The Game Boy Advance is for many the best portable console that Nintendo has made to this day. It is also a classic in the world of console modding. We thought there was practically everything with it, but a user named Rodrigo Alfonso on YouTube surprised us all recently by showing a Game Boy Advance unit capable of running first-generation PlayStation games.
Improving the perfect Nintendo console
The original Game Boy Advance is hardly flawed. Its design is compact and fits in almost any pocket. At the same time, it is an ergonomic console that fits well in the hands and is really comfortable. Most people who modify consoles focus solely on their only shortcoming, which is the screen. They replace it with a backlit one and that’s it. But apparently, Rodrigo Alfonso thought it was a small thing and decided to go one step further. Without further modifying the console, he wondered if it would be possible to make his Game Boy Advance run slightly more ambitious games. And of course, he succeeded.
To achieve his feat, Rodrigo Alfonso programmed a software called GBA Remote Play , which is available on his GitHub page. Then, he designed a plastic case where he could fit a Raspberry Pi , a battery, and a modified cartridge. The Raspberry Pi is powered by the battery and runs, how could it be otherwise, RetroPie. The tampered cartridge acts as a bridge for the console to boot via Cable Link. And it is that hackers discovered relatively recently that this port has a vulnerability that allows both booting the console from it to sending a video stream of 240 × 160 pixels . A real genius.
Game Boy Advance as a streaming device
The set works as a streaming service , very similar to Sony’s PS Remote Play, only that, in this case, the device that performs the streaming is glued to the console. Its software is the key to the whole matter, since in addition to communicating both parties, it is in charge of compressing the video and audio of the Raspberry Pi and sending it in real time to the Game Boy Advance through the Link cable port. When the player responds by pressing the buttons on the console, GBA Remote Play interprets that “input”, translates it so that the emulator understands the order it has to do. Then the action is processed and the video is compressed back to the console. With this system, the Game Boy AdvanceHe is capable of playing any game that RetroPie can run , regardless of the platform. Its creator shows some examples with PSX , SNES and Mega Drive games.
If you are interested in this experiment and want to do it on your own, you are in luck. Rodrigo Alfonso has published a guide both on GitHub and a tutorial on YouTube so you can create your own Game Boy Advance with Remote Play. The video is quite fast paced and the process has many steps, but it is well detailed in the guide that you have published in writing.
