Game Boy the Size of a Cartridge Created

Concluding month the Raspberry Pi Zero W launched. Information technology reminded united states of america just how small a consummate PC tin be, and at present the Nix board is the brains behind what counts as the smallest Game Boy always created.

Officially, the smallest Game Male child ever released was the Game Boy Micro. However, an unofficial version of the Nintendo handheld makes the Micro wait huge in comparison.

The "Game Boy Goose egg, but smaller" is the creation of Peter Barker, who goes by the name moosepr on the Hackaday website. You may remember the Game Male child Zero was created last twelvemonth and looks very much like the original.

Barker is a big fan of retro gaming, simply "not overly fond of 'rats nest' wires," then he decided to make a device for playing Game Male child games that was too "as small as possible." What he ended up with is a handheld capable of playing Game Male child games (and many other retro games) that'south roughly the same size as an original Game Boy cartridge.

Game Boy as small as a Game Boy cartridge

The reason this tiny Game Boy is possible is the existence of the Raspberry Pi Goose egg (or Zero Due west), which Barker combined with a 2.ii-inch LCD sporting a resolution of 320-past-240, and a rechargeable battery. For user input, he used a couple of 5-manner tactile switches rather than attempting to recreate the buttons constitute on a Game Boy.

The software running on this Game Boy is RetroPie, which allows any Raspberry Pi to be turned into a retro-gaming machine. Then while this device was created to play Game Boy games, it can also run Game Boy Color, Game Male child Advance, NES, and a host of games from other retro systems. The only limit here being the performance available from a Pi Zero board.

All the components Barker used for his Game Male child build are readily available and the RetroPie software is free. There's even a Hackaday post with build instructions if y'all decide to create your own. What this project is crying out for, however, is a case and fifty-fifty a cartridge slot on the back. Yes, that would make it much thicker, but as well able to play original games, not but ROMs.

Battery life isn't discussed in detail, but the unit uses around 200 milliamps of power to function. Barker says that even hooking up a little 400mAh drone battery will give you 2 hours of play time.