Born more than 30 years ago, the Game Boy has not finished talking about it. Nintendo’s first handheld console caught the attention of Sebastian Staacks, a German tinkerer who created a special cartridge to capture the console’s video stream directly. A small revolution for streaming video games.
The GB Interceptor
Until now, the best way to share your Game Boy games was to go through an emulator and play directly on a PC. A simple method, but which does not exploit the original hardware of the console, which poses problems for the achievement of “official” records. This is where the GB Interceptor comes in, an accessory created from scratch that allows you to connect game cartridges to your Game Boy and output a usable video stream for streaming on Twitch, YouTube and others. social networks.
Operation is simple: just insert the GB Interceptor into the cartridge port of the console, plug in a USB cable and then connect an official game cartridge. Technically, the accessory is not a “standard” capture card that records what is happening on the console screen, as the Game Boy hardware does not allow such manipulations. The GB Interceptor will actually emulate a version of the installed game, intercept commands sent by console buttons and then recreate a perfect copy of what is happening on screen.
An accessory designed for competition
The idea for the GB Interceptor was born during a tournament of Tetris, explains Sebastian Staacks. “Today, there’s nothing unusual about streaming video from a Game Boy. Emulators can easily do this, and modern Game Boy variants, like the Analogue Pocket, offer an HDMI output that can be captured. There are also modifications to add an HDMI output to the original Game Boy hardware“, explains Staacks. But competing on hacked hardware isn’t ideal for him.”Gamers have to rely on the habits they’ve picked up on their personal Game Boy. Replacing them with a modern device or emulator significantly hampers their ability to play competitively.“
Finding a way to share the content of a Game Boy without having to modify its console or use an emulator was therefore essential for high-level tournaments. “The Game Boy has just the right amount of complexity to be challenging yet simple enough to understand the whole system“, explains Sebastian Staacks. If you want to build a capture cartridge yourself, all the necessary information is on GitHub and a video explains how the contraption works from A to Z.