A fan disassembled a Game Boy to recreate it… horizontally. A small technical feat that will appeal to all nostalgics.
“Everyone loves the Game Boy“, Can we read on the Nintendo website (yes, this console is officially gendered in the male, excuse us for using the female). This assertion may be a little ambitious, but we must admit that the handheld console released in 1989 in Japan marked the minds of players at the time, launching the era of portable consoles.
Incredible as it was, the Game Boy suffered from many flaws. First of all, its dim screen, but also its format. The console is big, heavy and its vertical layout unbalances it in hand. In 2001, Nintendo understood this and released the Game Boy Advance with a horizontal format, still used today with the Nintendo Switch.
A horizontal prototype
A fan known under the pseudonym Obirux therefore decided to imagine what the Game Boy would look like if Nintendo had decided in the late 80s to offer a horizontal format. For this, he sacrificed two Game Boy in order to recreate a shell more to his liking before reassembling a functional and more ergonomic console.
Obirux does not specify how long he spent on this project, but he presents certain stages through a YouTube video ending with a test of the prototype on a game of Tetris.
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To achieve this, he had to change many parts, including the motherboard, and he took the opportunity to make some improvements to the screen. It is now backlit and a button allows you to choose the color of the rear light in order to adjust the tint of the screen.
Another improvement, and not the least, the location for the 4 AA batteries has been replaced by an integrated USB rechargeable battery.
No marketing planned
This is entirely a personal project and Obirux has no plans to release a kit to replicate his feat. Too bad, we really would have liked to put our hands on this little console blowing a wind of modernity on the embers of our nostalgia.
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