GingerOfMods has transformed a number of retro consoles into nifty-looking portables, but the Wiiboy Color is on another level.
As technology improves, tinkers like GingerOfMods are able to revisit older gaming consoles and make them even more compact and efficient than before. It’s not easy though, and the recent Wiiboy Color mod is a testament to just how much patience, design-sense, and spare parts go into making projects like this possible.
GingerOfMods goes into some more detail in the above video breakdown, but the short version is they 3D printed a custom Game Boy Color shell and then crammed a bunch of bits from new and old Nintendo consoles inside.
For example, the joysticks on the front are from a Nintendo Switch, while the face buttons are taken from a DS Lite. Both are combined using the circuitry of a GameCube controller. On the back of the handheld are two triggers, Z-buttons, and the fan for cooling the system.
The screen, meanwhile, was from a car back-up camera, the case was 3D-printed, and the circuit boards were re-designed from an existing Wii to cut down on space. With a 3.5 inch 480p display, GingerOfMods says the games also look better than on a traditional Wii console outputting to a TV. Finally, thanks to a USB-C port, charging is quick and the console can easily hook up to external battery packs for longer sessions. There’s also a headphone jack, as there should be.
The Wii has a great library, most of which isn’t available on Switch and probably won’t get ported anytime soon, if ever, so it’s really cool to see those experiences get preserved and made portable in such a small and functional build. Of course, it doesn’t come cheap. GingerOfMods says custom jobs like this can run $1,000, but can you really put a price on being able to play Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on the go?