CGB Converter

Extract text from Game Boy Color ROMs (CGB)

Select File
Drop or upload your .CGB file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your CGB file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your CGB file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert CGB to another file type

To convert CGB ROMs to another format, you need VisualBoyAdvance or other Game software.

Convert a file to CGB

To convert other file formats to the "ROM Image" file type, you need software like VisualBoyAdvance or a similar tool.

About CGB files

A .cgb file typically represents one of two distinct formats, each serving a completely different industry.

1. Game Boy Color ROM (Most Common)

For gamers and emulation enthusiasts, a .cgb file is a ROM image of a video game cartridge for the Nintendo Game Boy Color. While the standard extension for these files is GBC, some dumpers and legacy emulators use .cgb (derived from the console's internal codename, CGB-001).

Common Friction Point: Many modern emulators (like mGBA or VisualBoyAdvance) simply filter for GBC files and may not display .cgb files in their file browser, even though the data is identical.

Best Conversion:

For Emulation: Simply rename the file extension from .cgb to gbc. No actual file conversion is needed; the internal binary data is the same.
For Console Use: These files can be loaded onto flash cartridges (like EverDrive) to play on original hardware.

2. Esri CityEngine Compiled Rule (Professional Use)

In the GIS and 3D modeling sector, a .cgb file is a Compiled Graph Binary file used by Esri CityEngine. These files contain procedural rules for generating 3D cities from 2D data.

The "Lock-In" Problem: This file is the compiled output of a human-readable CGA (Computer Generated Architecture) text file. Users often find .cgb files inside Rule Packages (RPK) and want to edit the building generation logic. However, because the file is binary-compiled, it cannot be edited or easily converted back to the original source code.

Best Conversion:

To Edit Rules: You cannot convert .cgb back to cga. You must locate the original source project or contact the author for the uncompiled CGA file.

Convert.Guru analyzes your CGB file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted CBG, ORC, VSB and BSV files.

FAQ

If you want to convert CGB file to , you can use VisualBoyAdvance or similar software from the "Game Boy Color ROM" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert files to CGB, try VisualBoyAdvance or another comparable tool in the "Game Boy Color ROM" category.

The CGB Converter Story

The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our CGB converter.