The Nintendo Game Boy is more than 35 years old. That’s ancient in technology terms but there is life in the old dog yet.
Last year, I bought an Analogue Pocket: a wonderful device that allows me to play original Game Boy cartridges on modern hardware. The full colour, high resolution display makes every single game pop with a brilliance that makes the experience of playing these decades old games feel brand new again.
That is, if the cartridges work.
Showing their age
Game Boy cartridges – or Game Paks as they are officially designated – don’t age gracefully.
Years of their users blowing on the cartridge to get them to work and moisture in the air corrodes the gold plated contacts on the exposed edge, rendering them useless without a deep clean.
Even then, many of them contain CR2025 coin cell batteries. Those batteries are soldered directly onto the circuit boards and, like all batteries, they eventually run out of charge. Once that happens, any saving capability is gone without resorting to soldering irons and a very steady hands.
They’re also just old and tatty. Shoved in draws and battered around in boxes for years, unloved and abandoned. I’ve got cartridge shells that have warped and discoloured, and with labels hanging off. All of them in need of some TLC.
Transplants, not face lifts
I could have fixed the cosmetic issues easily enough. Hooking the old circuit boards out of their shells and putting them into “new” replica shells ones takes moments. Scribbling the name of the game onto the shell in permanent marker, even less time.
But that’s not very… well… me, is it?
For the past couple of months, I’ve been purchasing reproduction shells and circuit boards, ripping the original games from the original Game Paks and producing pristine replicas.
I’ve spent hours designing brand new labels for each game, printed on holographic sticker film and laser cut to the perfect size and shape.
In some cases, I’ve gone even further than that. I’ve created ROM-hacked versions of the cartridges: bringing colour to games that never had it, fixing bugs that have been left unfixed since the 1990s, and made better cartridges than the ones the publishers made themselves.
Better still, some bonkers but wonderful people are out in the world still making games for the Game Boy; and they sell them online. I’ve taken the opportunity to manifest those digital only games on physical cartridges.
Every single one has brand new batteries – meaning the save states work – but even better, those batteries can be replaced without any soldering.
The Game Pak is dead. Long live the Game Pak.
These new Game Paks look absolutely stunning, and they work flawlessly on original Game Boy hardware and on the Analogue Pocket. I’m delighted with how they’ve turned out.
Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I’m off to play them…