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I'm not sure if my copy of the Super Game Boy is broken, or has had its internal battery run out of power, but it doesn't seem to retain any information.

In particular, I'm annoyed by how it doesn't remember the chosen palette. This means that I have to do a lot of work every single session to get my favourite palette (the one that looks the closest to an actual GB), and it seems like something that should be retained.

Before asking this question, I tried looking up information about the SGB, and also looked for pictures and videos of the internals of the device, but found nothing. If it indeed has a battery inside, it must be intended to save data. I do not dare to open mine, but will probably do so if nobody can answer this.

Also, even if there is no battery inside, it could theoretically use some battery-less method of saving this minimal amount of information, even though it's from 1994.

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    There is a big difference between non-volatile memory and regular memory. If you are asking about the former, please modify your question to be specific to that.
    – DrSheldon
    May 25, 2022 at 16:15
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    There is an internal picture of the circuit board at insidegadgets.com/2011/04/02/… I can see no sign of a battery. I suspect non-volatile flash memory was not an option in 1994.
    – Mark Williams
    May 25, 2022 at 18:32
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    This isn't authoritative enough to be a proper answer, but I vaguely remember that forgetfulness being normal back when I rented a Super Game Boy and things like Donkey Kong 94 from the local Microplay as a kid in the 90s, because I vaguely remember wondering what the point of allowing so much customization was.
    – ssokolow
    May 25, 2022 at 19:32
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    We've had a few close votes since the edits. What do you think is still unclear about the question?
    – wizzwizz4 ♦
    May 27, 2022 at 15:51
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    @MarkWilliams non-volatile FRAM memory chips were an option in 1994, as seen in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 cartridges for example. But the SGB doesn't appear to contain any FRAM either.
    – Kaz
    May 29, 2022 at 8:39

1 Answer 1

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The Super Game Boy does not contain any battery back-up for volatile memory, or any non-volatile memory, so it can't save anything. It is essentially a Game Boy in SNES cartridge form that's been modified just enough to use the SNES for input and output. It would never remember your chosen palette, although it did have a password function so that you can write down a code for any custom palette that you created and reenter it later.

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    This answer also applies to the Super Game Boy 2 as far as I'm aware.
    – knol
    May 26, 2022 at 2:56

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