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.