How to make your old Game Boy as good as (or better than) new

Enlarge/ Fixing and upgrading old Game Boys is a fun way to revive and personalize your old tech; it's also a great excuse for revisiting some classic games.

Andrew Cunningham

Old Nintendo consoles are clearly having a Moment.

This interest has been spurred in part by official hardware releases like the NES and SNES Classic Editions, tiny replica consoles that have more in common with your smartphone than with the original hardware. But lots of people still want to dig out their old cartridges and play games on actual hardware, as evidenced by the Analogue NT, the Super NT, and Hyperkin’s unabashed Game Boy Pocket clone.

It’s that last one I want to focus on. Nintendo’s retro revival has so far focused mostly on the classic boxes that you hooked to a TV, ignoring the portables that buoyed Nintendo when home consoles like the GameCube and Wii U faltered. But Hyperkin’s backlit Game Boy clone and the (heretofore totally unsubstantiated) rumors about a Game Boy Classic Edition suggest that people want to relive their long childhood car trips just like they want to relive hours in the basement parked in front of a TV and an NES.

If you don’t want to wait around for Nintendo to start re-releasing old portables, the good news is that there’s a vibrant repair and modding scene out there for anyone who wants to make their old Game Boy hardware as good as (or even better than) new. I’ve spent the last month researching the subtle differences between different Game Boy production runs, watching dark blurry YouTube videos, learning to solder, and spending more time crawling through Reddit and forum posts than I care to remember. And I have returned to share my trove of knowledge with you, so you don’t have to try quite as hard to enjoy these old games on the hardware that originally played them.

Table of Contents

• Why the Game Boy Advance?
• Fixes: The casing, the buttons, and the screen
• Getting supplies and taking things apart
• Cleaning buttons and contacts
• Cleaning battery corrosion
• Fixing the GBA’s (or GBA SP's) power switch
• Cleaning the cartridge slot
• The upgrades: Backlit screens
• Getting a backlit screen in the original GBA
• What about battery life?
• An adjustable GBA backlight
• A rechargeable GBA battery pack
• Play it loud: Some speaker mods
• What about games?
• Replacing old save batteries
• The important thing is to have fun

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham

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https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/04/how-to-make-your-old-game-boy-as-good-as-or-better-than-new/