadow Blade.  Shadow Man is also very weak against his own weapon.  Except for Hard Man and Spark Man, the logic of the weaknesses of the Robot Masters here is beyond me.

The best weapon in the game is the Shadow Blade.  It can fire in five directions, has good speed, decent range and comes back to you.  Essentially it is a more balanced version of the Metal Blade.  Needle Cannon is also pretty good, it fires fast and lasts a while.  Spark Shock is also fast and travels far.  Search Snake is pretty limited in its usefulness and often really weak, the Gemini Laser is slow to travel, you can only have one shot out at a time and it takes several ricochets off walls for each shot to expire.  Note that Search Snake has a slightly improved attack pattern over Bubble Lead. The Magnet Missiles exhaust themselves too quickly to be of much use.  Hard Knuckle is so slow that it is really only useful to break down barriers and in boss fights, like Crash Bomber.

Top Spin takes the prize here as the worst weapon in the first three Mega Man games.  It is worse than the Leaf Shield, the Air Cannon, Bomb Man and Guts Man's weapons.  There are three issues with the Top Spin.  First, you have to be right next to the enemy to register a hit, leaving you prone to being hit in return.  Second, the amount of damage it does is very variable.  Third, it drains really quickly.  You can spin against Shadow Man until Top Spin's energy is depleted and still not defeat it.  The second time around, you will almost certainly use another weapon against Shadow Man.  While there is one boss in Dr. Wily's castle that is vulnerable to the Top Spin, it is also vulnerable to another weapon, fortunately.

Mega Man's companion/helper Rush is introduced in this game.  Rush is a robot dog who can perform three abilities.  The first ability is the Rush Coil and is present when you begin the game.  It acts like a spring to allow you to jump high. The second is the Rush Marine and the third is the Rush Jet.  The Rush Marine allows you to travel freely in water and is useful in Gemini Man's stage.  The Rush Jet allows you to travel freely in the air and makes Magnet Man's stage a piece of cake as well as any other area with a lot of pits.

Mega Man 3 allows you to collect up to nine Energy Tanks.  There are some levels where you can get more than one Energy Tank or get one early in the level so you can collect them quickly.  Additionally, the slide move makes its first appearance.  With it, you can usually slide under any Robot Master who jumps and get away from them quickly.  This makes using a Robot Master weapon a little less necessary in many instances.

Dr. Wily's Revenge

The Game Boy game is something like a remake or adaptation of the original game with elements of the sequel thrown in.  The original Mega Man had six stages and four smaller parts to Dr. Wily's stage.  For the small screen, some cuts had to be made.  Gone are Bomb Man and Guts Man and their stages.  Dr. Wily's Castle and Space Ship are longer than any Robot Master's stage.  The game is six stages long, but the last two stages are quite difficult.  The health and energy meters were decreased from 28 to 19 units.

Cut Man, Fire Man, Ice Man and Elec Man are the Robot Masters you can choose from in this game.  Fire Man's attack has been simplified.  Elec Man has become much less aggressive and his attacks do far less damage, making him the usual Robot Master to start out with.  Their weakness have not changed from the NES game, but the best weapon to use against Cut Man is Fire Storm.  Their weapons are essentially the same as in the NES game.

When you get to the end of Dr. Wily's Castle, you will see teleporters you can take in any order to fight Bubble Man, Heat Man, Flash Man and Quick Man from Mega Man 2.  Their weaknesses have not changed, but the Metal Blade does not exist in this game, so you are intended use Atomic Fire against Flash Man.  They really are not particularly weak to any of the weapons from the first set of Robot Masters.  The only major change is that Heat Man's weapon does not take up as much energy for a charged shot.  It can also destroy the barriers on Dr. Wily's Space Ship.

Once you defeat the second four Robot Masters, you must fight Enker, who only is affected by the Arm Cannon. Enker gives up the Mirror Buster, which reflects enemy shots. Unfortunately, once you obtain their weapons, you have only one stage to use them.  The final password only allows you to continue before Dr. Wily's Castle, so if you want to try to beat the game again you have to fight the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters again.

There is one item that can be acquired in this game, the Carry item.  You obtain it after you defeat the final Robot Master of the initial four.  It creates a platform to the side or underneath you for a short period of time.  Only one can be active at a time, but you can use it to save yourself from a deadly fall or spikes or to reach areas where you cannot jump to unaided.  You cannot change to a weapon while it is active, but you can conserve its energy by leaving the screen it is on.

Capcom used Arabic numerals to designate the NES games and Roman numerals (and the subtitle above) to designate Game Boy games on their respective boxes in order to tell them apart.  I will do the same for this article.

Mega Man II gives the other half of the Robot Master contingent from Mega Man 2: Air Man, Crash Man, Metal Man and Wood Man.  After you get to the end of Dr. Wily's Castle, you will be able to go through teleporters for new stages for half of the contingent of Mega Man 3: Needle Man, Top Man, Magnet Man and Hard Man.  After you beat them and acquire their powers, you will fight Quint and obtain his power, the Sakugarne, which is a pogo-stick.  Then it is onto the final stage, Dr. Wily's Space Ship.  Other than actual stages instead of arenas for the second set of Robot Masters, not much has changed from its predecessor.

