I had my mind blown yesterday, twice.
First, at the local game store I saw one of my favorite childhood PC games: Jeff Gordon XS racing, but in Game Boy form! Had no idea it was ported to GB. Had to get it.
Side note, XS racing on PC is a killer game, sadly very few have heard of it, go play it!
So it worked great in my OG game boy. Super fun but ofc not as good as the PC one.
I decide to look the game up. Everything about it says gameboy color. It is NOT a gameboy color cartridge. However, it WILL play on a gameboy advance SP in color! So i learned there are some backward compatible GBC games.
Also someone told me years back OG GB games dont work on an SP. Well, they do!!
Just some fun weird facts!
Gray cartridges run in GB mode. The GBC can apply some limited colorization, the firmware has a database of game IDs to apply specific palettes to, or you can select one manually with a button combo on startup.
Black cartridges are dual mode, they’ll run in GB mode on original hardware or GBC mode on a GBC.
Translucent green cartridges are GBC-only. If you try to boot them on an original GB you’ll get an error screen telling you this game is only for GBC.
Had no clue the color mattered!