[Bucket Mouse] has long been a fan of the various iterations of the Nintendo Game Boy. Now, he’s turned his eye to the Game Boy Advance, building an enhanced version for the console’s 25th anniversary.
There are plenty of ways to mod an existing GBA to be better than the original, but this build recreates the console from the ground up. It’s basically a brand new motherboard that replaces the original entirely, requiring only the CPU and RAM to be harvested from the original board.
It’s perfect for when you find a badly-damaged handheld that needs heavy repair, because every other part on the board can be purchased new. You can buy a nice shiny screen kit online, and even upgrade to LiPo power if so desired. The new motherboard also eliminates sound issues that are common when upgrading the screen in a classic GBA, and there’s stereo audio available on the headphone jack as standard. Battery life is also improved compared to the original.
If you’ve got a haggard old GBA in need of repair, or you just want to build the best classic handheld you can, it’s worth taking a look at this build. You might also appreciate previous works from [Bucket Mouse], like his efforts to improve the original Game Boy.
I have an original Gameboy with a broken screen – as best as I can tell, I can’t just replace the screen – there are no replacement screens available.
There are replacement mainboards with screens – which are Gameboy emulators – and it just feels like it wouldn’t be ‘my’ Gameboy, or ‘a’ Gameboy anymore, so I haven’t yet ordered one…
You can replace the screens with modern IPS displays, they usually come with a replacement driver/control board (Google “DMG RetroPixel IPS Q5 LCD Kit”). These don’t replace the mainboard/CPU. The only way to replace them with an original STN display is via a donor, they haven’t been manufactured for many decades and sadly are all doomed to fail sooner or later. You may be lucky though, the most common failure on the DMG Gameboy is the ribbon, carefully reflowing the pins can fix it.
Hey Rich. The front boards are mostly just wiring that goes over the ribbon cable to the CPU and stuff on the other board. It’s not an emulator, it’s often a salvaged display (from old Blackberries, last I checked) plus some circuitry to convert the signals sent from the Gameboy CPU to ones that display can understand. It’s tough if you really want that original screen feel, but honestly those screens are so difficult to see that even the folks who still use them are doing stuff like adding inverters to the digital signals and then flipping the polarizers and replacing the foil film behind them with a backlight, which honestly seems more invasive than just popping a replacement front board and LCD in there.
Anyway, totally understand if it’s not your jam, but just wanted to let you know that many mods do leave most of the hardware that makes the gameboy what it is intact. Check out RetroModding or HandHeldLegend.
There are replacement screens available for the DMG, but like you noted you will have to replace the front “button” board as well. This isn’t emulation at all, the original cpu mainboard is retained and all the front board does is convert the original display control signals to the format needed for the new lcd. AFAIK there are no 1:1 replacements with a monochrome reflective lcd, they are all newer tft or ips lcd’s (often with colorized pallet settings and even sometimes options to simulate the original pea green color and pixel screen door effect). I agree it’s just not the same as the original screen but I haven’t found another option to get closer to the original yet.
With RTX shaders you could implement a GameBoy LCD in software to achieve the desired look.
Does the GameBoy have a GPU that can run RTX shaders?
I wished there was an b/w e-ink screen for the DMG and Game Boy Pocket! 😃
Or an amber screen (plasma) for the DMG..
I don’t like to use color screens for monochrome devices, if it can be avoided.
Personally, I hope that the flat screen technology will still evolve here.
Monochrome OLED screens would be cool, for example.
I think a sharp memory lcd would look (forgive the pun) quite sharp on a dmg/pocket and have the benefit of fast refresh!
They exist: https://github.com/bytendomods/RLCD-DMG
One of these days I should get around to posting my 1/2-scale GameBoy build- kinda stopped doing that with AI slurping everything up these days. But the 144×168 Sharp memory LCD is the right resolution, and between that being almost exactly half scale for the GB pocket display and SD cards being a decent approximation to half a game cart, it seemed like it was meant to be.
So… can confirm the memory LCDs are awesome in this application. Dithering 2-bit down to 1-bit without any upscaling even works acceptably well.
Here you go: https://github.com/bytendomods/RLCD-DMG
Thank you very much! 😃
Wife brought a ds, 3ds, advanced, and a snes into our marriage, i brought the nes mini, n64, wii and switch. Have not touched her advanced yet, gonna test it soon tho. But it were hers when I played the first time with the ds and 3ds (and I was amazed by them!)
That’s cool, she has a great taste it seems! 😎
You’re lucky! 🙂