The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was released in 2001 to breathe some new life into the handheld market, and it did it with remarkable success. Unfortunately, the original models had a glaring problem: their unlit LCD screens could be very difficult to see. For that reason, console modders who work on these systems tend to improve the screen first like this project which brings a few other upgrades as well.
The fully open-source modification is called the Open AGB Display and brings an IPS display to the classic console. The new screen has 480×480 resolution which is slightly larger than the original resolution but handles upscaling with no noticeable artifacts and even supports adding some back in like scanlines and pixelation to keep the early 00s aesthetic. The build does require permanently modifying the case though, but for the original GBA we don’t see much downside. [Tobi] also goes through a ton of detail on how the mod works as well, for those who want to take a deep dive into the background theory.
There has been a lot of activity in the Game Boy Advance communities lately though as the hardware and software become more understood. If you don’t want to modify original hardware, want an upgraded experience, but still want to use the original game cartridges we might recommend something like the Game Bub instead.
Re: “The new screen has 480×480 resolution which is slightly larger than the original resolution but handles upscaling with no noticeable artifacts.”
This is true (though I’d quibble about the cutoff for “slightly larger”) but it’s also worth pointing out that the resolution is deliberately chosen to be an integer multiple of the original screen (240×160), allowing pixel perfect upscaling with no artificial borders on the display.
I have taken the bottom half of a Gameboy SP and added a resistor to trick the backlight current sensor, very cheap and screen is great.
There are even prints to cover the old hinge area the top screen occupied.
If you just want a cheap functional way to play GB/GBA games.
The sp screen is good (especially the second revision) but if you can get an ips mod installed its a massive jump in quality
Agreed, original GBA screen is rather poor, GBA SP is ok-ish. If you want to play GBA, your best stock option is a DS lite. Unfortunately the DS Lite does not play GB natively, otherwise I wouldn’t need a GB, GBP, GBA or GBA SP at all. So GBA SP is my best option for GB games, but as KDawg said, its frontlit screen is “fine” but very far from perfect.
Case modification sounds scary, but 2nd hand cases of every color are available for cheap. So if you did mess it up all is not lost.
It’s surprisingly really easy, 5 minutes with flush cutters and an xacto knife
No surprise there aren’t any scaling artifacts, 480 across is a perfect 2x scale of the GBA’s 240 horizontal resolution and a perfect 3x scale of the GB(C)’s 160.
I just did this mod with my original GameBoy with a pre-laminated IPS screen from AliExpress and it’s a day and night kind of experience. The new screen is amazing! Finally games are actually playable without the constant hunt for the best viewing angle with random light sources. Definitely worth every penny if you still love these old consoles.