Some breadboard chef has cooked up a slightly new way to serve Raspberry Pi Zero. He sliced up a Game Boy, stuffed it with a Raspberry Pi micro PC, sprinkled in a couple of new buttons and baked in an SD card reader to play retro ROMs.
The Game Boy Zero, as it's been named by its creator wermy, can play just about every retro Nintendo game, from the Game Boy Advanced on back. The SD card reader was wired into a Game Boy cartridge –it was done to invoke the nostalgia of inserting a cartridge into a Game Boy.
"I took an original Game Boy cartridge, took it apart and I wired up an SD to Micro SD card adapter," says wermy. "I desoldered all the chips and soldered it up to some of the pins [in the cartridge]. And then I took the cartridge reader from the Game Boy and wired up those pins to the SD card pads on the back of the Pi Zero."
Because the original Game Boy doesn't have as many buttons as a Game Boy Advance, wermy carved up the handheld console's casing and installed two extra buttons, "X" and "Y," from an NES controller. He also drilled out two screw holes on the back of the Game Boy Zero, both to give himself more room to work and to install a pair of tiny shoulder buttons.
Elsewhere in the Game Boy Zero, there's a USB Type A port that'll allow peripherals such as a keyboard and mouse. There's a micro USB port for charging and an HDMI port for big screen play.
The creator also trimmed some of the bezel to make more room for a color LCD screen, something else the original Game Boy lacked. And he wired in a lithium polymer battery pack.
"There are hundreds of videos on YouTube of the Pi Zero playing different emulators, so you can get a pretty good idea of how it handles things," wermy says. "But I've been pretty impressed"
Check out wermy's video of his finished Game Boy Zero in action:
