game boy

164 Articles

Dumping Game Boy Cartridges Via The Link Cable Port

December 14, 2022 by 17 Comments

When it comes to vintage consoles like the Game Boy, it’s often nice to be able to dump cartridge ROMs for posterity, for archival, and for emulation. To that end, [Francis Stokes] of [Low Byte Productions] whipped up a rather unique method of dumping Game Boy carts via the link cable port.

The method starts by running custom code on the Game Boy, delivered by flash cart. That code loads itself into RAM, and then waits for the user to swap in a cart they wish to dump and press a button. The code then reads the cartridge, byte by byte, sending it out over the link port. To capture the data, [Francis] simply uses a Saleae logic analyzer to do the job. Notably, the error rate was initially super high with this method, until [Francis] realised that cutting down the length of the link cable cut down on noise that was interfering with the signal.

The code is available on GitHub for those interested. There are other ways to dump Game Boy cartridges too, of course.

Continue reading “Dumping Game Boy Cartridges Via The Link Cable Port” →

Ultimate Game And Watch Has Support For NES

December 9, 2022 by 2 Comments

We’ve talked about feature creep plenty of times around here, and it’s generally regarded as something to be avoided when designing a prototype. It might sound good to have a lot of features in a build, but this often results in more complexity and more difficulty when actually bringing a project to fruition. [Brendan] has had the opposite experience with this custom handheld originally designed for Game and Watch games, though, and he eventually added NES and Game Boy functionality as well.

As this build was originally intended just for Game and Watch games, the screen is about the size of these old games, and while it can easily mimic the monochrome LCD-style video that would have been present on these 80s handhelds, it also has support for color which means that it’s the perfect candidate for emulating other consoles as well. It’s based around a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and the enclosure is custom printed and painted. Some workarounds for audio had to be figured out, though, since native analog output isn’t supported, but it still has almost every feature for all of these systems.

While we’ve seen plenty of custom portable builds from everything from retro consoles to more modern ones, the Game and Watch catalog is often overlooked. There are a few out there, but in this case we appreciate the feature creep that allowed this build to support Game Boy and NES games as well.

TEGA: Typescript Embedded Game Boy (Macro) Assembler

December 1, 2022 by 2 Comments

[Francis Stokes] has a real love for the original Game Boy, suggesting that owning this machine pushed him along a certain path that many of us would recognize. Developing Game Boy games isn’t particularly difficult from a hardware point of view, as you can easily buy special cartridges that have an SD card slot, allowing custom code. [Francis] had the idea of easy software development by producing a typescript hardware abstraction library, TEGA (or TypeScript Embedded Game Boy Macro Assembler). This provides a safe environment in which to play with the code, which can then be run inside an emulator such as BGB, before being deployed onto actual hardware.

The video embedded below — which we warn you now is a long one — goes into extensive justification and technical explanation of how [Francis] leverages typescript to create lots of nice features to produce safe code, whilst handling many of the Game Boy’s architectural restrictions, as well as the weirdness of the Sharp SM83 processor that powers it. We particularly liked the built-in support for on-the-fly asset compression, since every byte matters in the meager 32 Kb system, it’s nice not to have to think about it all the time! After discussing TEGA, the Game Boy hardware, the ins and outs of a demo game Block Jump, and then how to debug with BGB, we’re pretty confident many of you will be in a strong position to bust out a Game Boy application in the future!

As an aside, we did also stumble upon a new hardware guide provided by Finnish programmer and Game Boy superfan [Joonas Javanainen] which will help frame some of the topics [Francis] was talking about.

You may recall a little while back, the same author targeted the RISC-V using code written in typescript. After all, when you’re comfortable with a tool, you can shape it to do practically anything.

Continue reading “TEGA: Typescript Embedded Game Boy (Macro) Assembler” →

The Game Boy Color Accessory You’ve Been Waiting For

November 30, 2022 by 27 Comments

Sometimes silly projects catch our eye, and we just can’t resist covering them. Over on Hackaday.io, [solderking] realized that there was a glaring omission in the multi-game management hardware for the Game Boy Color. Obviously, it’s too mundane to carry the handheld around with a bunch of games in one’s pocket, and a hardware multi-changer would definitely improve the usability. This convenient, pocket-friendly solution allows you to dock up four cartridges at a time, and with only a little mild inconvenience, spin the whole assembly, lock in a game and load it up. What could be easier?

Constructed from a ridiculous three-tier PCB stack, with a rotating center joint, the assembly is completely passive, with the connections from the selected game cartridge passed down a series of connectors before finally entering the Game Boy via the usual edge connector. The mere fact that this works at all just shows how tolerant (and we guess, slow) older gaming platforms used to be, and just what you can get away with! Still, it’s a fun build, and it does work, which just goes to show that just because you can, then you should.

We’re no strangers to Game Boy hacks. Here’s a useful cartridge to help with developing your first program. If the old platform is just a bit too limited for you, then we’ve got you covered with a hack that wedges an iCE40 FPGA and a Pi Zero inside the case, to give a bit more oomph.

Continue reading “The Game Boy Color Accessory You’ve Been Waiting For” →

Bringing The Hinge To A 1990s Game Boy

November 16, 2022 by 6 Comments

The new hotness in mobile phones is it seems a hinge, and an ever-so-fragile flexible LCD display. There’s nothing new in a hinge of course, a couple of decades ago they were all the rage in feature phones, and of course Nintendo got in on the act with the ever-so-cute Game Boy Advance SP. This hinged design caught the attention of [Allison Parrish], who has brought it to an earlier generation of Game Boy with the Game Boy Pocket SP. It’s a late-1990s Game Boy Pocket whose PCB has been carefully cut in half, in a custom case that looks for all the world like the hinged case of the Advance SP.

The case is a neat bit of CAD work very nicely 3D printed and fitted with a set of Advance SP hinges, but perhaps the neatest part of this build is the se of a set of flexible PCBs to connect the two halves of the unit together. This looks for all the world as though it came this way from the factory, which is an achievement above many console mods.

The whole thing is a little lumpy compared to the SP to make space for the Pocket’s full-size cartridge, but not so much as to make it ugly. Any 1990s kid with one of these would have been the envy of all their classmates!

You may not be surprised to know that this isn’t the first respin of a Nintendo console into an SP-style case.

SquareBoi Is The DIY Game Boy Cart You’ve Always Wanted

August 16, 2022 by 16 Comments

Running unofficial code on a Nintendo Game Boy has long been a solved problem. However, you still need a way to get that code onto the handheld console. The Squareboi cartridge promises to do just that, as created by [ALXCO-Hardware].

It’s a well-featured cartridge, with up to 4 MB of ROM storage onboard. It also features a ferromagnetic RAM part for savegame storage, which doesn’t need a battery to hang on to your precious data. It’s designed to be compatible with the vast majority of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, with efforts made to support the most common mapping schemes. It can be built using entirely through-hole components, and is readily programmable via an Arduino.

For those eager to tinker with code on the Game Boy, diving into the Squareboi is a great way to get closer to the bare metal and understand what’s really going on at the low level. Those interested in building their own can get all the relevant details over on Github.

We’ve seen similar hacks before, too, like the cartridge that brought Wikipedia to the humble Nintendo handheld. If you’ve been whipping up your own Nintendo hacks, be sure to drop us a line!

A Game Boy built out of copper wires

The Wonderfully Weird Wireframe Game Boy That Actually Works

June 7, 2022 by 10 Comments

We see lots of great hardware projects here at Hackaday: some are extremely clever, some are beautifully made, and some show off their maker’s extraordinary skills. Others are just plain weird, but still manage to include some or even all of the above categories. Case in point: [kgsws]’s Wireframe Game Boy project. It’s probably the weirdest Game Boy mod we’ve seen so far, but also extremely impressive from a technical point of view.

The basic idea was to take a Game Boy Pocket and remove its outer shell, replacing it with a cage-like structure made from thick copper wire. That sounds kind of reasonable; think of those transparent Game Boys, only without the transparent plastic. [kgsws]’s video (embedded below) shows him bending a few pieces of copper wire to match the Game Boy’s overall shape, then adding mounts for the cartridge socket, the display, the D-pad and the four buttons. After that you’d simply slide in the PCB, insert some batteries and off you go, right?

Well, this wouldn’t do for [kgsws]. What he did instead, was use a hot air desoldering station to remove all chips from the motherboard and proceed to mount them directly inside the wireframe without a PCB. He then used dozens of thin copper wires to hook up the cartridge slot, the CPU, RAM, buttons, and everything else to reconstruct the motherboard’s functionality. We cringed a bit when we saw him brutally cut the display’s flat cable with scissors, and that too was connected to the rest of the system through flying wires, soldered directly onto the screen’s contacts.

Amazingly, the system managed to boot up and run its software after it got a pair of fresh batteries. Despite a slightly dodgy D-pad, the naked Game Boy actually turned out to be fully usable, although it probably requires somewhat more delicate handling than Nintendo’s famously bullet-proof hardware. We’ve seen Game Boys modded into all kinds of different shapes and sizes, but none quite as unusual as today’s. If it’s wireframe construction you like, check out this eerie sound generator or this beautiful circuit sculpture clock. Continue reading “The Wonderfully Weird Wireframe Game Boy That Actually Works” →