Skip to main content

[Idea] GameBoy Zero

For starters, let me provide some context - I am a lover of retro gaming. Primarily because I think the current state of the gaming industry is in a mess, to say the least. I remember when I was young I always watched my father play the original Super Mario Bros, Ice Climber, Adventure Island, and many more games on a Famicom (NES) clone.

My cousins on the other hand had their childhoods spent buried in their original Gameboys, and to save you the trouble of listening to my life story, here is a list of all consoles that I have actually had the chance to play some games on (not necessarily owning it, up to the 5th generation consoles).
  • Nintendo Famicom (clone)
  • Nintendo Gameboy DMG
  • Sony PlayStation
  • Nintendo 64 (Project64 Emulator on PC)
  • Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
  • Various Arcade games (MAME)
Some of the consoles formed most of my fondest memories throughout my childhood. Games like Super Mario 64 (N64), Tumblepop and Joe & Mac (MAME), and Donald Duck Goin' Quackers (PS) were the ones that I can vividly remember playing them.

As times went on, I would revisit some of the games to replay them, break them, and also pick up new ones. Like finally completing the whole 120 stars in Super Mario 64 (following a guide online nonetheless with PJ64 running), and also I took an interest in Tetris, the original NES version.

When I was day dreaming on an afternoon earlier on in June, an idea popped into me - is there a way to make a console that is portable, but runs the non-portable consoles such as the NES (mainly the NES -- I love my Tetris).

That's when I stumbled across retro gaming on the Raspberry Pi using RetroPi. A lot of guides will teach us to use RPi3 to build a console (see NESPi). There are handheld guides as well, but they are bulky and not really the most feasible to carry around - my preferred form factor for a handheld is the original Gameboy DMG.

Further Googling landed me with a few projects to choose from.

The first is the PiGRRL from Adafruit. It is sold in all-in-one packages from Adafruit, and I can choose which RPi I want to use - 0/2/3. The problem? A few actually. I am in Singapore, and after conversions and shipping and handling and buying. The thing would cost a bomb (just over USD160/SGD220). Secondly, the PiGRRL has a small screen (2.8 inches) and I don't want to go blind playing games and be used as a case study in years to come to say why video games are bad. And finally, the buttons are tactile buttons - I very much prefer the original silicon button feel of the NES/SNES controllers.

And the other project I came across is the Gameboy Zero project. It crams an RPi Zero into a Gameboy DMG form factor, complete with new updated parts, and a larger 3.5'' coloured screen. With RetroPi, we can run a multitude of consoles with the help of emulations. So I decided that the Gameboy Zero seems like a great project to start with. After some quick calculations, I realised that while the project will still cost quite a bit, it is still cheaper than the PiGRRL as a whole.

So do expect posts on the Gameboy Zero coming up soon on this blog. You can subscribe to be notified every time I post something new on the blog.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Guide] Installing Microsoft Office 2016 on Ubuntu Using WINE

WINE is a compatibility layer that lets Linux users install and run Windows applications. It is not a virtual machine or an emulator. In simple words the compatibility layer translates Windows calls to Linux calls and thus something that can be understood by the underlying Linux system. For GUI folks (like me), PlayOnLinux is a graphical frontend to manage WINE applications. It also helps to automate some processes during the execution of the EXE files through the use of POL Scripts. All along POL  has a script that installs Microsoft Office 2010 to a point where it runs quite smoothly and mostly bug-free. However, future versions of Office have failed to be installed or run properly. As I was playing around with a copy of Microsoft Office 2016, I was able to get Microsoft Office 2016 running "well enough TM " such that it can be used on a day-to-day basis. Here I will outline the steps I have done to accomplish My laptop is running Kubuntu 18.04.3 LTS and has POL 4.2...
Post a Comment
Read more

[Project] Gameboy Zero (Part 1 - Gathering Resources)

If you head over to the sudomod wiki page you can find a list of items needed for you to build a Gameboy Zero from scratch. However, a lot of these items are expensive to me, such as the Adafruit PowerBoost and any other things that have to be shipped either from US or UK. So I started sourcing for my own parts from other places (mainly China) to try to obtain a list of items that are as cheap as possible, but functionally similar to the original parts. Thankfully, the sudomod wiki has an list of alternatives for every item that is needed, and comments if the item has been used in any other GBZ projects with or without success. So after Googling around as well, I have come up with a list of items that I will use instead of those on the GBZ with custom parts wiki. Here is a list of the more important components:- Screen: 3.5'' GearBest Composite screen Charging circuit: Got from eBay, Looks similar to the Banggood PowerBoost Battery: 4 x Lithium-ion cells (14500) Button PCB...
Post a Comment
Read more