Restoring An Abandoned Game Boy Kiosk

Back in the olden days, there existed physical game stores, which in addition to physical games would also have kiosks where you could try out the current game consoles and handhelds. Generally these kiosks held the console, a display and any controllers if needed. After a while these kiosks would get scrapped, with only a very few ending up being rescued and restored. One of the lucky ones is a Game Boy kiosk, which [The Retro Future] managed to snag after it was found in a construction site. Sadly the thing was in a very rough condition, with the particle board especially being mostly destroyed.

Display model Game Boy, safely secured into the demo kiosk. (Credit: The Retro Future, YouTube)
Display model Game Boy, safely secured into the demo kiosk. (Credit: The Retro Future, YouTube)

These Game Boy kiosks also featured a special Game Boy, which – despite being super rare – also was hunted down. This led to the restoration, which included recovering as much of the original particle board as possible, with a professional furniture restore ([Don]) lending his expertise. This provides a master class in how to patch up damaged particle board, as maligned as this wood-dust-and-glue material is.

The boards were then reassembled more securely than the wood screws used by the person who had found the destroyed kiosk, in a way that allows for easy disassembly if needed. Fortunately most of the plastic pieces were still intact, and the Game Boy grey paint was easily matched. Next was reproducing a missing piece of art work, with fortunately existing versions available as reference. For a few missing metal bits that held the special Game Boy in place another kiosk was used to provide measurements.

After all this, the kiosk was powered back on, and it was like 1990 was back once again, just in time for playing Tetris on a dim, green-and-black screen while hunched half into the kiosk at the game store.

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An amber on black interface on a green reproduction Game Boy screen. It has the FM station 88.9 in large letters in the middle of the display and "Ice Cream (Pay Phone) by Black Pumas" displayed in a box below. A volume indicator is on the left side of the tuner numbers and various status icons are along the top of the screen. A paper cutout of an orange is next to the Game Boy on a piece of paper with the words "Orange FM Prototype" written underneath.

Orange FM Brings Radio To The GameBoy

We’ve all been there. You left your Walkman at home and only have your trusty Game Boy. You want to take a break and just listen to some tunes. What to do? [orangeglo] has the answer now with the Orange FM cartridge.

This prototype cart features an onboard antenna or can also use the 3.5 mm headphone/antenna port on the cartridge to boost reception with either a dedicated antenna or a set of headphones. Frequencies supported are 64 – 108 Mhz, and spacing can be set for 100 or 200 kHz to accomodate most FM broadcasts setups around the world.

Older Game Boys can support audio through the device itself, but Advances will need to use the audio port on the cartridge. The Super Game Boy can pipe audio to your TV though, which seems like a delightfully Rube Goldberg-ian way to listen to the radio. Did we mention it also supports RDS, so you’ll know what that catchy tune is? Try that FM Walkman!

Can’t decide between this and your other carts? Try this revolving multi-cart solution. Have a Game Boy that needs some restoration? If it’s due to electrolyte damage, maybe start here?

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Breadboarding A Game Boy From Scratch

The original Nintendo Game Boy is a stout piece of hardware in a solid plastic enclosure. [Raphael Stäbler] recreated the popular handheld on a breadboard instead, in a fully-functional way, to boot.

[Raphael]’s build doesn’t rely on a real Game Boy CPU or components. Instead it’s emulated with the aid of a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller. [Raphael] coded up an emulator from scratch, instruction by instruction, something he’s documented on his own blog. The Teensy is placed on a breadboard, and hooked up with a series of 8 buttons to serve as the controls. Audio output is via a LM386 acting as a simple audio amp, hooked up with an original Game Boy speaker for more authentic sound. Display is thanks to a FT81x display driver running a small LCD. Games are loaded via an SD card formatted in the FAT32 file system.

While it’s not as ergonomic as the original Nintendo console, it works, and works well! It’s an impressive project to see the Game Boy recreated from scratch inside a powerful microcontroller. We’ve seen other projects go to similar lengths before. Video after the break.

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The Game Boy Color Accessory You’ve Been Waiting For

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.

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

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!

Game Boy Repurposed Solely As A Camera

As much as we all love the Game Boy Camera, it’s really just an add-on to the popular handheld console. Twitter user [@thegameboycam] decided to build a dedicated camera platform using the hardware, and the result was the Game Boy DSLR.

Camera pedants will note that it’s not really a DSLR, but that’s not really the point. It’s a Game Boy with the camera accessory built into a proper camera-like housing. There’s a CS/C mount for the lens, and it’s got a custom shell with leatherette, just like the cameras of last century. It’s also got a cold shoe, and a 1/4″ screw thread for tripod mounting. Oh, and strap lugs! So you can really rock that old-school aesthetic with your tweed suit on.

More practical modern features include a 1800 mAh battery that charges over USB Type C and a backlit IPS display. The screen has been turned through 90 degrees, and the cartridge port and buttons are relocated to create a more traditional camera-like form factor. If you really want, though, you can still play it like a regular Game Boy. Just swap out the modified camera cart with the lens mount for a regular Game Boy Camera or another game cartridge.

It’s a fun hack that scores big on style points. No longer can you be the cool kid just by rocking a Game Boy with a big ol’ lens hanging off the back. Now you gotta compete with this!

Our tipsline is waiting for when you’ve got the next big thing in Game Boy Camera hacks. Video after the break.

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GBA Remote Play Upgrade Lets You Play PlayStation On The Bus

The Nintendo Game Boy Advance was basically the handheld gaming situation of its era, by virtue of the fact that it had no serious competitors in the market. The system was largely known for 2D games due to hardware limitations.

However, [Rodrigo Alfonso] has recently upgraded his GBA Remote Play system that lets him play PlayStation games and others on his classic Game Boy Advance. We first featured this project back in July, which uses a Raspberry Pi 3 to emulate games and pipe video data to the handheld for display, receiving button presses in return.

Since then, [Rodrigo] has given the project some upgrades, in the form of a 3D-printed case that mounts a battery-powered Pi directly to the back of the console for portable play. Additionally, overclocking the GBA allows for faster transfer rates over the handheld’s Link Port, which means more pixels of video data can be clocked in. This allows for more playable frame rates when running at 240×160, the maximum resolution of the GBA screen.

The result is a Game Boy Advance which you can use to play Crash Bandicoot on the bus just to confuse the normies. Of course, one could simply build a Raspberry Pi handheld from scratch to play emulated games. However, this route takes advantage of the GBA form factor and is pretty amusing to boot. Video after the break.

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