Let’s just admit it: Small screens are kind of a pain to look at for long periods of time.
Until that magical invention known as the DSiXL, it felt like I was struggling to look
at a postage stamp animated with my favorite portable games.
And while something like that might be passable for short periods like Tetris or whatnot,
around the mid-90’s a magic thing happened: POKEMON.
Sure, there had been other portable RPGs around, like Legend of Mana, the early SaGa games,
and Link’s Awakening, but nothing caused kids to sink more hours into their portable
fixations than the prospect of catching ‘em all, and being the very best like no one ever
was.
And while Red and Blue came with built-in Super Game Boy functionality, as the series
developed, more and more extra bits got tacked on.
Time for a minor hardware upgrade!
Here it is, folks, the Super Game Boy 2.
It’s translucent, because Nintendo was convinced that was a cool thing at the time.
It’s functionally identical to its predecessor, save for one important difference: See that
little port on the side?
After Pokemon popularized the idea of Game Boy connectivity past what anyone had expected,
it became clear that making this new device compatible with the various trading mechanisms
and whatnot was of crucial importance.
Heck, you can hook up a printer to this thing.
Who says we didn’t get interesting add-ons?
Nuts to the whole Super Nintendo PlayStation rigmarole.
We’ve got the capacity for a PRINTER.
So you can stick Pokedex entries to the inside of your locker, so you have something to read
when you’re locked in there.
I kid, I kid.
You wouldn’t have enough light to read them, anyway.
Alas, we never did receive this device here on Western shores.
By 1998, when it was released, we were already deep into the N64 era, and we’d see some
similar functionality when the Transfer Pak and Pokemon Stadium allowed for playing your
Game Boy carts at double and even triple-speed, a blessing that has to be experienced to be
believed.
It’s a cute little quirk of science, and a odd and interesting addition to your collection,
especially if you like teal translucent things.
With glowy bits.
That allow you to hook printers up to things.