Saw this earlier and was immediately intrigued followed by a subtle wave of nostalgia. I used to have a Gameboy Color when I was a kid, and I remember struggling to play at night time because of the backlight issue.
I’m considering hunting one down to mod myself, does anyone here have experience with this?
I did this to mine a while back so I could get a nostalgia hit.
It’s fairly simple to do, all you need is the Gameboy a Gameboy SP and diode and wire. I made the mistake of soldering the diode the wrong way around and it blew the SP screen!
I recently have been toying with the idea of putting a rechargable battery in the console. I’ll dig it out later and post a pic.
I’ve done a backlight mod on my Gameboy advance. I went that route because the advance fits my hands better. Let me know if you want some advice on how to do it.
Was there anything notably different between the Gameboy Advanced and the Gameboy Color other than shape?
If I still had my original Gameboy or Gameboy Color (or any other game except for Tetris for some reason 
), definitely. I love messing around with electronics.
Shape and the addition of sholder buttons are the main upgrades. Obviously if you just play gameboy/Gameboy color games they won’t be used for gameplay. If I remember correctly they will shift between the native image and a stretched out one though because the advance also has a larger screen.
There was also a change in cartridge. We got actual Gameboy Advance games, though the GBA was backwards compatible with old school gameboy cartridges
Cool! I didnt know this was a thing. I still have atleast one of every gameboy. If I was a smarter guy ide try it out. Anyone remember when the GBA sp first came out? Man that was awesome. No longer being tied down to batteries and house lamps.
Hey, pm me
I’ve looked into a few times for adding a backlight to my GBA. Ended up finding a Micro for cheap so that ambition fizzled. I just need to get a Gameboy Light from Japan, and my gameboy/GBA collection will be complete.
I still have a game boy pocket, game boy color, and and advance in my closet somewhere. I always say “yeah I should do that” when I see mod videos and the like, but once I get them out I just wind up spending hours playing pokemon or castlevania and forget all about it.
Here it is.
Really fun little project to do, quite straight forward too. If you want to get the most out of retro Gameboy games I’d probably aquire a Gameboy SP: already has a backlight, rechargeable battery and can play all the GBA games. The original and colour games like out at the bottom from the console though.
This is so cool, gotta get my Mario and pokemon on again!
I will definitely hit you up about mods whenever I get around to it
