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Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

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Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#43

>Purely in terms of industrial design, I don’t think a Nintendo handheld has matched the elegance of the SP. 100%. Awesome post.

The SP was pretty painful to hold and use for long times in my experience. The shoulder buttons were particularly hard to hit comfortably. The original GBA horizontal design is my favorite and most comfortable. Swap it to a nice backlit LCD or even OLED and it would be perfect.

GBA wasn't bad but it was bulkier to carry on your person. The portability of the SP was killer and the beautiful LCD screen was protected in your bag or pocket.

As far as ergonomics, it wasn't so bad. For more action oriented games, it could be a bit tiring, but for Pokemon it was the perfect machine.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of this, you can easily go to cheaper school and pay about 10K a year. Software Engineering is a fields where you don't even need a degree to be honest. I know at least 2 colleagues who make much more than me without degrees. Just make side projects. Or spend a bit more , go to UC Berkeley and you can attend one of the best CS schools in the world. Just live in California for a year to get residency…

That's my whole point, I don't have a degree and it's been a long time since that came up. In my most recent position I got an offer before the recruiter found out I didn't have a degree: We were making small talk waiting for someone to join the call and they offhandedly asked where I went to school... I didn't. - So with that in mind, how are they justifying their value over those cheaper (or free) options? With an…

If people want to pay for prestige let them.

For the most part you either should logically come from money or get a scholarship. At 18 your free to ruin your life in a variety of ways ,college isn't the worst.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#45

I absolutely adore the Game Boy modding scene that’s exploded in the last few years. Case overhauls like this or the Boxypixel slab pictured in the article, numerous backlit high-res IPS screen replacements, mods to improve sound, Li-ion battery packs with USB charging. And that’s to say nothing of Analogue or the MiSTer project, creating full FPGA reimplementations of the hardware. It’s a really cool example of what…

Sadly the original hardware is slowly degrading over time. Nintendo DS lite screens for example are all yellowing at this age. Buttons suffer too, my gameboy color is just a paperweight now because the buttons hardly register a press. Maybe these issues can be repaired but I’m not skilled with a soldering iron which is a big requirement it seems.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#46

>Purely in terms of industrial design, I don’t think a Nintendo handheld has matched the elegance of the SP. 100%. Awesome post.

Ds Lite imo is even better. Its thinner so it fits easier in the pocket even though its wider. You put in a flashcart with a 32gb micro sd and now you can store every game worth playing from the nds, gba, gbc, gb, snes, nes, sega genesis, various ataris and other early game systems. It has the longest battery life for a nintendo handheld I believe. Plus I find it pretty comfortable in adult hands still, definitely moreso than the nintendo switch.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not think so either, although, SLA is the one method I'd guess, if I had to, just going by the main picture. SLA is indeed the process they used, but what really surprised me was that it's offered as a 3D printing service from JLPCB and PCBWay.

Yeah this is definitely an SLA print. SLA is capable of amazing quality with respect to both dimensional tolerances and overall appearance of finished product. I've been on the fence about getting one. This post might be the thing that pushes me over the edge. HN readers: what SLA printers do you recommend?

I have an Epax 3D and I've been pretty satisfied with it, although it does have a pretty small build area.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#48

I absolutely adore the Game Boy modding scene that’s exploded in the last few years. Case overhauls like this or the Boxypixel slab pictured in the article, numerous backlit high-res IPS screen replacements, mods to improve sound, Li-ion battery packs with USB charging. And that’s to say nothing of Analogue or the MiSTer project, creating full FPGA reimplementations of the hardware. It’s a really cool example of what…

Sadly the original hardware is slowly degrading over time. Nintendo DS lite screens for example are all yellowing at this age. Buttons suffer too, my gameboy color is just a paperweight now because the buttons hardly register a press. Maybe these issues can be repaired but I’m not skilled with a soldering iron which is a big requirement it seems.

It's relatively easy to learn soldering basics, and even if you're not good at soldering, it's pretty forgiving (especially on older hardware where the components aren't so finicky).

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#50

I absolutely adore the Game Boy modding scene that’s exploded in the last few years. Case overhauls like this or the Boxypixel slab pictured in the article, numerous backlit high-res IPS screen replacements, mods to improve sound, Li-ion battery packs with USB charging. And that’s to say nothing of Analogue or the MiSTer project, creating full FPGA reimplementations of the hardware. It’s a really cool example of what…

I love it too, though I wish that along with it there was renewed interest in Gameboy game development. There are GB game-jams, but more-often-than-not the results of those just languish in obscurity rather than seeing any community attention; and so there's no incentive to put any polish into these titles. (There's nobody trying to make anything like David Murray's Planet X3 for the GB scene.)

I feel like something that would really kick such an ecosystem off, would be some sort of wi-fi-enabled GB/GBC flash-cart, which boots to Mario-Maker-like UX for downloading, playing, and reviewing (liking/disliking, making playlists of, etc) bite-sized GB/GBC experiences from a community-maintained cloud service; where the supply side of that cloud service would be easy upload integration with tools like GB Studio.

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