Rush, Energy Tanks and the slide move make their Game Boy introduction.  Rush transforms into the Coil, Jet and Marine.  You can obtain up to four Energy Tanks in Mega Man II.

I should talk about Robot Master weaknesses in this game, but this game is so poorly done that you can beat them all with the Arm Cannon.  The Robot Master's attacks and patterns are fairly simplistic and do not usually do much damage.  Quint is a joke and Dr. Wily's final forms won't cause you grief, unlike the previous game.  The music stinks as well.  Considering that the engine from the previous game was quite robust, the lack of inspiration in this game is appalling.

Okay, so in this game, Metal Man is now vulnerable to Crash Bomber.  On the other hand, Crash Man is not nearly as vulnerable to the Air Shooter, but it remains the best weapon to use against it.  Neither Shadow Man nor Spark Man are present, so Magnet Man is now vulnerable to Needle Cannon.  Similarly, Gemini Man is not present, so Needle Man is now vulnerable to Top Spin.

100(ish) Game Boy Games Worth Playing

I previously created a list of 250 NES Games Worth Playing, and now I would like to do the same for Nintendo's other 8-bit success the Game Boy.  Here I have fashioned a list of 100 good games that show off the best the library has to offer.  The Game Boy has over five hundred licensed, non-Color titles, so I cannot say I am an authority on every game ever made for the platform.  However, I am familiar with most of the titles listed below.

I have limited this list to monochrome-only Game Boy games.  No hybrid Game Boy/Game Boy Color games here.  This includes Pokemon Yellow, which has Game Boy Color-specific features but little more than Super Game Boy level of color.  Most of the games released in 1994 and later have some form of Super Game Boy support.  This list is not meant to say that there are only 100 good Game Boy games in the monochrome library or that this is a top 100, I'm always happy to learn of other good games.  It is limited to games that were released in the United States.

Some games are included not because they are particularly good but are part of a larger series.  Disney's DuckTales, for example, was a great game on the NES but only passable on the Game Boy.  Mega Man II is easily one of the worst Mega Man games in the series, but it is part of a much greater series.  The first Castlevania has your character move like molasses, but it has redeeming features and it makes you appreciate its sequels more.  Final Fantasy Legend is little more than a grindfest, but some people like that sort of thing.

While this list is clearly biased, I tried to balance it.  There are few, if any sports games or fighting games, but lots of action/adventure games.  The Game Boy was known for its puzzle games, so I have included pretty much any official Tetris game.  You cannot go wrong with Tetris and the Game Boy is the system for lovers of this classic.  In fact, casual gaming on the go was practically invented by the Game Boy.

I have tried to avoid ports of arcade games, of which there are several, unless there is something truly unique about the game.  Space Invaders is unique because not only does it have Super Game Boy compatibility, but it will also let you play a recreation of the arcade version using the full SNES hardware!  These days there are so many ways to play the real deal on a portable device.  There are several ports of console games, but I only include ones that can stand on their own when you want to play a game on the go.

I have included certain games that are ports of NES games or close conversions.  Milon's Secret Castle is a true port of the NES game which takes the Game Boy's limitations in mind.  The Duck Tales games use the same structure as the NES games and most of the graphics and sound, but the level layouts are different.

A Boy and His Blob: Rescue of Princess Blobette
Adventures of Lolo
Alleyway
Balloon Kid
Batman: The Video Game
Batman: The Animated Series
Battle Arena Toshinden
Battle of Olympus, The
Bionic Commando
Bomberman GB
Bonk's Adventure
Bonk's Revenge
Castlevania Adventure, The
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Castlevania Legends
Contra III: The Alien Wars
Cosmo Tank
Disney's Darkwing Duck
Disney's DuckTales
Disney's DuckTales 2
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Land
Donkey Kong Land 2
Donkey Kong Land III
Dr. Franken
Dr. Franken 2
Dr. Mario
F-1 Race
Faceball 2000
Final Fantasy Adventure
Final Fantasy Legend, The
Final Fantasy Legend 2
Final Fantasy Legend 3
Fortified Zone
Game Boy Gallery
Game & Watch Gallery
Gargoyle's Quest
GhostBusters II
Gradius: The Interstellar Assault
Great Greed
Harvest Moon GB
Hudson's Adventure Island
Hudson's Adventure Island II
James Bond 007
Kid Dracula
Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters
Kirby's Block Ball
Kirby's Dream Land
Kirby's Dream Land 2
Kirby's Pinball Land
Kirby's Star Stacker
Kung' Fu Master
Kwirk
Legend of the River King GB
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Mario's Picross
Mega Man
Mega Man II
Mega Man III
Mega Man IV
Mega Man V
Mercenary Force
Metroid II
Milon's Secret Castle
Mole Mania
Motocross Maniacs
Nemesis
Ninja Gaiden Shadow
Operation C
Quarth
Pinball - Revenge of the 'Gator
Pokemon Blue
Pokemon Red
Popeye 2
Prehistorik Man
Prince of Persia
R-Type
Radar Mission
Rolan's Curse
Rolan's Curse 2
SolarStriker
Space Invaders
Star Trek 25th Anniversary
Super Mario Land
Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins
Sword of Hope
Sword of Hope II
Tamagotchi
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue
Tetris
Tetris 2
Tetris Attack
Tetris Blast
Tetris Plus
Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break
Trax
Wario Blast Featuring Bomberman!
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
Wario Land II
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Yoshi
Yoshi's Cookie
Zen: Intergalactic Ninja

