In Depth: The Game Boy Printer | Hacker News Reader

In Depth: The Game Boy Printer

shonumi.github.io

100 pointsgullyfur14 comments

When I was a kid I had a gameboy camera and a gameboy printer.

It was basically a low-res instagram/polaroid hybrid.

Take a selfie (the camera rotated, pretty revolutionary at the time), add borders and effects in-software, print out a instant photo.

It was sort of like an instant portable photobooth, what with the borders and frames and decals and so on.

It felt pretty magical when I was young. As an older person it feels as if it's a niche that could probably still be filled profitably by someone with the right stuff and marketing.

> As an older person it feels as if it's a niche that could probably still be filled profitably by someone with the right stuff and marketing.

It's a whole product category:

https://www.lifewire.com/best-portable-photo-printers-415640...

I don't think its a very big one. Or at least its on the way down. I saw a few of them about 9 years ago but not since then.

Yeah, I know, but I don't think that product category is very profitable, and they fill a wholly different role. They're marketed towards scrap-bookers and mobile professionals, and they aren't usually very cheap.

What I meant is that I think there is a profitable idea there exploiting the concept as a fun toy for younger people.

I know a ton of people that'd be psyched at the prospect of printing out their selfies as stickers from their phone or a very mobile phone-like device.

It's funny that you say cheap, when I remember the printer being about $99 (in late 90s dollars!) which was close to the price of a Game Boy (color) as well. In all my years of school and daycare I remember seeing exactly one kid with one, and even then it wasn't used for photos since no one had a camera. We ended up just printing Pokemon sprites.

6 AA batteries was also an extremely luxurious allotment...

> As an older person it feels as if it's a niche that could probably still be filled profitably by someone with the right stuff and marketing.

I mean, there is - it's Instax [1] from FUJIFILM. Basically a polaroid instant camera on steroids. At least here in Germany, I see some kids running around with it. I think it also features an App, where you can set filters and anything, and print it from your phone on a portable printer, which would tick another item on your list.

[1] https://instax.com/

The end mentions that it's supported by GBE+ ... though getting paper for the Game Boy Printer is a bit of a challenge for enthusiasts. Some have taken to cutting non-official thermal paper to the right size.

While, we're on the topic, GBE+ just had a birthday (both GBE and GBE+ were released on April 1).

https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/GBE%2B

I have take thermal paper and cut it down to size, but then you need to double it up to produce the right thickness

A part that's not super clear here is that the gameboy link cable comms are basically SPI. Running this over an Arduino is probably the easiest way to use this today.

anyone know what connector the gameboy link cable uses? i actually have a gameboy printer and it would be fun to print to from a PC

AFAIK it's only the gameboy link cable. It went on to inspire firewire, but it's it's own connector.

FireWire predates the Game Boy by three years.

It started development in 1986, but didn't finish development to be released into a product until 1994, five years after the release of the GameBoy.

Edit: Also Michael Johas Teener, the one time chair of the FireWire working group, says here in slides from a presentation about the history of firewire, hosted on his personal website, that the "Connector based on Nintendo Gameboy". http://www.johasteener.com/docs_files/1394HistoryAndMarket.p...

There's some what would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad commentary on the GameBoy Link Cable wiki talk page about how that isn't enough of a reference for some reason. The deletionists have certainly won wiki.

Just buy a cheap link cable online and cut the end off

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