A Tale of Two Game Boys - A Restoration and Modding Project Log - Part #1

The Game Boy modding scene has always been something that’s intrigued and concerned me in equal parts. Whilst I love the creative and colourful designs that new custom buttons, shells and backlights can provide, I can’t help but feel that with each mod a small piece of gaming history is forever lost. Yes, I know there are likely millions upon millions of unaltered Game Boys out there in garages and attics, and I know that the number of people who still see value in them is fairly small in the grand scheme of things. However I also know that over the years many others will have ended up in landfill, never to be seen again. More to the point; Nintendo aren’t making any more of them. Whatever we have now is all there will ever be, and that number can only ever get smaller. 

But does it really matter? Should we be preserving and restoring Game Boys to keep them as original as possible ‘warts and all’, or should we embrace the new ways of keeping our outdated handhelds relevant in this age of smart phones and tablets? To find out once and for all where I truly stand on the matter I decided I would take the plunge and try my hand at both restoring and modding an original dot-matrix Game Boy.

 The first thing for me to do was to find a pair of Game Boys suitable for the task at hand. The obvious choice was to browse the popular auction site, eBay. Typing Game Boy into the search bar gives an immediate insight into just how many of the iconic handhelds are still out there, and I was met with dozens of listings for Game Boys in a multitude of conditions. I wasn’t looking for a perfect clean-in-box model as I’ve always been of the opinion that, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. It didn’t take me long to find a perfect pair of ‘sold as seen’ DMG’s in clear need of attention. A bid of £30 won me the auction and after a week of waiting the two consoles were in my possession. 

The first thing to do was assess the condition of each Game Boy and decide which of the two would be best suited for restoration and which would be best suited for modding.

At first glance the first Game Boy seemed in surprisingly good condition considering it was listed as spares or repair. The shell looked nice and bright with no sign of yellowing and the screen was reasonably scratch free. Upon closer inspection I noticed a fairly deep scratch in the logo and also noted the missing battery compartment cover but there was certainly nothing too problematic on the aesthetic side of things. It wasn’t all good news however as turning the machine on uncovered two, more troublesome issues. A large section of the right hand side of the screen wasn’t working at all, and there was no sound coming from the system’s speaker. Not ideal but I knew If I could fix these few issues then the Game Boy could be almost as good as new. I knew straight away that this would be the perfect unit for restoration.

It was time to turn my attention to the other Game Boy and it didn’t take long to see that the ageing handheld was in a bad way. The screen lens was missing, as was the battery compartment cover. The shell was badly yellowed and filthy dirty showing years of neglect. Turning the system on proved a pleasant surprise however as the screen showed no obvious signs of defects or dead pixels, and the sound was cheerfully and loudly bouncing from the speaker. So beneath the worn and battered exterior was a perfectly working Game Boy just begging for a new look. I’d found my perfect candidate for modding.

As much as I wanted to get cracking right away I knew now wasn't the time to get stuck in with a screwdriver and soldering iron. I’d never done anything like this before and had absolutely no idea how I could go about fixing the issues with the first Game Boy nor did I have any idea of how to go about modding the second. No, now was the time to educate myself. I knew what needed doing, now I just needed to know how to do it...

Part 2: A Tale of Two Game Boys - Part #2