We’ve come a long way, baby.
Back when Nintendo first released their Game Boy back in 1989, it was considered the hottest, most cutting-edge video game technology available. Other portable video systems were in the market as well (I recall being very impressed by the Atari Lynx), but Nintendo’s Game Boy was something of a new standard. Since video game technology evolves so quickly, however, the Game Boy quickly gave way to newer and newer generations of portable systems with more sophisticated graphics and controls.
Check Out: 10 Retro Game Boy TV Commercials
Indeed, the Game Boy is now seen as so rudimentary that enterprising young engineers, thanks to the website BitFix, now hold an annual Classic Game Boy Build-Off, in which competitors try to build the most creative new version of the 1989 Game Boy, repurposed into another machine.
This year’s winner was a ‘blogger named [Fibbef] who combined a Game Boy with a guitar, as seen in the video above [credit: Hackaday]. It’s a working guitar, and a working Game Boy. I imagine it would be difficult to play as a video game system, but is a pretty cool-looking guitar.
It’s admirable that video game fans are taking a more technical approach to their passions, building their own devices, parlaying their interest into a skill. If you are forward-thinking enough, maybe you too can build your very own Classic Game Boy for next year’s tournament.
Above image: Hackaday
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
