DMG vs Super Game Boy release!

DMG, the original 1989 Game Boy model, faces a new enemy: the Super Game Boy! Using your extensible hands, will you be able to grab and smash all the Super Game Boy minions who want to destroy you?

Unlock the hidden power of the Super Game Boy

This experimental game uses a Super Game Boy feature normally "locked away", and that no commercial Game Boy game ever used: the ability to control Super NES sprites in addition to everything moving on the Game Boy screen. As you'll notice, all the enemies in this game are very colorful, more than anything the Game Boy Color or the Super Game Boy can usually display. It's because they are Super NES sprites, overlaid on top of the Game Boy screen contents.

This feature was developed into the Super Game Boy, and was mentioned in earlier versions of the SGB development manual back in the 90's. But when the device was official released, Nintendo listed this feature as "use prohibited" and disabled it inside the SGB BIOS. Thus no officially released Game Boy game ever used it. Why did they disable such a cool feature?

Well, if you play this game you'll understand it right away: although this feature does work (the game can indeed control and display colorful SNES sprites in addition to everything else), it's flawed: the SNES sprites are constantly flickering. Up to 24 SNES sprites can be controlled at once by the SGB, but they will always be displayed once every 2 frames at best. That's why they look like "translucent" in the screenshots. I guess that the developers of the Super Game Boy never managed to have this feature running smoothly without flickering, so they simply disabled it when the device was commercially released.

The first (and only?) "Super Game Boy exclusive" game

This game uses several features unique to the Super Game Boy. In addition to the hidden "SNES Sprites" one, it also uses the SGB screen coloring techniques, and play some sounds using the SNES audio chip instead of the GB one.

So this game can only be played using a Super Game Boy 1 or Super Game Boy 2, and of course a SNES or Super Famicom to plug the device in. If you don't have real hardware available, several emulators can run this game too (see game page for more details).  If you're curious about "how the magic is done", I wrote down some technical details on the game page (hack to unlock the hidden SGB feature, and its limitations). And if you want to dig further, the game is open source with a fully documented source code! (written in C with GBDK-2020).