Name: Super Gameboy
Released: June 1994

The Super Game Boy was a special cartridge released by Nintendo to allow their extremely popular Game Boy line of games to take advantage of the more complex and powerful hardware of the Super Nintendo. By 1994 the monochromatic screen of the Game Boy was really starting to show it’s age, and it would still be another 4 years until we saw the release of the excellent update; the Game Boy Color. By contrast not only Sega, but also Atari had managed to release technically superior handheld systems that allowed for games to display in a multitude of color on their screens. Though, regardless of their advantages, neither would come close to the massive success of the Game Boy.

The Super Game Boy then was a smart stepping stone for the company at this time. By buying this single cartridge, folks who already owned a library of Game Boy cartridges could now play their small-screen titles on their living room TV’s. This also came with a host of upgrades in the form of wonderfully colorful and artistic borders that you could select from. If you were creatively inclined you could even make your own borders with a built-in editor. More still, the palette selection tool meant bringing a variety into the games; but just like the borders, if you wanted, the tools were there to create your own take on the coloring system. It didn’t stop there however, as many Game Boy games from this era would be built with the Super Game Boy in mind. When plugging a “Super Game Boy Enhanced” title into the cartridge, you would get developer crafted upgrades like uniquely specialized borders, custom developer palettes, and some of these games even had improved sound design you could only get through the SGB cart.

In 1998 a successor, aptly named the Super Game Boy 2, would release as a Japan exclusive. It contained a number of upgrades from the original model, not least of all being an added link cable port. It’s often thought this may have been in direct response to Nintendo’s new explosively popular franchise of Pokémon. Adding this port meant that even folks without a Game Boy could engage in the Pocket Monster trade-frenzy of the 90’s. Another, far more substantial, upgrade is that when they released the original Super Game Boy it had a flaw that actually made your games run 2.4% faster than original hardware. The SGB2 however, fixed that problem entirely and now gave you a perfectly timed version of your handheld favorites. It’s also worth noting however, that it’s possible to physically modify a Super Game Boy to have both the link-port and correct the timing errors. If you’re not afraid to tinker with some circuitry, of course.

The Super Game Boy would go on to be the most adopted add-on for the system, and with its many special features and variety of upgrades over your actual Game Boy, it’s not hard to see why. Arguably the best thing about the add-on though, was that it granted an entire group of gamers the ability to play Game Boy games, without ever having to purchase a Game Boy.

Name: Satellaview
Released: April, 1995 - June, 2000

One of the most interesting add-ons in the history of the medium, the Satellaview was designed as a satellite subscription service to be sold exclusively in Japan. Designed with cooperation from St. Giga satellite radio, this service would broadcast games out to your Super Famicom in a couple of different ways. There were games you could download to the included cartridge/memory card set and play at your leisure, but there were also special broadcast games, where on a weekly (sometimes daily) schedule a new portion of the game would be sent out. The games on this service are some of the most unique and interesting that the system had to offer, such as a voice-enhanced 16-bit remake of the original Legend of Zelda, a series of Mario-themed Excitebike games, a prequel to the Kaizo Chojin Shubibinman series (Known as Shockman in the west), and even a straight up pseudo-sequel to Link to the Past.

The service itself lasted from 1995 all the way into the year 2000, but past that point enjoying the system has mostly been a mixed bag. Emulating certain games on the system was quite a bit more complex given their initial design, more concerning was that none of these games existed in sold cartridges and preservationists have had to rely solely on what was downloaded to existing BS-X cartridges where the broadcasts were stored. There are still some games that are yet to be dumped from the service. Not all is lost however, as occasionally we stumble upon something we thought was long gone, such as the set of Kirby themed mini-games that were recovered a couple years ago now. 

Another facet of the experience was the BS-X software itself. The way you would interact with this service was down to a special cartridge that housed a memory card. Upon booting this up, you’d be thrust into an earthbound-esque town with a variety of characters and activities to participate in. This was your gateway to the service. You could buy items from a town vendor, check the broadcast schedule, or just head to your character’s home to play your downloaded titles. As you can imagine, emulating this in its entirety would be quite the feat – to say nothing of the language barrier involved… which is why you have to give credit the amazing folks over at the BS-X Project for translating this unique gem. Using the right emulator, you can now explore the basic structure of this town and use it to boot up your Satellaview ROMs. What’s that though? The town is empty? Well that’s where the Satellaview Server Simulation Tool “SatellaWave”, made by a user going by LuigiBlood, comes in. This allows you to select from a myriad of variables such as the seasons, NPCs, and more that you would have experienced during the run of the service. Together this gives you a pretty solid view into the way the service would have worked, had it been released in the west. 

As will all gaming hardware, it really comes down to the games though. This brings us to the jewel of the Satellaview service; SoundLink titles. More than just the game files, these broadcasts were heavily reliant on timed events, and included actual voice-overs that were streamed through the satellite radio infrastructure of the service. The most famous of these titles is The Legend of Zelda – The Ancient Stone Tablets; a sort of pseudo-sequel and remix of A Link to the Past. Because the game was broadcast to the system, and then assembled on-site with the hardware, acquiring and manually assembling all of the necessary parts so that you can push the broadcasts into a ROM-style release is a mountainous task to say the least. This also doesn’t account for the fact that these were, naturally, all broadcast in Japanese. This means in addition to a traditional fan-translation, you would need to also re-record dialog lines in other languages for the world-wide community. 

Much like a great Zelda game however, when things seem most dire, a hero answers the call. I’m talking of course about the incredible people over at BS Zelda. This amazing group of people have lovingly recreated the experience, voice-overs and all, for us to enjoy. Their website contains a number of different projects related to the BS Zelda games that any fan of the series or the system should really take a moment to check out. It cannot be overstressed the sheer amount of work, recreation, and restoration that has gone into their projects. They even have MSU-1 versions of their projects for custom soundtrack listening. What’s MSU-1, you ask? Well that takes us to our next “add-on”.

Name: SD2SNES

Which brings us to the final ‘add-on’ we want to talk about today. This is in no way an official add-on, but it’s a very important one none-the-less. You may be familiar with flash-carts, or the more well-known flash-cart brand “Ever-Drive”. These devices allow you to play ROM backups on your real console hardware. In and of itself this is a pretty impressive and awesome piece of tech, allowing you to play not only commercial games, but homebrew, fan translations, and more. 

The SD2SNES however, is a very special form of flash-cart. This cart uses an FPGA chip, which you may be familiar with as it drives certain devices like the Analogue Super NT and Mega SG. This impressive addition effectively allows for the use of the specialized cartridge chips like the Super FX, and more interestingly, the MSU-1. What this means is that now you can play these enhanced “SNES CD” titles on your real Super Nintendo hardware! Not only that, but it also is partially compatible with BS-X games. The features of the card are vast, and because it’s open source, it’s being updated all the time. It’s really something to be able to experience all these amazing facets of the Super Nintendo. From those that would be lost to time things that may have never have even existed, all on your living room TV. 

Now that’s, playing with power!