Getting Out the Digital Crayons : Color and the Game Boy

When the Game Boy was released in the U.S. in August of 1989, it had three big advantages.  First, it came bundled with Tetris, the Killer App.  Second, with the console at $99.99 and cartridges at $19.99 the price was right.  Third, the battery life of 20-35 hours was very impressive, especially compared to the competition (Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx and NEC Turbo Express), which could barely muster 6 hours.  The only disadvantage to the Game Boy was its four-shade monochrome screen, but compared to its predecessors, the Microvision, Game & Watch and Tiger Electronics toys, it was a huge leap forward.  That drawback was not enough to keep people from buying millions of Nintendo's handheld system and few of the competition's handheld systems.

1.  Super Game Boy

Nintendo planned to introduce a successor color console as soon as was practicable, but the monochrome Game Boy could not be quickly replaced.  It took some years before LCD screen technology produced an affordable and practical color screen.  Nintendo's first attempt at color was an add-on for the Super Nintendo, the Super Game Boy.  The SGB could play GB games on a SNES, with SGB providing GB hardware and the SNES providing controller input and audio and video output.  Any GB game could have a 4-color palette set from 32 choices or the user could make up his own palette.  The user could also choose a graphical border from a set of 9 borders.  The borders could have up to 64 colors.  Nintendo's non-SGB enhanced games like Tetris and Metroid II would pick a default palette from these 32 choices.  See here : https://tcrf.net/Notes:Super_Game_Boy

However, GB games could take advantage of some of the SNES's features, such as the SNES's sound chip, input from the 2nd controller port, custom borders and an ability to provide more color to the game than the built-in palettes could provide.  While the GB itself had three palettes of four shades available to the background and sprites, the SGB could not colorize these directly.  Instead, it could apply a 4 color palette to every 8x8 pixel area. 4 color palettes were available with one common color.  Thus at any time, up to ten separate colors could appear inside the Super Game Boy gameplay window.

Beginning with Donkey Kong, games used the Super Game Boy to apply more colors than the built-in palettes.  However, the most colorful screens were typically static screens.  The application of color to a tile was based solely on the tile's position on the screen.  In order to avoid tiles changing color depending on their location on the screen, games with SGB support typically applied a four color palette to the active playfield area.  One exception to this limited color applied to the "window", a hardware feature of the Game Boy's PPU which allowed for stable status bars.  Because the tiles within the window were stable regardless of sprite activity or screen scrolling, window tiles were typically more colorful than the active playfield area. 

Most games released after Donkey Kong would provide some level of Super Game Boy support, but eventually the support was limited to palettes and borders.  These borders and custom colors would not be seen on a Game Boy Color, Advance or Player.

There are games that saw a re-release for the Super Game Boy with support for SGB features.  Centipede, originally released separately, was later released in a multicart with Millipede, is one such game.  Super Breakout was similarly updated when released in a multicart with Battlezone.  Asteroids and Missle Command were released separately as pure GB carts, then in a multicart with SGB support.  Tetris 2 was released first as a GB game, but quickly updated with an SGB compatible version.

2.  Game Boy Color

The Game Boy Color supported a color screen and had a 15-bit palette of colors available.  Each background 8x8 tile can select from 8 palettes with 4 colors each, and each 8x8 sprite can select from 8 palettes with 3 colors each.  Thus up to 56 colors can be shown on the screen at any one time.  However, this functionality is strictly limited to GBC games.

When the Game Boy Color was released, Nintendo allowed for some ability to colorize GB games.  When a GB booted up, the GBC would apply either the default palette entry or a palette entry customized for a particular game or set of games.  The boot ROM of the GBC would compare the hash of the ROM with a table and if there was a match, it would apply a custom palette.  While there were over 1,500 GB games, including variations, the boot ROM table only had entries for 84 of games.  Nintendo's own titles always got an entry, but some third party games also received some entries.  Weirdly, there are several games that will use a custom palette only for their European version.  For example, Mega Man 1,2 & 3 will show a custom palette with Mega Man in blue, but only if the European cartridges are inside the Game Boy Color, Advance or Player.

If there was no match, then the GBC could be told to apply one of twelve palette entries by pressing the A or B button, with or without a directional on the Game Boy Color's boot screen.  The player would have to be quick to do this, otherwise the game would load with the default palette.

