Game Boy Color Promotional Demo

The Game Boy Color Promotional Demo is a cartridge that was used in store kiosks back in 1998, to show off the GBC's amazing new capabilities. It contains several tech demos, as well as colorized mockups of existing monochrome games.

It also contains one of the most obscure bits of recycling in Nintendo's history - the music used during the demo is a rendition of a song originally composed for the then-unreleased Zero Racers for the Virtual Boy (specifically, the music used for that game's title screen and menus), something that wouldn't be discovered until that game was announced to be getting a release on Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics in 2026.

Oh, and did we mention it's an excessive hack of Wario Land II?

Download Game Boy Color Promotional Demo File: Game Boy Color Promotional Demo.rar (89 KB) (info)

Debug Menu#

GameShark code 0102ADC2 or Game Genie code 020-37B-E6E will activate a debug menu for viewing all the demos, including several unused ones (see below). Up and Down moves the cursor, while A activates the selected item.

"F1 RACE"#

Watch on YouTube

Actually a second cube demo. Apparently, Nintendo wanted to further show off the Game Boy Color's ability to "render" polygons, but this was cut from the loop for unknown reasons.

COLOR 1#

An unused intro which was replaced by the fade-out one.

COLOR 2#

Identical to COLOR 1.

Wario Land II Music/Sounds#

The entire soundtrack, including sound effects, is present in the ROM. Game Genie code ??5-65B-3B6 will play any of the songs during the demo, while Game Genie codes BF8-46A-E6D 008-3FA-E6E ??8-44A-802 will play any of the sound effects at the Nintendo logo.

Link's Awakening Sprites#

Promotional Demo	DX Release

The sprites used for Link's Awakening in the Promotional Demo are a bit different than the ones used in the eventual Link's Awakening DX:

• The animation of a dying monster is different from the one in DX.
• The Moblin's arrows are green in the Promotional Demo, but brown in DX.
• The sign is missing a shadow, as well as shading on the sign's top and bottom.
• The color used for the borders of the trees is cream in the Promotional Demo, but green in DX.

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this. Specifically: Comparison images.

Unused Graphics#

Nintendo copied whole ROM banks and used what they needed for the demo, so consider what is used in the actual game to be unused in the demo.

Not Compatible with GB/SGB#

When loaded on a Game Boy or Super Game Boy, the game will throw up a screen saying that you need to use a Game Boy Color. At the same time, some unused tiles are loaded into VRAM. This screen is a modification of the warning screen from Wario Land II for GBC, which is triggered when a save from one system (e.g. GBC) is used on another (e.g. DMG). The tileset, with the light outline, is the same.

A pointing gloved hand. A leftover from Wario Land II, for when the warning screen would offer to erase the save, and proceed with the game.

Possibly a placeholder icon.

The only tiles used are the - tile and the gray background tile, leaving the numbers, other punctuation, and alternate background colors unused. The dark background tile square was used as a menu bullet point in Wario Land II.

Tetris DX#

All of these unused graphics unless noted appear in Tetris DX as well.

Title Screen#

There are a few unused graphics and a ton of placeholders loaded at the title, so there may have been further plans for the title screen.

This early idea to display Tetris DX in Japanese is the only remnant left.

This copyright string was likely going to be placed at the bottom of the ENTRY.

Unused#

What appears to be an early border design for the Game Over screen. The second one appears to have an unfinished shadowing effect. The palette is a guess, as one has not been assigned.