Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended
posts.decontextualize.com
posts.decontextualize.com
That's how you tell the professionals from the novices! The professionals only get it wrong once. Per connector, of course. The novices can get it wrong up to five times, which is really impressive! (The novice in question may or may not have been me.)
Case overhauls like this or the Boxypixel slab pictured in the article, numerous backlit high-res IPS screen replacements, mods to improve sound, Li-ion battery packs with USB charging. And that’s to say nothing of Analogue or the MiSTer project, creating full FPGA reimplementations of the hardware.
It’s a really cool example of what some very creative and passionate people can do with commodity technology. The only downside is it’s actually becoming quite pricey to get original hardware.
No soldering required to get you back up and running.
As for your buttons, you can buy new rubber membranes that make contact with the board to register the press. Give the board a good clean with isopropyl and pop some new membranes in and your buttons will no doubt be good as new—no soldering needed!
All you'll need to do to fix a GBC with stuff buttons is open it up (requires a tri wing screwdriver, $2 from eBay), clean the button pads with a q-tip and alcohol.
The pads in question are the black bits on the back of the rubber immediately underneath the button, as well as the circular copper traces on the board that the black bits come into contact with when you depress the button.
You might need 3 or 4 q-tips. You'll know when you're done because the q-tips will stop turning black.
Takes 10 minutes overall and is only slightly more technical than wiping your arse! Don't be intimidated!
If you're deathly afraid of making mistakes, get a desoldering iron. If you mess up just suck the solder up, reapply a bit of flux as necessary, and try again.
I feel like something that would really kick such an ecosystem off, would be some sort of wi-fi-enabled GB/GBC flash-cart, which boots to Mario-Maker-like UX for downloading, playing, and reviewing (liking/disliking, making playlists of, etc) bite-sized GB/GBC experiences from a community-maintained cloud service; where the supply side of that cloud service would be easy upload integration with tools like GB Studio.
You can also get GB carts that support SD card. I appreciate you’re describing a more complete, end to end, UX but we can already do everything right up to inserting the SD card into the Gameboy cart. With Gameboy emulation as good as it is, you could do away with original hardware for 99% of players too (though for me, the joy of retro gaming is using the original hardware. But I’d never look down on anyone who preferred emulation).
Rather, I mean that nobody's fabbing GB game carts, printing glossy color manuals for them, putting them in boxes, and shipping them to Kickstarter backers. Nobody's translating these games into 10 languages. Nobody's QA-testing the heck out of them to ensure they don't have any obscure edge-case bugs. Etc. (This was why I brought up Planet X3: it's an example of a modern retro-game that is polished in exactly this sense.)
But a desire to go through all the effort to create polished modern GB games, is the sort of thing that requires market demand — a willingness to spend real money to buy new GB games (whether digitally or physically.) No hobbyist game developer is going to spend a year on "things that aren't programming" to make a nice shippable product out of their game, if that isn't going to result in at least breaking even on their effort.
And a prerequisite for that demand, is public awareness of the fact that modern GB games are being created — and, more importantly, a public "brand" awareness for the people creating them!
Indie game jams are great and all; but they don't create brand awareness. App Stores with "studios with most stars" views create brand awareness. Easily one-click accessibility of the games to allow them to be played on a PC (rather than on a portable with no video-capture support), to enable streamers and content-creators to play them on a whim, create brand awareness. Gamedev tooling that expects/requires a "publisher logo card" to be shown on boot, create brand awareness. Etc.
Basically, think of "modern gameboy games" as if they were a thing made by one company, rather than a diffuse community. What would that company be doing to market them? The community can do those things too!
Maybe not Kickstarter specifically, but they are doing the other stuff.
> Nobody's translating these games into 10 languages.
That's a little unreasonable ask. Given how little money these games will bring in you can't expect that.
> Nobody's QA-testing the heck out of them to ensure they don't have any obscure edge-case bugs. Etc. (This was why I brought up Planet X3: it's an example of a modern retro-game that is polished in exactly this sense.)
There is QA testing happening but like with the above, you can't expect smaller operations to pay people to QA. So you end up either having "QA" be demo builds, in which case most people end up with a copy so you can't do the premium carts that you're also asking for. Or you just have to accept that QA is a smaller operation but still have the beautiful hardware copy.
Even really well polished games on other platforms with much bigger audiences, like Xeno Crisis for the Mega Drive / Genesis, have had their share of bugs too. Even in the original days of these consoles, when games from big studios with big budgets to spend on testing, we'd still see new releases with bugs-galore.
> But a desire to go through all the effort to create polished modern GB games, is the sort of thing that requires market demand — a willingness to spend real money to buy new GB games (whether digitally or physically.) No hobbyist game developer is going to spend a year on "things that aren't programming" to make a nice shippable product out of their game, if that isn't going to result in at least breaking even on their effort.
