Nintendo may be slowly embracing the mobile gaming platform with a handful of apps on the mobile markets and more on the way, but the company behind the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS have not made an effort to put out classic portable games on the various mobile platforms just yet. And instead of releasing a Game Boy Classic to go with the NES Classic and the upcoming Super NES Classic, Nintendo will only make available classic Game Boy titles on its virtual console service for the 3DS and WiiU (yeah, we’re still waiting for a Switch virtual console). That means if you ever want to play some old Game Boy games on your smartphone, you are out of luck.
Until now.
Hyperkin has taken an old April Fools joke and turned it into a reality with the Smart Boy. The Smart Boy is an accessory that plugs into an Android phone and allows you to insert an old Game Boy or Game Boy Color game cartridge and play it right on the phone. The front of the accesory recreates the classic Game Boy button layout, complete with the original color scheme. The device is not quite ready for the market just yet, but pre-orders are now being taken for those who want to play their old copy of Super Mario Land or Tetris on the go just like they used to in the 1990s.
It looks to be about as clunky as the old-school gray brick, which may not be a bad thing if you intend on using this for an extended period of time. Hands cramping on an Android phone is a real possibility if playing Game Boy games. The video gets upscaled for the Android device, which is nice, and the picture should be much cleaner compared to the old greenish color scheme of the original Game Boy. Plus, backlighting is a given on a smartphone, which is something that was missing from the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color product line.
It is funny how the Smart Boy has come to be. It started out as a simple April Fool’s prank in 2015. The prank may have been executed as a sneaky market research effort to see what the reaction would have been to an actual product. Needless to say, the demand was high enough to proceed forward with the project.
SmartBoy, an upcoming Game Boy-compatible device concept for the iPhone 6 Plus. #gameboy #retrogaming #gaming pic.twitter.com/QWResQq5W7
— Hyperkin (@Hyperkin) March 31, 2015
The Smart Boy is scheduled to be released in September at a price of £60 in Europe. Unfortunately for Nintendo-loving iPhone users, there is no accessory in development for iOS devices.
Nintendo likely isn’t too keen on the idea, but in a world where retro consoles are being sold to be able to play older video game son modern TVs, there may be nothing Nintendo can do to shut this product down.
