Super Gameboy emulation?

Hyruleslink

I did some searching around and found this Youtube user that found a workaround to get Super Game Boy working in Retroarch on Launchbox. Perhaps we could adapt some of what he did to make it work in Retropie.

darknior

Hi. Some news about this feature on PI ? Because the last video was on PC always with BSNES.

Today Launchbox release some video preview : https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/42189-emumovies-nintendo-super-game-boy-videos-released-v10/

I think we must use the border trick ... with this pack of 100 games : https://www.dropbox.com/s/s16grwhmcov0w2b/105 SGB Borders Retroarch Wii.rar
Or full here : https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8664/super-gameboy-border-overlays-complete-set

The game list with borders is here : https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Super_Game_Boy_games

mediamogul

@darknior

The borders are a great addition, but man would I love to emulate the game's color palettes, especially 'Donkey Kong '94'. We're in good company though. Nintendo themselves didn't include the ability to access those palettes from the Gameboy Color when it was released. If they had, the various emulators could likely make use of the color by using the GBC BIOS rather than having to emulate a SNES to get the job done. There's also the outlying feature of 'Space Invaders' having an arcade port that is only accessible from the Super GameBoy, but aside from the novelty, there's a million different ways to play that game more authentically these days.

darknior

@mediamogul Yes you are right, but i think it can be easier to use a GB emu with a trick to access this palette.
It is not officially possible, but if SNES can, GBC emu can too.
And if with border it make the trick it is almost perfect. Or maybe the GBC emu can show the border from rom too. And replace the Super Gameboy official menu.

mediamogul

@darknior

That would certainly be fantastic. What kills me is the feature is lying under the hood of VBA-M and even existed at one point in lr-vbam. However, it was intentionally removed by the libretro guys along the way, so it must have had some gremlins. As I remember, it could even do the borders.

matchaman

Is there a way we could get access to the old lr-vbam core? Maybe an old RetroPie release and extract the binary? I get that it might have caused trouble with GBA emulation but I'd stick to mGBA for that.

altdottravelling

In case anyone finds this thread as I did (12th June 2018).

I switched the emulator used by retropie (installed on a linux desktop machine) to lr-mgba and Donkey Kong worked perfectly as it does on the super gameboy. Background fame and colour palette :)

Hyruleslink

@altdottravelling Question. How do you select lr-mba for Gameboy games? I only see that emulator as an option for Gameboy Advance games. I am assuming you are loading your GB roms into the GBA roms folder to accomplish this?

mediamogul

@hyruleslink

If you had lr-mgba installed prior to the update, you may need to remove it and add it again using the RetroPie-Setup for the launch option to appear in the GameBoy Runcommand menu.

Cederick

So is it actually like using the Super Gameboy on SNES? Because I would love to play Pokémon Gold and Silver (Spaceworld) like it was presented back then with the borders and everything.

mediamogul

@Cederick said in Super Gameboy emulation?:

So is it actually like using the Super Gameboy on SNES?

Pretty much, yes. The only function that isn't emulated via lr-mgba are SNES-specific games from a Gameboy ROM. However, I believe the only example of this is the SNES 'Space Invaders' arcade port found on the Gameboy version.

Cederick

So I tried to put the sgba roms in gbc and it dosn't show up..

mediamogul

@Cederick

There aren't any unique Super Gameboy ROMs to speak of. They should all be standard .gb files. They'll work zipped as well.

Cederick

Pokémon Gold - Spaceworld 1997 Demo (NonDebug) (Header Fixed).sgb
Pokémon Silver - Spaceworld 1997 Demo (NonDebug) (Header Fixed).sgb

mediamogul

@Cederick

Interesting. To my knowledge those should really have the .gbc extension.

Cederick

The Spaceworld demos where developed to run on super gameboy hardware since the gbc wasn't out around this time and they still wnated to show off what they be able to do with colors.

edmaul69

@Cederick if the emulator is capable of playing the .sgb files changing it to .gbc or .gb will work. And doing so will make it show up in the gamelist. All my gbc games have a .gb extention and work just fine.

mediamogul

@Cederick said in Super Gameboy emulation?:

The Spaceworld demos where developed to run on super gameboy hardware since the gbc wasn't out around this time

In that case, the .gb file extension would be more appropriate, although as @edmaul69 mentioned, either should work. Keep in mind that .gb and .gbc both denote a certain type of ROM. Seeing as how the Super Gameboy never had a unique ROM type, I imagine that the .sgb extension is there to tell compatible emulators to load the Super Gameboy BIOS automatically. With lr-mgba, loading a .gb file with the Super Gameboy BIOS manually enabled should produce the same results.