This doesn't even happen with new games on current generation consoles. So I don't understand why you're expecting it to happen with retro-consoles.
> And a prerequisite for that demand, is public awareness of the fact that modern GB games are being created — and, more importantly, a public "brand" awareness for the people creating them!
I don't think awareness is the problem. I think most people just don't care. If you're a retro gamer you are probably already aware, and if you're not then you're never going to play these games anyway. And I honestly can't blame people for not caring. There's so much content out there these days that GB games (with all the warts that the GB hardware had, by modern day standards) simple aren't going to appeal to most people.
I think you're setting your expectations far too high.
> Indie game jams are great and all; but they don't create brand awareness
Again, there are plenty of releases that aren't the results of game jams.
It absolutely does. What do you think https://www.nicalis.com/ as a studio does? They take hobbyists' indie games, acquire distribution rights, and polish them so they can see console release.
Also consider: ports. What is the re-release of Shantae for Switch, if not someone spending a year polishing an (admittedly already polished by 2002 standards) GBC game into a product non-retro-gamers are willing to pay for?
> If you're a retro gamer you are probably already aware, and if you're not then you're never going to play these games anyway.
...why not? I think you're setting your expectations too low.
People pay for (polished) Steam and console releases of RPG Maker games; and those often have far less effort or thought put into the gameplay, replayability, etc. than these games do.
Though the real point of comparison that should be made, is the market for indie commercial homebrew releases for non-portable consoles; which is thriving even among non-retro-gamers, in a way that the market for portables, isn't.
• Consider: there are more people out there commercializing just the ROMhacks of Super Mario World (by doing full engine rewrites of games that were already full asset replacements, to get away from Nintendo's IP, and then selling the results on console stores!) than there are GB/GBC/GBA game authors attempting to commercialize their games.
• Consider: there are tons of game streamers, speedrunners, genre-specific content creators (e.g. horror-game Lets Play-ers), etc, who play new console retro-games if and only if they come packaged in some accessible format. So they'll play Steam or console-store releases of these retro games; they'll play PC-accessible downloadables like Mario Multiverse or PokeWilds; but they won't touch a raw emulator. And, by-and-large, the developers of these new old-home-console titles are aware of that, and produce/port/polish their releases so that they can be consumed in this way, and so can generate virality. I don't see anything like that happening in the new old-portable games space.
They're not the games studio doing it, so it literally proves my point. These people could just as easily do it for the GB games too but they know there's no money in it.
> ...why not? I think you're setting your expectations too low. People pay for (polished) Steam and console releases of RPG Maker games; and those often have far less effort or thought put into the gameplay, replayability, etc. than these games do.
Because those games are cheap as chips and don't require an original Gameboy to play them. Given your point was about polished cart releases, the requirement to own a Gameboy is a pretty big hurdle for people who are only casually interested in retro games.
Then there's the other points I've already outlined: Gameboy graphics, much as I loved them at the time, haven't aged well. Even modern pixel art is very different to the 4 toned shades of grey on a 160x144 matrix.
> Though the real point of comparison that should be made, is the market for indie commercial homebrew releases for non-portable consoles; which is thriving even among non-retro-gamers, in a way that the market for portables, isn't.
Thriving is over-stating the market. There's a lot of resellers driving the prices up but the market for actual retro gamers is a lot smaller than the market bubble suggests. A lot of non-retro gamers bought their NES or PlayStation "mini's" but then went back to their current gen PlayStation/Xbox a few weeks later; leaving their retro system to collect dust. Even the emulators bundled with Nintendo's Switch Online membership mostly gets played by people who are already retro gamers, while the rest of the Switch's demographic prefer either Nintendo's first party games or the range of indie offerings.
And even if we take your comment at face value, you're still ignoring my point that the Gameboy has aged probably the worst of any console. Except maybe the Atari 2600. Don't get me wrong, I do love my Gameboy. But serious concessions were made in it's hardware design to facilitate it's long battery life. This made the device a fantastic handheld in the 90s but a terrible platform for modern gamers who aren't already bought into retro gaming. Sure you might get the odd non-retro gamer pick it up for nostalgia purposes (like with the NES Classic) but that's not going to be a sustainable source of income.
> Consider: there are more people out there commercializing just the ROMhacks of Super Mario World (by doing full engine rewrites of games that were already full asset replacements, to get away from Nintendo's IP, and then selling the results on console stores!) than there are GB/GBC/GBA game authors attempting to commercialize their games.
Are there? Do you actually have some data to back up that claim? Have you done any in-depth analysis here or just pulling guestimates out of your arse? And even if you are correct (which I doubt), what difference does it make? The two aren't related. They're not even mutually exclusive.
