Making a portable Nintendo GameCube today is not a very complicated task. It can be done in several ways. For example, the easiest way to play titles from that console again is with the new Steam Deck, which supports the Dolphin emulator natively. Others tend to make it a bit more difficult and use Raspberry Pi boards to achieve the goal. And finally we have this youtuber who has achieved it using authentic Nintendo hardware .
A youtuber turns a fake concept art into a real project
YouTuber GingerOfOz only has five videos on his channel, but he has already earned more than 70,000 subscribers thanks to his ingenuity. It is dedicated exclusively to creating portable consoles. In fact, his first video, which was uploaded more than 3 years ago, already showed his first project: a pocket Wii. Later, the modder would upload videos making his own pocket PlayStation 2 and also a Wii in the format of a Game Boy.
However, this week, GingerOfOz has outdone herself. Browsing the Internet, he came across a curious “concept art” that mixed a Game Boy Advance SP with a GameCube. The image has been circulating on the Internet for years, and surely if you like consoles, you have ever seen it published somewhere. Well, GingerOfOz saw this image again and considered that it was possible to materialize it.
In a first investigation, the youtuber discovered that the image dates from the year 2005 , and even found a publication in a forum in which it was discussed whether the image was real or not. However, the render had enough imperfections to make it obvious that it was a fake.
However, our protagonist is an expert transforming consoles, so, inspired by that false image, he set to work to turn the fake into reality. And, of course, he succeeded.
Chopping up a Wii to make a portable GameCube
The first thing GingerOfOz did was calculate the size of the fake console in the image by reference to one of the actual GameCube miniDVDs. After designing a first sketch of the case and printing it in 3D, the modder confessed that he did not intend to use a Raspberry Pi or any other generic hardware to emulate the console, but original parts . Instead of using GameCube hardware, however, he decided to use a Wii board . This is because they pretty much use the same hardware, but on the Wii it was optimized for both size and power. It was also more interesting with a view to inserting a custom firmware —much easier on the Wii than on the GameCube—, since it would be the only way to enter the games on the console, since there are no miniDVD drives so small that they fit into said firmware. Case. However, he did leave the slot to be faithful to the original image.
The real madness came when it came to assembling the entire team. Obviously, the Wii board was larger than its case, so he cut it into different parts and soldered them together to make several layers of PCBs. And, although it may seem unbelievable, the invention worked. After connecting the screen and adding a button panel created by himself on a 3D printer, the viral fake Nintendo GameCube became a reality. And not only that. After asking for help on Twitter, GingerOfOz managed to talk to the original creator of the image , who, trivia of life, had been following him on Twitter all this time.