This colorization scheme allowed for separate 4-color palettes for the background and two 4-color sprites palettes.  Thus up to 12 colors could be available, but sprites tend to use transparency for one color, thus typically 10 colors are used.  Because the sprites and backgrounds can be directly colored, the GBC can typically show more color than the SGB.  Sometimes, the custom palette would have a detrimental effect.  In Super Mario Land, World 1-3, there are tiles that will fall and hurt Mario.  Because these tiles use a sprite palette, they are colored differently than the background palette, making them easy to spot.  The color combinations and list of games that are supported can be found here : http://tcrf.net/CGB_Bootstrap_ROM

In order to provide software for its new system, Nintendo released several of its games with new colorization using the GBC hardware.  Often these titles had the DX suffix after their names.  Thus there were The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, R-Type DX, Tetris DX.  These games provided substantial enhancements over their older versions.

Other re-released games include Wario Land II, Centipede, Frogger, Legend of the River King GB, Harvest Moon GB, Prince of Persia, Space Invaders, Daffy Duck - Fowl Play, Looney Tunes, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, The Rugrats Movie, Super Breakout!, Titus the Fox. Pokemon Yellow, while it is a Game Boy Color game, hardware-wise, does little in terms of color beyond its SGB features.

Japan received a colorized version of Balloon Fight (Balloon Kid overseas) for the Nintendo Power rewritable Game Boy Pak.  The game was never released as a standalone cartridge.  Konami colorized most of its Game Boy games and released them in Europe in four Konami GB Collections.  Volume 1 contained Castlevania: The Adventure, Gradius, Konami Racing (F-1 Spirit) and Probotector (Contra : The Alien Wars). Volume 2 included Block Game (Quarth), Frogger, Parodius and Track and Field.  In Volume 3 you could play Bikers (Motocross Maniacs), Guttang Gottung (no idea what this is, it might be unique), Mystical Ninja (Ganbare Goemon), Pop'n Twinbee.  Perhaps the best collection was Volume 4, consisting of Antarctic Adventure, Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, Gradius II: Return of the Hero & Yie Ar Kung-Fu.  Castlevania II on this cart is interesting because the U.S./European GB version had the holy water as a weapon, but the colorized version found on this cartridge had the Cross, which was in the Japanese GB version.  Interestingly, Capcom had intended to colorize its Game Boy Mega Man games and was going to release them as a Game Boy Advance cart (Mega Man Mania or Mega Man Anniversary Collection), but the cart never materialized.

Finally, there are hybrid games that first saw a release with GBC support in mind.  By allowing cartridges to be backwards compatible with the Game Boy while being able use the full color features of the GBC, Nintendo allowed its monochrome, 1989-vintage machine a few more years of life.  The hybrid games are really GBC games with a black & white option.  Thus the contrast may not be ideal where the color version uses dark backgrounds, as in Mega Man Xtreme.  There may be odd color choices, like the white beard for Arthur in Ghosts 'N Goblins that makes him look like Santa Claus.  The game may not run as smoothly because the GB runs at 4MHz and the GBC runs at 8MHz.  Blaster Master: Enemy Below is one game that is sluggish on the GB where it is fairly smooth on the GBC (the NES game is smoothest of all).  Graphical tricks may not be present in the GB because the GBC has a much better ability to perform "raster" tricks in hardware.  Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 was the last hybrid game released, on September 15, 2001, thus giving the Game Boy (from July 31, 1989) twelve years and forty-five days of continuous support.  That is second only to the Playstation 2 and (perhaps) the Atari 2600.

The Game Boy Advance acts exactly like a Game Boy Color.  The Game Boy Player for the GameCube acts like a Game Boy Advance, even though it is similar to a Super Game Boy.  It does not support any Super Game Boy functions, but it does allow you to play Game Boy Color games on a TV.

The Everdrive GB Review - Game Boy and Game Boy Color Fans Rejoice : Your Prayers Have Been Answered!

Last year, Krizz released his long-anticipated Everdrive GB.  The Everdrive GB is a flash cart that supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROMs.  It is extremely important for two reasons.  First, it is a modern cart that uses removable micro SD cards to hold ROMs.  Earlier cartridges relied on flash memory built into the cartridge itself, which limited the number of games that could be stored on the cartridge at any one time.  The use of an SD card means that you can use any device that will write to an SD card to load games onto it.  The EMS Smart Cart 64M(egabit), probably the most widely available older-style Game Boy/Color flash cart, only supports two 4 Megabytes banks for games.  It also requires the use of software to load games.  This software uses an unsigned driver and intended to work with Windows XP.  Getting it to work on Windows Vista, 7 or 8 is an increasingly annoying hassle.  The Everdrive GB supports up to a 32GB microSD card, formatted with FAT32.  A 2GB or better card can easily hold every ROM you would ever want to play.