> Consider: there are tons of game streamers, speedrunners, genre-specific content creators (e.g. horror-game Lets Play-ers), etc, who play new console retro-games if and only if they come packaged in some accessible format. So they'll play Steam or console-store releases of these retro games; they'll play PC-accessible downloadables like Mario Multiverse or PokeWilds; but they won't touch a raw emulator. And, by-and-large, the developers of these new old-home-console titles are aware of that, and produce/port/polish their releases so that they can be consumed in this way, and so can generate virality. I don't see anything like that happening in the new old-portable games space.
There are absolutely shit loads of retro gamer streamers out there too. In fact I'm doing a stream myself tonight.
Disclaimer: as well as being a retro gamer and streamer myself, I know a number of relatively high profile people in the gaming and retro-gaming circles. Some who are resellers, some who are games researchers and some who are games journalists too. A couple of which are also really big fans of the GB, GBC and GBA so frequently get sent new games for review (albeit those games don't usually get published in magazines because, and I quote "not enough people are interested in the Gameboy". But they will publish reviews online).
I've gotta take the GBA apart again to fix a d-pad issue but other than that they're perfect. Slowly building up a collection of games for them again, too.
Documenting being a major drag.
Still, always a pleasure for a tech guy to scroll through a bonafide geek project.
Loved the page of the guy that mapped and memory-injected a WD hdd PCB Marvell's ARM cores to ultimately install its own linux kernel on it.
One of these days I’ll do that mod.
Wikipedia says: «As of December 31, 2009, the Game Boy Advance series has sold 81.51 million units worldwide, 43.57 million of which are Game Boy Advance SP units and 2.42 million of which are Game Boy Micro units.»
So, the SP was the most sold version, but I can't name a single GBA emulator that uses its design as the logo.
But I agree that the normal Advance would benefit greatly from a backlight. For what it was, I'm surprised how well the external light you could buy held up (connector & flex cable)
While looking into it recently, I kinda came to the conclusion that the best bang for buck was probably to just get one of the PSP Vita models.
To be fair, this has a kind of synchronicity, since the original PSP was my first exposure to homebrew hardware modding.
IDK, either way, I'll probably eventually end up with an Anbernic device or something similar. They're just so neat and the idea of a tiny little Linux box with a built in gamepad appeals. But I can't help but think they could do better.
GBA: Approximately 145 mm (5.7 in) x 82 mm (3.2 in) x 24 mm (0.94 in) (WxHxD)
Not exactly the same, but very close.
I wonder if you could drop the internals for the anberic into a gba frame
But still, one of the things I liked about my GBA was how well it fit in the hand, part of that was because the back was somewhat contoured. The new trend of everything being flat rectangles makes devices a lot less comfy for me.
I see where you're coming from here. I like playing the switch handheld but it's way too big for true portable gaming.
>part of that was because the back was somewhat contoured
It's got very slightly elevated grip pads on the back and the build quality is high so it feels solid.
https://main.retro-handhelds.com/content/images/2021/09/RG35...
I found the Retro Game Corps YouTube channel to be a big help when getting everything setup.
I ended up modifying the behavior to hide everything on the launch screen except for 1-2 games I'm playing and made them always launch from save states on boot.
[0]https://extremerate.com/products/ips-ready-upgraded-the-wood...
I've been on the fence about getting one. This post might be the thing that pushes me over the edge.
HN readers: what SLA printers do you recommend?
Unless you get an industrial printer, dimensional accuracy gets messy with SLA. Slicers can try and compensate, but you end up having to work around warping
For organic shapes like figures I'm sure it's great, but as someone who prints functional items 99% of the time I'd rather tune an FDM printer than fight with my messy SLA machine
That's alarming. How bad are we talking about, like millimeters or fractions thereof?
I really, really like the appearance of the case from TFA and would love to build similar enclosures for my projects, but if that comes at the expense of noticeable long term dimensional instability, no thanks.
This was already five years ago so I wouldn’t discount the technology altogether, I would just check for the printer and material you’re interested in.
0: https://www.cuddleburrito.com/blog/2015/10/13/3d-printing-vi...
That article is dated 2015! If they could do that seven years ago, what is state of the art now?
https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/3d-printing/plastic...
The quality of the results is excellent - you can print some really fine detailed parts. The downside is cost (print and the materials) and the fact that the materials involved are pretty nasty - they come with some major warnings about causing infertility and cancer just for coming into contact.
Maybe I just have had a few bad experiences and I'm by no means a CAD expert, but that one is close to the top of my list and I have used 5/6 CAD programs over the last 15 years.
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/303578/how-preval...
https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/krl6b1/dock...
screen protectors and other weird tricks like wrapping your switch in cloth or modifying the dock seem pretty common which probably helps make it less likely.
