Nintendo game boy and its many variants represent one of the most famous and successful game platforms in history. For decades, the most popular child in the lunch room was the one with a game console, so that other students could squeeze together to see the latest Pokemon games.
But those days have long passed, and now these once coveted handheld devices can make a splash in the second-hand market. This makes it the best time to view the recently released project [kgsws], which allows you to interface the game boy LCD with esp32 or raspberry PI. In the most basic application, it allows you to push video from a Linux computer to the game boy LCD via WiFi. But as the video below shows, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
By connecting the esp32 between the LCD and the main PCB of the handheld device, the microcontroller can also use the I2S camera mode as the capture device. The recorded game experience [kgsws] looks great compared to what is ultimately displayed on the LCD of the handheld device. The visual effect is clear and smooth, naturally without the iconic (albeit disgusting) green tone of game boy.
The project also includes the ability to control a range of game console LCDs, which allows some interesting possibilities. The image can be stretched to cover multiple displays, [kgsws] demonstrated by playing games on a 3 x 3 recycled panel grid, but each LCD can also be controlled separately, just like the large digital clock seen above.
Whether you want to capture gameplay on real hardware or run retropie on a real game boy screen, we’re glad to see what people have come up with using this project.