Second, unlike the other flash carts currently on the market, including the EMS Smart Cart, it is designed to play games, not for music creation.  The Everdrive does not need any configuration files or mapper files.  Out of the box it supports the MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 and MBC5, which encompasses virtually every licensed Game Boy and Game Boy Color game.  It also of course supports no-MBC cartridge ROMs like Tetris (32KB).  The EMS Smart Cart only supports MBC5, which virtually all Game Boy Color games use but no pure Game Boy game needed to use.  Unfortunately due to differences between the MBCs, this caused many issues with Game Boy MBC1, MBC2 & MBC3 games.  Also, there are Game Boy and Game Boy Color games that, intentionally or inadvertently, do unusual things with the Game Boy hardware that screws them up when playing on an old-style flash cart like the Bung GBXchanger or the EMS Smart Cart.

The Everdrive GB does not have these problems.  The Everdrive also supports Super Game Boy features and also allows the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance to display custom color palettes for recognized monochrome Game Boy games.  You can still change the palette used for Game Boy games in a Game Boy Color or Advance using the d-pad and buttons.  This is why it starts twice (except for Super Game Boy, see below), once for the menu and then a second time for the game.  This ensures maximum compatibility.  As of this writing, there are no OS updates, all you need is a formatted microSD card and you are all set.

Compatibility is the key here.  When I purchased the EMS Smart Cart, there was always a possibility that Game Boy games would fail to work for some reason or another.  This would require the game to be patched.  I contributed a few patches myself, but even so, issues still crop up from time to time.  With the Everdrive GB, you won't have to worry about your game suddenly crashing or failing to save.  I have tested many of the games that required patches with the EMS Smart Cart and all worked without any problems on the Everdrive GB.  It supports entering sixteen Game Genie codes, but this feature is somewhat hit or miss. You can change the type of MBC emulated if you wish, but no game needs this feature.

Whereas the EMS Smart Cart would load all games onto its internal memory and allow instant access to whatever games it could hold, the Everdrive GB must write a game stored onto the microSD card into its internal flash memory.  There is 8MB of flash memory, most commercial Game Boy Color games maxed out at 4MB, and there is only one licensed game, from Japan, that uses 8MB.  The Flash is written to in 64KB blocks, and each period you see after Write, which corresponds to an LED pulse on the cart, means it has written a 64KB block.  A 4MB game, the largest typical commercial Game Boy Color game, would take sixty-four periods.  Each block can be written to in less than a second, which gives less than a minute for the largest Game Boy Color game to load.  Note that Game Boy Color, Advance and Player systems have a CPU that is twice as fast as the CPU in the Game Boy, Pocket, Super or Light, so they will write ROMs much faster.

While this is slightly less convenient than the EMS Smart Card's instant access, you can restart the game that was last written into the Everdrive GB by pressing start when you next turn on the system.  This save you from having to wait while the game is rewritten.  There is a coin-style battery used to store the contents of the battery backed S-RAM when the system is turned off.  The cartridge will write the contents of RAM to a file automatically when you start another game.

Everdrives run off a menu system that displays a page of a folder at a time.  Each page on the Game boy can show twelve files or folders at a time.  The first twenty characters of the file or folder's name will appear in the selection area.  There is also a three row shaded area on the bottom of the screen that will show the first sixty characters of the currently highlighted folder or file.  This should be sufficient to identify most games without having to eliminate too much of their file name.  It is a very convenient system to use.

Despite the currently-available cartridges using a Game Boy Color-shaped translucent cartridge shell, it will fit and work inside an original DMG Game Boy (original off-white and "Play it Loud" colors).  There is a plastic corner cut into the back that allows the power switch tab the appropriate amount of room to allow the switch to move into the ON position without any problems.

Things it does not support (does not encompass Japanese hardware) :

MBC3 Real Time Clock

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial - Digital Companion
Harvest Moon GBC
Kate and Ashley - Pocket Planner
Pokemon Crystal
Pokemon Gold
Pokemon Silver

Patches exist for the Pokemon games to allow you to set the clock before running the game or loading a game, but the clock will not change while the game is playing.  Games should work otherwise.  The RTC functionality in Harvest Moon is pretty limited, so you won't miss it.

MCB5 Rumble Pak

10-Pin Bowling
3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrillride
Disney's The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy
Hole in One Golf
Missile Command
NASCAR Challenge
Perfect Dark
Pokémon Pinball
Polaris SnoCross
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
Rhino Rumble
Star Wars: Episode I - Racer
Test Drive Off-Road 3
Tonka Raceway (US Only, European version did not come in a Rumble Pak)
Top Gear Pocket
Vigilante 8
Zebco Fishing!

Games still work and some came with and without the rumble feature.  The rumble feature is only slightly missed.

Game Boy Camera

ROM may work, but functionality will be severely restricted.

MBC7 Tilt Control

Only used with one Game Boy Color game, Kirby's Tilt 'N Tumble.

