Revitalizing Retro Tech With Modern Elements
Breathing New Life into Game Boy
An interesting thing to revisit a nostalgic classic from our childhoods: Nintendo’s Game Boy systems. After a recently reinvigorated interest with Game Boys, I stumbled into the world of Game Boy modding.
Game Boy mods have brought new life to Nintendo’s Game Boy community and to the retro gaming community alike. Game Boy mods range from custom shells, to custom holographic stickers, to soldering in modern components like RTC clocks, backlit screens, RGB buttons, and touch sensors to cycle through color palettes or brightness levels.
The way this discovery came about was when, one day I thought to myself — “I wonder where the hell my old Game Boy is?”
The first step to this endeavor would be to tackle my storage unit to find a Game Boy or to purchase one online. After a quick search online, I quickly discovered there are modern elements which are being added onto the original game console’s PCBs. The most notable being the backlit screens, what an incredible difference between picture quality. The backlit screens alone have created a new surge for Game Boy consoles. To this very day, a used Game Boy still sells at around the original MSRP of $100.
As you can see from the photo, the Game Boy on the left has a much more vivid quality due to the IPS backlit screen. As well as the screen being 15% larger, and equipped with a louder speaker: It’s a fun device to game on.
Getting Games for your Game Boy
The next process would be to get some games. A feat considering some of the older Game Boy Cartridges can range anywhere from $3 to $15,000+ depending on the game. While searching for nostalgic games, I came across the EZ-Flash Omega for the Game Boy Advance and the EZ-Flash Jr for the Game Boy & Game Boy color. Compatible cartridges which allow an external micro-sd card to be plugged in. All that is required is to drag and drop the firmware onto the micro-sd card, and then drag and drop the game ROMs into a folder within that firmware. So instead of hunting down 30 year old Game Boy games from online marketplaces, it is much easier instead to get the games from Internet Archive. The inner digital preservationist in me is overcome with the excitement of the prospect of being able to have not just one, but every Game Boy game.
So now I have every single Game Boy game from existence on a single USB drive. (As well as other games which were never released or unofficial games, hacked games such as the Pokémon variants, all the promo & demo videos for the in-store displays) An archive of a database which is at my disposal with over 7,000 games between Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance at a total of 30.7GBs. Eat your heart out Call of Duty at 199+GBs for a single game. So with this alone, the fact that I am able to contain thousands of games on a single USB which is less than 31 GBs is remarkable.
The convenience of this brings an entirely new element to Game Boy. Gone are the days of having to lug around boxes and bags of game cartridges. Now I carry one game cartridge with every game loaded onto that single sd card.
Modernizing the Game Boy Printer
I then remembered about the Game Boy Printer & Camera! An oddly unique piece of hardware which was developed for Game Boy. I found my Game Boy Printer & Camera and began printing photos out on the 24 year old thermal printer and paper.
Over a period of weeks of enjoying my revitalized Game Boy, I began to wonder about further modifications to the handheld consoles. All up until I stumbled across @gameboycameraobscura on Instagram. What a delightful surprise to find! An artist who exclusively takes photos with a Game Boy Camera and exhibits his photography in galleries! Not only that, but he somehow managed to discover a way of taking colored photos with candy wrappers and an infra-red blocking lens from a telescope! Remarkable.
A few moments into his page, I was overtaken by a brewing thought; “How the hell did he digitalize the photos to post on Instagram?”
After some research and a conversation with @gameboycameraobscura. I quickly found the device. A tiny piece of hardware called a ‘Camera WIFI Printer for Gameboy’ designed by Suicidebattery in the United Kingdom on Tindie.
Powered by an ESP8266 chip and attached to a custom PCB, the device emulates a Game Boy Printer by being attached through the original cable adapter which is used to connect a Game Boy to the Game Boy Printer. Once the photo is printed from the Game Boy it is sent to a local web server with a fixed IP using the ESP8266, which can then be saved to a computer.
First step is to substitute the original Game Boy Printer for the WIFI Printer. The device connects via the Game Boy Printer cable, and then connect the WIFI Printer to power source.
Select the photo you are going to send to the WIFI printer.
Print the photo through the Game Boy Camera. This will transfer the photo to the ESP8266’s internal memory. Which can then be accessed through the fixed IP on the device.
Once the photo has been transferred. Connect to the GameboyPrinter newly shown Wi-Fi which has generated.
Go to the URL: 192.168.4.1
Once on the website, you will be able to view all of your transferred photos. You can save them to your computer, post them online, or reprint them on a better thermal printer! lol.
I used my Munbyn Thermal printer, which I have been having a lot of fun with. Here is the same photo across the two printers. The original Game Boy Printer paper, and two other size options from the Munbyn Thermal Printer.
A fun thing to discover how such a small change in technology can create such an unexpected result. It only opens the door to creativity with what can be accomplished. The idea that these cameras were designed with no method of extracting from the game cartridge is amazing, the photos only existed on that specific camera cartridge. Now the photos are digitalized and saved. Here is the raw photo which was taken from a modded Game Boy Color using an original (not modified) Game Boy Camera cartridge: And is now online.
