Building A GameBoy Pocket

A friend of mine was asking if I had a Gameboy spare, that I could send him, so that he could show is children what life was like before the millennium.

I said, "Yes, I literally have almost 30. I’ll send you one."

I took this opportunity to have some fun and build him one instead of just sending one out.


This is the process I go through, looking through parts, testing and spares.

I went through a stage a while ago of importing damaged GameBoy Pockets and Color’s (Colour) from Japan and messing about with them, listed as “no-power, junk” I’d get them for about £12 each delivered.

I’ve never not got one of them working again, these things are so durable it’s pretty surprising really. Only serious physical damage or corrosion will end their lives. Even in death they are super helpful too, as you can never have enough spare buttons, rubbers, mother boards, screws, shells, etc….

I’m a big fan of keeping everything as original as possible. However, replacement parts are pretty good to be honest and extremely close to the original parts Nintendo used all those years back – but they lack the spirit and soul of the original, so where possible I always use genuine parts.

There is one constant exception to this though, which I’ll touch on later.


Shells
I have plenty of other original shells, some better than others. Most have a few scuffs and marks, some have some serious marks and some have worn wording or even smoothed plastic around the buttons, that said, I also have some seriously nice ones that do not show their age at all and look beautiful. After a good clean and a polish they all look lovely though.

In this case however I went for a new aftermarket shell, which is very well made, fits tightly together has great quality and goes with the vision I had that I wanted for the look.

Buttons & Rubbers
Generally, you can go with whatever you like here, it’s a totally aesthetic choice, which is pretty fun.

I normally gravitate towards smart and simple, as opposed to clear neon, busy or loud designs. I do have some colourful aftermarket buttons and d-pads, but I tend to not use those and they aren't pictured here.

The MGB doesn’t have a specific button, marked or coloured like say the CGB (Color, with A & B) so you just pick the nicest, least used buttons you have at your disposal.

Rubbers are so important; these are what you feel when you press the buttons and the health and rebound of them are an important part to how the console feels.

These do tend to split and are probably the most perishable item in the system in my experience. They often split, get very grimy and tend to hold liquid and funk, so tend to be very unpleasant to handle.

You want to look at the back on the black pads on the rubbers that make contact with the board and bridge the contacts, you want to avoid heavily used rubbers if you can – obviously, and a clear sign of heavy usage is shine on the pads. So, pick some flat textured ones.

***Worth noting here, that in the end, to add a little bit of detail, I ended up using a lightly translucent lime green power switch, which I though looked cool.

Motherboards 
The boards are generally all the same in the MGB (GameBoy Pocket), with a few variants across the range but with clearest difference/improvement being that the second series of boards came with a battery light indicator on the lens, which was absent from the first run of consoles.

So, I picked a previously fully cleaned and tested, tidy little second series board for this build.

***Again, slight change here to what is pictured, as once the console was built and I was testing it noticed that the speaker was every so lighting blowing a little on full volume, so I took the opportunity to switch boards to another with a much better performing speaker.

To keep the original look as best as I can, I use a hair dryer to remove the serial number and model version stickers from shells that I can’t use, that still have good stickers of course.

These then can be re-applied to another shell.

Then, if you are out of other options you can pick up copies very easily.


Screens 
Not much to do here really, other than use a nice clear, well polarised screen.

I have a few of these where the polarisers are destroyed, often from being left out in the sun for long durations, window cils, open shelves etc…. The polariser is basically what turns the screens output into a contrast we can see. Now, you can, if you like, do something significant here, which turns the MGB into a very different beast completely.

You can, backlit the screen and bi-vert the image.

Resulting in a MGB you can comfortably play in the dark. To make sure the image doesn’t become washed out and hard to see, you bi-vert the image, which effectively, turns the pixels you used to be able to see off, and the ones that were off, on.

It works very well, but its very fiddley, involves, lots of time patience, tricky soldering and power issues if you don’t install a 5V regulator.

Also, a lot of people think that it takes something away from the original console, which I understand.

In this instance, since it was for a mate who wanted to use it as an example of a bygone time, it was best to leave the display OEM.

Lenses
This is the exception that I mentioned earlier, where I pretty much always use an aftermarket, glass lens.

They are just so much nicer.

They are more resistance to scratches and have a nice weight to them in the hand when playing, they make the console feel sturdier.

I ended up going for a glass version of the original colour and style to keep things familiar.

Parts, picked, sorted and doubled checked – it’s ready to go.

It’s also really important to use original Nintendo screws too, they are so much better quality than anything else I’ve ever been supplied with.

And there you have it.

I also have a penchant for classic Nintendo cases and have quite a few that I have picked up for pennies over the years at car-boots, game bundles, or wherever I see a nice one really.

So, it was time to pick an appropriate case. There was only one obvious choice really.