Game Boy Player



The Game Boy Player is an accessory for the Nintendo GameCube. As the name implies, it can be used for playing Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. It also has a link port for linking up to other Game Boy systems and accessories. It is the successor to the Super Game Boy.

In most regions, black is the only color that the Game Boy Player is available in, despite the fact that indigo and platinum GameCubes also exist. In Japan, a variety of colors for the Game Boy Player have been released.

The Game Boy Player hooks up to the GameCube by being inserted underneath it. It comes with a special start-up disc which must be inserted into the GameCube before any Game Boy games can be played. Players may play with a standard GameCube controller, or use a Game Boy Advance that is hooked up to the GameCube with a link cable. By pressing the Z Button on the GameCube controller, an options menu will be brought up, but the game will not be stopped.

The Game Boy Player allows for a small amount of customization for playing Game Boy Games. Because the dimensions of a Game Boy screen does not match up with most television screens, a border is necessary. It is possible to configurate the size of the border, the background of which can be changed to to a number of different patterns. A timer can also implemented.

Certain titles, including Super Mario Advance 4 and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, have a rumble feature that can only be triggered by playing the game with a standard GameCube controller.

There are a few titles that won't work properly, or at all, with the Game Boy Player. While there are no Mario titles that are incompatible, the two Gyro Sensor titles, WarioWare: Twisted! and Yoshi's Universal Gravitation won't play properly, as they require the player to rotate the entire system around, something that the GameCube clearly wasn't designed for.

The Game Boy Player is not compatible with the Wii, due to the different shape of the Wii and the lack of compatible ports.

Trivia

 * Playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga on the Game Boy Player can result in a good cheat for Mario and Luigi's "dizzy" phase in Bowser's Castle during Iggy and Lemmy's obstacle courses. Normally, the controls would be mixed up and the D-Pad controls would be altered. This would result in having a tough time through the obstacles, and touching one would force Mario and Luigi to start over. However, the player could easily get through this by tilting the controller to match the altered controls.