I mean, of course, Pokémon was childlike. Us almost-adults played clearly superior games like MtG with cardboard. The GameBoy was for Tetris.
Hopefully this doesn't have builtin ads ;)
Obviously we need a hinged Nintendo Switch now.
100%.
Awesome post.
As far as ergonomics, it wasn't so bad. For more action oriented games, it could be a bit tiring, but for Pokemon it was the perfect machine.
I'm also a self-taught dev who's wanted to go back to college and get a degree for posterity.
So naturally applying to NYU made sense, get started on the education stuff I was putting off, get access to a really cool makerspace, etc. I talked to someone from admissions at the school, learned more about the process, but then we got to pricing and the fact I wouldn't qualify for assistance... well it turned out it was practically unaffordable for me, a senior SWE in NYC making a "FAANG-like" salary.
I say "practically" because technically I could pay it, but to what end? I'd be looking at over 150k over the next two years for a simple bachelors with no appreciable change to my career trajectory.
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It really blew my mind. I was making what their graduates can expect to make years out of school and the math wasn't working, how is it supposed to work for someone coming out of high school?
The cynic in me would look at that makerspace that easily had *40k in Ultimakers that never actually seemed to be printing anything peeking out the window and think "is this what they're paying for?", but I guess on the flip side you get things like this post?
* Actually I went and looked at an old picture, I only counted 8 or so in view of the window...
Then those 18 year olds grow up, can't pay back the loan, so the government uses bailing them out as a political bargaining chip.
Just make side projects.
Or spend a bit more , go to UC Berkeley and you can attend one of the best CS schools in the world. Just live in California for a year to get residency first
In my most recent position I got an offer before the recruiter found out I didn't have a degree: We were making small talk waiting for someone to join the call and they offhandedly asked where I went to school... I didn't.
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So with that in mind, how are they justifying their value over those cheaper (or free) options? With an expensive makerspace? Pedigree? (as you point out there are cheaper schools of a similar calibre)
To me it doesn't add up and something has to give at some point. I've long felt that if we get student loan relief, it must come with tightening the purse strings on the tuition side by downsizing how much the government is willing to finance per student.
The schools are using the money for everything from vanity projects to real-estate plays, that needs to stop.
For the most part you either should logically come from money or get a scholarship. At 18 your free to ruin your life in a variety of ways ,college isn't the worst.
They take out loans for it, and as the now-in-jeopardy relief program shows they often can't pay those loans back.
A lot of schools don't even have the prestige but have this pricing problem: if we keep letting colleges access "free money" on the backs of 18 year olds, they will keep taking that money and spending it regardless of if it benefits the students.
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If you walk into a bank as an assetless 18 year old and ask for a $100,000 for "a big bet that will probably pay off just trust me", you'll be politely but firmly asked to leave.
Why are we letting that happen just because some school offering 0 collateral happens to be the co-signer?
It's a very complex problem. Not everyone wants to code, for many professions you really need to get into a top school. That top school might cost a bit of money.
Recently I've found it's best to worry about oneself to be frank.
Know you don't want to take out 100k for a top school, but don't judge those who do.
Assuming that results in an additional 5 to 10k in income per year after graduation, it easily pays for itself.
For you, since you already have an established career it makes little sense to spend that much
I didn't judge the students who go there, or imply such a thing.
My parents both came to this country from a third world country and spent the better parts of their lives working towards their doctorates, so I'm not looking down on people for seeking education.
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My entire point is that the act of paying tuition isn't what makes you 5-10k, going to the school as a whole is.
NYU is a school where according to their own numbers the average student does in fact pay out more than 100k for a 4 year degree after the >30k in aid the average student gets
And so I'm questioning if that extreme level of cost is actually a requisite of NYU creating a student worth more than average.
Do they really need to spend 1 billion dollars more a year than UC Berkley, on a slightly smaller student body, to make students who make near identical salaries?
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At the end of the day no one person can answer that, but I'm highly skeptical and would rather see downward pressure on tuition in the form for cutting off the money faucet that is 18 year olds taking out loans.
If the schools really generate equivalent value to what they're asking, that shouldn't be an issue: richer graduates will still benefit their endowments, better outcomes will still differentiate them, etc.
Embedded systems were a good match for my background tinkering with assembly for calculators and messing with MCUs, but it's a very "traditional" part of tech.
Android in embedded is much closer to mobile in terms of culture, so my lack of a degree wasn't a problem getting started, and demand has only grown over the years. I currently work in HMI for self-driving vehicles these days but I've worked on everything from in-store interactive displays to prototype fitness equipment
Bonus: You can also pivot to traditional mobile dev, which I've done for some stints over the course of my career
Lovely quote.