Game Boy Zero
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, one of the most successful portable game consoles of all time – until it was replaced by the color-coded Game Boy Color (1998). Nearly 120 million copies of the console have been sold. For more than a quarter of a century, Game Boy rewrote gaming history and dominated the market with games like Tetris or Super Mario. Now, a hobbyist who goes by the pseudonym “wermy” has breathed new life into an old classic, with the help of Raspberry Pi Zeroes. His “Game Boy Zero” project not only has a color display, but also a USB A and micro USB jacks, a mini HDMI slot, and two additional control buttons.
The console runs on the operating system RetroPie, a distribution that contains emulators for different consoles, making it possible to play other classic games (including SNES, NES) that only need to be downloaded as ROM. A converted game plugin module, including SD card, finally ensures that the minicomputer can access the Game Boy’s hardware. Wermy documented his development steps and published them on Imgur on April 6, 2016.