HuC-3

Only used outside of Japan with Robopon - Sun Version, supports an RTC, an Infrared Port, Battery Backed Save RAM and has a speaker that can make some simple sounds when the cart is off.  The physical cartridge is oversized and has a compartment for a user-replaceable battery and also has an internal save battery.  The game will not go past the Hudson Soft Logo on the Everdrive GB.  The Japanese only mappers HuC-1, TAMA-5, MMM01 (and MBC4 if it exists) are not supported.  Nor are the :

Unlicensed Games :

Wisdom Tree
Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land
Joshua & the Battle of Jericho
King James Bible For Use On Game Boy
NIV Bible & the 20 Lost Levels of Joshua
Spiritual Warfare

You aren't missing much with the lack of support for these unlicensed games.  Graphics will be too garbled to play, just like most emulators.  The great bgb emulator does support these games, if you feel compelled to try and read the bible on a 160x144 screen.  These games will work in a real Game Boy but not in an Everdrive GB.

Rocket Games
ATV Racing
Full Time Soccer
Hang Time Basketball
Karate Joe
Painter
Pocket Smash Out
Race Time
Space Invasion

These were unlicensed Game Boy Color games by Rocket Games, a label from Datel and InterAct, makers of the GameShark and Pro Action Replay cheat devices.  They also issued some multi-carts with these games.  I assume these games will work in a real Game Boy Color.  They do not work in an Everdrive GB.

Sachen and Gowin also released unlicensed Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but they are too obscure and awful to be worth mentioning.  They will not work in an Everdrive GB.

Mortal Kombat I & II

Uses the MBC1 chip in an unusual way, trying to select a game will just go back to the menu.  Play the standalone releases instead.  Typical MBC1 games have a maximum 512KB ROM, if the ROM size is 1MB like Mortal Kombat (and there are a few Japanese games like Genjin Collection that are that large) it will not work in an EverDrive.

Transfer Pak

The N64 Transfer Pak, used for Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mickey's Speedway USA and Perfect Dark will not work with the Everdrive as it would with a regular Game Boy or Game Boy Color game due to its menu.  However, there is a way to get the transfer function to work if you have an EverDrive N64 and are willing to mod your Transfer Pak : http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1780.0

The EMS Cart may work if only one game is on it, but the Everdrive GB will not.

Nanoloop and LSDJ

These music cartridge programs are not fully supported on the Everdrive GB.  Nanoloop uses custom hardware and saving songs does not work in the Everdrive GB.  LSDJ requires 128KB of RAM available to it.  The Everdrive GB only makes 32KB of RAM available, which is all that virtually any Game Boy and Game Boy Color game would ever need.  Only individual songs can be saved.  The EMS Smart Cart is a better choice for LSDJ.

Game Boy Pocket

The Game Boy Pocket may not be able to provide sufficient energy to run the Everdrive GB or the EMS Smart Cart on batteries. Reports have been hit or miss as to whether it works.  I would suggest finding the strongest AAA batteries you can find.  Rechargeable batteries tend to not do well because they are nominally 1.2v, whereas alkaline and lithium batteries are nominally 1.5v.  I would suggest using Energizer Ultimate Lithiums or the Duracell equivalent.  I have had success with Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries and my Game Boy Pocket, so it can work.  While eventually the voltage tends to even out over time, it is when you start up that the extra little bit is most needed.  See here for some advice : http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1972.15

All other official Nintendo Game Boy systems will work, including those that take batteries.  This includes the DMG Game Boy, the Game Boy Light, Game Boy Color, Super Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP (front lit and back lit) and the Game Boy Player.  They have no problems with good rechargeable batteries like the Eneloop.

Minor Issues :

Please do not be alarmed by the above list, it is really only a small fraction of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color experience.

R-Type DX will not work properly until you perform a soft reset using Start + Select + B + A.

Shantae will write a save file which cannot be copied or deleted in a card reader.  The game will save and load games just fine.  This could be an issue with my micro SD card.

The Everdrive GB certainly works on the Super Game Boy.  It will support games with Super Game Boy features like Donkey Kong and Kirby's Dreamland 2.  It will work just fine with Space Invaders, including the part that transfers control to the SNES to play The Arcade Game.  However, 24 of Nintendo's games had a predefined palette, and when inserted in the Super Game Boy, the hardware would default to the specified palette.  When you first load a game with the Everdrive GB, you will see the default palette.  You can change it manually to the correct palette, using the information from here : http://tcrf.net/Super_Game_Boy_1_and_2, or you can push the reset switch of the SNES.  When the Super Game Boy boots back up, you will see the predefined palette.

One minor complaint I have is that the button to select a game or an option is B and the button to go back is A.  This just feels wrong on a Nintendo system with two buttons.  This can be changed on the Everdrive N8, but not here.  I do not have a problem with this scheme on the Mega Everdrive because a Genesis controller uses three or six buttons.

With GBOS v2, you can now swap A & B buttons so that A does the selecting and B goes back/cancels.  Just put it in the GBOS.GB file in your EDGB directory on the SD card and that is it.  It adds a half a second to the startup time because it has to load the file into RAM rather than have it embedded on the FPGA.

