Killer Game Boy mod turns retro handheld into emulation powerhouse

This Raspberry Pi ReBoi kit turns the decades-old Game Boy Color into an emulator device, and you can make one of your very own.

The Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally have long since changed the way we look at handhelds. Days of ensuring you have spare double-A batteries, and all the cartridges you can carry, are long since a thing of the past.

Now you can play your PC game library on the go for hours without reaching for a power source and almost match the graphical intensity of your desktop. Yet, despite how high-powered gaming handhelds have become, many of us still yearn for the feeling of playing the devices from our childhoods.

Now, with the thanks of this Reboi kit on Kickstarter, you can turn your old Game Boy Color into a compact handheld. Letting you recreate the nostalgia of your childhood, all the while playing games the GBC could only dream of running.

Game Boy DIY

The nostalgic piece of ingenuity was created by James Sargent, an engineer based in London. Seeing the GameBoy Color as a “magical device”, James wanted to make a handheld that lived in the shell of a Game Boy but functioned as a modern handheld. But, that’s not all: Sargent wants to sell the kit, so you can do this at home, too.

Thus, the ReBoi kit was born. According to the Kickstarter campaign page, the core of the ReBoi is the Raspberry Pi Zero. That tiny computer is packed with a power supply, display, and onboard controls, to function as a mini Game Boy Color PC. In a video, the Reboi is shown running a Linux-based front-end not too dissimilar to RetroPie.

The Raspberry Pi Zero alone isn’t equipped to take on exactly what James wanted to do with the Reboi kit. So the tiny PC is paired with a motherboard with a baked-in second RP2040. That second system utilizes the same chip as a Raspberry Pi Pico, and is what helps translate the Game Boy Color buttons to register as an emulated keyboard and gives the handheld some fancy RGB lights and battery monitoring.

Putting it together doesn’t involve too much engineering know-how either. The kit can be put together purely with the use of some screws and a screwdriver – no soldering required. However, you will need to have an old Game Color lying around, or at least a reproduced shell, to encase the RetroBoi kit in all its nostalgic glory.

The ReBoi won’t be able to run your Steam games on its 240 x 250-pixel display, but operating systems like RetroPie, Linux and any systems the Raspberry Pi Zero is compatible with can be run on this compact Game Boy Color “PC”.

The ReBoi Kickstarter has already smashed past its goals, with just a few more hours left, in case you want to get in on the action.