The Game Boy was the dominant handheld gaming platform for an incredible nine years (1989-98). MBC3 and MBC5 allowed for even larger games but were introduced around the time of the GBC. Two MBCs, MBC1 and to a lesser extent MBC2, were found in virtually all GB cartridges larger than 32KB. They also allowed the cartridge to map in battery-backed RAM and to bankswitch RAM. Even when the first games were being developed Nintendo realized that 32KB was insufficient for complex games and devised Multi-Bank Controllers (MBCs) to allow the GB to address much more ROM using bankswitching. Other memory locations were reserved for communicating with RAM, APU and PPU, the Link Port and reading the buttons. The GB's 8-bit CPU can only address 64KB of memory, and Nintendo designed the chip so it could address 32KB of ROM. Let's shift gears for a moment and discuss GB memory mapping hardware. By embracing the past the developers of the GB port made a perfectly acceptable use of more than four colors on the SGB's active display. Later versions of Space Invaders had circuitry to generate color, but only for rows of graphics, not by tile or character.
Color cellophane strips were put over the monitors to give color to areas of the screen. Early versions of space invaders used black and white monitors. But Space Invaders takes advantage of how the original arcade hardware worked. Normally developers avoided using more than four colors in the active playing area to avoid issues where the color of a tile depends on its location on the screen. Finally the SGB version also supports more than four colors in the active play area in either the Color (5 colors) or Cellophane Color (8 colors) modes. The GB version also supports positional stereo sound whereby the sounds of your shots are louder out of your left or right speaker if your cannon is on the left or right side of the screen. It contains the SNES version of the game which it loads into the SNES's W-RAM if you select that option. Space Invaders is a remarkable cartridge in more ways that I originally realized. Additionally, Nintendo changed palettes every level, which also helps to break up the monochromatic approach. The status bar's use of different colors, which is possible because the status bar is always in a fixed position, helps distract from the fact that the colors below it can be achieved with the SGB's palette editor. Below the status bar, the active portion of the screen is only using four colors for each level of Donkey Kong. When we enter the game, things take on a much more monochromatic cast.
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