The Everdrive GB saves games in 32KB files.  Typically only the Pokemon games used battery backed save RAM that large.  Most Game Boy and Game Boy Color games used 8KB and some used 512 nibbles to save.  Editing save game files will require an extra step.

The Everdrive GB will not sort files alphabetically, you will need a program like DriveSort for that.

Conclusion

The Everdrive GB, while a bit more expensive than previous Game Boy flash carts, is a steal at $88.00.  I cannot recommend it highly enough to all fans of 8-bit handheld Nintendo games.

Game Boy and Headphones - Better Earpirces do not Always Give Better Sound

The original DMG-01 Game Boy are known for their superior sound quality over their successors, the Pocket, Light, Color, Advance & Advance SP.  I wanted to test that with three sets of Earbuds I have.

Set one are the Samsung Earbuds that came packed with a Samsung Galaxy Note 4.  These earbuds have a second ring for a micrphone (TRRS), a microphone volume dial and flat cables.  Although they came free with the phone, they probably would cost you $5-6 at retail.  

Set two are a pair of Earbuds branded with Disney's Phineas and Ferb cartoon show.  They have rounded cables and no micrphone.  They use gel Earbud tips.  They probably would set you back $2-3 at retail.

Set three is a pair of Earbuds bought at the dollar store.  The cables are extremely thin and the block that allowed for the Earbuds's cable to be retracted broke very quickly.  $1.00.  Unlike Set one and two, they do not use Earbud tips.  The Earbuds Nintendo packaged with the original Game Boys looked very much like these.

Sets one and two are more comfortable in the ear than set one and can fit more snuggly.  Set one, when used with a modern device like a Samsung Galaxy Note 4, sounds crisp and clear with the audio generated from that phone.  Sets two and three have a hard time fitting into the headphone jack.  What you hear from them sounds comparatively muffled compared to set one.  

So, which set is best for listening to the Game Boy?  In terms of Sound Quality, set two or three sound superior to set one.  Set one will give the loudest sound, but the noise floor is also raised.  The result is a constant hiss at any volume.  Additionally, set one will give off a high pitched noise at high volumes and audible hum at low volumes, which can be easily be heard when no music is playing.  

Set two and three will give an appropriate volume, but it won't be deafening like Set one can provide.  Nor will you hear hum or the sharply pitches at the extreme ends of the volume dial.  However, set two sounds way too quiet unless the earphone connector is pulled a few millimeters out of the jack.  Set three doesn't have this problem, but its earpieces are far less comfortable than Set two's gel earbuds.   

This is another example where the latest and greatest is not the best for vintage gaming hardware.  The Samsung Earbuds deliver far more dynamic range than the cheap Earbuds, but this is a situation where an output device gives too much.  I found that headphones that came with a functioning volume wheel could cut down the headphone's own volume range to mask out the worst aspects of the Game Boy's sound without lowering the volume too much.  Without a volume wheel, you are left to the mercy of the earbud's default sound repoduction, and it may not sound pretty.

Even the DMG Game Boy is no audiophile's prize, it is far from it.  It retailed at $100 and used a screen that was unimpressive even in its day.  It did have Tetris, great battery life and a good price, so if the audio quality is less than spectacular, most people did not care.  Also, after the first two years, stereo sound separation was not very noticeable with games.  

Half of Me, Useless to Thee

Some vintage computing and gaming devices came with two interconnected components.  They came with two distinct physical elements that combined together to function.  Here I will give examples of what I mean :

Roland MPU-401 Units

The original Roland MPU-401 unit housed all its circuitry (microcontroller, RAM and firmware) in a metal box.  This box connected via a male  to male DB-25 cable to an interface card or cartridge for the computer in question.  The unit had DIN connectors for MIDI IN and OUT and was intended to connect to MIDI devices.  The interface card (MIF-IPC, MIF-IPC-A) was always a simple bit of circuitry to provide an input and an output port to the MPU-401.  Typically, when a Roland MPU-401 is marketed for sale, it will only come with the unit, and not an interface card.  While the circuitry in the unit handles all the intelligent MPU-401 commands, without an interface card, a PC has no way to connect to it.  Designing a prototype interface board is possible, but not necessarily something that just anybody can do.  Recently, there are clones available for the MIF-IPC-A, which is compatible with just about any PC with an ISA slot.  However, they are really pricey for a simple card with no custom chips.

You can purchase perfectly functional replicas of the interface board here : https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/

Roland MPU-IPC Line

Roland later released the MPU-IPC, MPU-IPC-T and MPU-IMC.  In this case, while there was a combo of an ISA card and an breakout box, this time all the circuitry was placed on the ISA card.  The breakout box contained just the physical MIDI ports and some passive components.  Usually, when these are advertised, only the breakout box is listed.  The box on its own is useless.  The card without the box also has no practical purpose unless you are trying to explore the MPU-401 as a programmer.  Fortunately, if you have the card, it is feasible to solder together a MIDI OUT port so you can connect your MT-32 or other MIDI device to it.  Even implementing a MIDI IN port is feasible with an opto-isolator.  The MPU-IPC-T's manual, freely available online, gives the schematic for both it and the MPU-IPC.

