{"id":328683,"date":"2025-10-24T08:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328683\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T08:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:38:12","slug":"nintendos-chips-let-this-lego-game-boy-upgrade-kit-play-real-cartridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328683\/","title":{"rendered":"Nintendo\u2019s chips let this Lego Game Boy upgrade kit play real cartridges"},"content":{"rendered":"

The race to make the Lego Game Boy<\/a> play actual Game Boy games ended before it even began. The same day Lego officially launched the set, Natalie the Nerd<\/a> revealed she\u2019d already transformed it to play real Game Boy cartridges on real Game Boy chips.<\/p>\n

Turns out she\u2019s not stopping there! Natalie is now working on complete drop-in upgrade kits for the Lego Game Boy \u2014 no soldering required \u2014 and partnering with maker marketplace Crowd Supply<\/a> to handle the logistics. She warns that this won\u2019t be something you\u2019ll want to play every day, but she\u2019s still making it real.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s calling her kit the Build A Boy<\/a>, and she says the completely pre-soldered version should truly be \u201cdrop in and play.\u201d It\u2019s her custom-designed board with everything you should need beyond the bricks, including:<\/p>\n

Natalie confirms to The Verge that she\u2019s planning to offer an optional glass lens if you hate the plastic window that Lego uses to cover the screen \u2014 and she might even offer some sort of video output so you can play on a TV or other external screen, though it\u2019s not guaranteed. She\u2019s not sure how she\u2019ll make video out happen yet, though. \u201cIt could even be potentially be over Wi-Fi if that doesn\u2019t affect performance,\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n

While the original Game Boy offered a 160 x 144 10:9 aspect ratio display, Natalie says the 320 x 320 one will simply upscale the original images by 2x while keeping their relative shape and size the same.<\/p>\n

Natalie doesn\u2019t plan to wire up a Link Cable port for multiplayer play \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t personally care for the link port,\u201d she tells me \u2014 but says she\u2019ll \u201cprobably\u201d leave a pinout so modders can add their own.<\/p>\n

As far as harvesting the chips goes, Natalie says she\u2019s managed to buy damaged Game Boy Pockets in bulk, as they\u2019re the \u201cunloved sibling\u201d of the Game Boy family, but she doubts she\u2019ll have enough to satisfy demand. If you have a donor Game Boy Pocket yourself, she\u2019ll also sell a version that only requires the CPU and RAM for around $60. She\u2019ll also sell a completely DIY version for the \u201csoldering iron pros\u201d out there. She\u2019ll also still release files for free.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear what the entire drop-in kit will cost yet, given Trump\u2019s tariffs. \u201cI am aiming for $99 USD but y\u2019know how the world is at the moment,\u201d she writes. She\u2019s hoping to start selling them in early 2026, and says she should receive the first test boards this very week.<\/p>\n

Natalie\u2019s kit won\u2019t be the only way to play a Lego Game Boy for real. For example, tap the video below!<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s quite a feat to shrink an entire actual working Game Boy down to the size of a Game Boy cartridge, others are coming close \u2014 modder Hairo Satoh<\/a> has been showing off an excellent Game Boy Color version on Instagram<\/a> that uses real cartridges, though he tells me it required a lot of modification to the Lego \u201cshell\u201d and he\u2019s not sure he\u2019ll release a kit himself. Generally, Satoh sells one-offs on commission.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the rival BrickBoy kit<\/a> might be the easiest and most sustainable way to power a Lego Game Boy yet. It plays ROMs on an emulator, not actual cartridges on actual chips, which defeats some of the fun for me \u2014 but at least no Game Boy Pockets will be harmed in the making of that kit. We\u2019re still waiting to share how much it\u2019ll cost; it\u2019ll launch on Kickstarter on October 28th.<\/p>\n