The Roland LAPC-I is not useless without its breakout box, the MCB-1.  The MCB-1 is useless without its card.  However, they were sold separately, whereas for the MPU-IPC packages, card and box came together.  The only thing you miss with an MCB-1 is the ability to connect external MIDI modules.  The same applies for the IBM Music Feature card and its breakout box, but in IBM's case, the card came with the box.  I have read that you can repurpose a common gameport-to-MIDI adapter to substitute for an MCB-1 because they both use a DA-15 connector.  This pinout would almost certainly work :

LAPC I DA-15 Connector
+5v - 8, 11
GND - 9, 11
MIDI IN - 14
MIDI OUT - 13

Sound Blaster DA-15 Connector
+5v - 1, 8, 9
GND - 4, 5
MIDI OUT - 12
MIDI IN - 15

Wireless Controllers : Atari Remote Control Wireless Joysticks to Nintendo GameCube WaveBird Controller

Each Atari Wireless Joystick has an antenna jutting out of it and, compared to a wired joystick, a huge base housing the RF circuitry and the battery compartment.  The receiver is a black box with a retractable metal antenna that plugs into the joystick ports of the 2600.  The 2600's power adapter plugs into the receiver, which then has a cable which channels the power to the console.  The range on these controllers was so poor that they were not worth the all the hassle.

Due to the unwieldy nature of Atari's RF solution, for the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, most controllers used Infrared Receiver Technology.  This is the same type of technology found in your cable remote.  Some controllers had an IR transmitter built into them, which did not add nearly as much weight and bulk (even with batteries) as the RF solutions did.  All required a receiver to be plugged into a controller port. Nintendo released a 4-player adapter called the NES Satellite.  The Satellite had a base where you could plug in four controllers.  It also had a receiver which plugged into both of the NES's controller ports.  Similarly, the SNES Super Scope also used a wireless IR receiver to determine the "gun's" position.

The WaveBird controller was the first modern wireless controller.  It used RF signals in the 900MHz and 2.4GHz bands and did not require an unobstructed line-of-sight like previous IR controllers.  The range was superior to IR controllers, supporting operation 20 feet from the console.  It no longer mattered where the player was in relation to the receiver or what was between him and the receiver (within reason).  The WaveBird was not substantially larger than the regular wired GameCube controller, unlike the Atari Wireless Joysticks.  Unfortunately, the receivers are really small and often times get lost and thus are not included with every WaveBird auction.  By the seventh generation, all wireless controllers used Bluetooth technology, with the transmitter/receiver located in the console.

Game Boy Player

The Nintendo Game Boy Player attaches to one of the ports underneath a Nintendo GameCube.  It allows you to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance Cartridges on the GameCube and on a TV screen, similar to the Super Game Boy for the SNES.  However, while the Super Game Boy contained everything it needed to run inside its cartridge, the Game Boy Player includes a software disc.  This disc must be present in the GameCube and must load before you can use the Game Boy Player.  The Player screws into the underneath of the GameCube, but the mini-disc and its small case tended to get lost.  The GameCube's copy protection must be bypassed to use a backup of the software disc.  This is the only official way to play Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance games on a TV screen.

However, you need not despair anymore if you have the Player and don't have a disc.  You can run Game Boy Interface, which can do even a better job than the real disc!   Start here : http://retrorgb.com/gameboyinterface.html

Games Designed for a Particular Peripheral : R.O.B.

(I am not going to go through every example of a game that works with only a certain peripheral, but a few special cases come to mind)

Nintendo released R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy, with the NES Deluxe Set back in 1985.  R.O.B. came in this set with the pack-in game Gyromite.  R.O.B. was also released alone and without a pack-in game.  It is not uncommon to find loose R.O.B.s or Gyromite or even Stack-Up cartridges.  However, without the special accessories for each game, R.O.B. is useless.  Because the Gyromite accessories came with systems, they are more common than the Stack-Up accessories.  However, finding complete sets of accessories is also a hit or miss affair.  Gyromite has five pieces (two gyros, gyro holder, gyro spinner, controller stand) and Stack Up has ten (five blocks and five stands).

Games Designed for a Particular Peripheral : Miracle Piano Teaching System

The Miracle Piano Teaching System was a peripheral for the NES, SNES and Genesis, and also worked with the PC, Macintosh and Amiga systems.  The Miracle Piano was a 49-key MIDI keyboard and came with software either on cartridge or disk.  It is enormous as far as peripherals go.  It also came with a custom cable to plug into the console's controller port and a foot pedal.  On a PC, a pair of MIDI ports would work.  All sound would be generated by the keyboard's speakers.  The piano itself is the same regardless of the system it was intended for, only the software and cable differs from system to system.  Loose carts do appear as well as loose pianos, but the cables tend to get lost.  Pinouts for the cables can be found here : http://pianoeducation.org/pnompcab.html