Will be travelling to Japan later this year and found out about these workshops in Tokyo where you get make “your own” modded Gameboy. Guessing modded refers to being able to choose custom shells and buttons, not so much to anything else there might be (I am not very knowledgeable about Gameboy mod scene).
Looks super cool, but is very pricey. Around 55.000 Yen for different courses, so I am a bit on the fence for booking it or not.
Anybody here have any experience with these? Would those be “normal” Gameboys you need cartridges for?
Edit: found a video of one, just in case someone is interested seeing how it goes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjHSz8goaZ8
I don’t know about the class but you can mod a gameboy for way cheaper than ~$350 and it’s stupid easy to do.
A backlit ips screen is like $60 from us sellers but you can also buy them direct from china for like 1/3-1/2 that. Honestly that’s really the only thing with a crazy markup. The brackets to center the lcd, a new glass lens, etc are like $2-3 each. The install is pretty easy if you can handle disassembling a gameboy and putting it back together. The soldering is 3-5 wires depending on what screen and it’s stupid easy soldering. Some are solder free, the soldering is to just tap the signals for buttons so specific combinations will bring up the screens OSD, some use capacitive touch on the screen bezel instead (or in addition to). Some require minor case modification but that also stupid easy ($2 flush cutters and just remove some plastic ribs, basically)
A lithium battery mod is like $25 domestically and if you can install the normal alkaline batteries you can handle this one. Depending on what battery and what model gameboy you may have to solder 1-2 wires to a usb c board (gba/sp batteries sometimes have it integrated and you can get a replacement battery door with a hole or they come with one (that probably won’t match), gb/color/pocket usually have a daughterboard). The toughest bit is cutting a hole for the usb c charger but if you’re reshelling a lot of replacement shells come with that already done.
Speaking of reshelling that’s also stupid cheap. $10-20 should cover a shell and buttons. That said this can also get stupid expensive for exotic cases (like $100-200+ for boxypixel cases, which are cnc cut aluminum)
So at this point you’re spending 70-100 to do the mods most people do and watching a YouTube video is enough because it’s really easy. If you have no tools a $15 soldering iron beginner kit, $2 flush cutters, a small screwdriver set, and cheap wire strippers will cover everything. Nonconductive tape like kapton is also nice to have (don’t be a hot glue person yuck) but not essential
After that it’s other cheap mods you can add but aren’t typically considered “essential”. LED lighting under the buttons is like $20 and it’s just a flex pcb that you line up and tack on via a few solder points. You can get a fresh speaker, 2 wires to solder. You can also do things like replace the speaker amp but tbh I think this is silly, every gameboy sounds like shit regardless because the speaker is trash. The audio amps are slightly less distorted and louder trash, but still trash. Use headphones if you care that much. An hdmi mod for gba is like $50 and probably the hardest install here, though still fairly easy. Some people recap them while they’re open but I’ve never seen a gameboy with caps that caused issues. Even if you do decide this is worthwhile it’s only really necessary to do electrolytic caps and there aren’t many to do, the sp literally only has 1 (it’s surface mount but stupid easy to do). Iirc the og dmg has the most with 6 and they’re through hole
The main other cost is the console of course. This is where things can be kind of wild. A gameboy confirmed in good working condition can be a little pricey for what it is. Even then it’s still not usually expensive, $50-100 depending on how much of a deal you can find. But this is USA pricing. If you’ll be in Japan I’m sure you can get used gameboys all over for like $20-40, if yahoo jp auctions are any indicator. Buying a broken one is a gamble though they’re usually simple to fix, especially if you’re already planning to replace the screen and speaker. Those and cleaning the power switch/battery contacts fixes 95% of broken gameboys, they’re built like tanks regardless of revision
The idea of a class is neat ig because honestly a lot of sellers sell modded gameboys for $250-300 in the USA but they’re just making bank off of people who watch YouTubers that talk about console modding, think it’s neat, but are too scared to do what’s probably the easiest set of console mods in the world. I don’t do it anymore but I would buy lots of broken gameboys from yahoojp and mod them (buying mods in bulk makes this even cheaper) and easily double or triple my money. Don’t buy from people like me, just do it. It’s so goddamn easy
I dont want to undercut your post, because its hella helpful, but I’m assuming the class is more of a super-techy arts-and-crafts day. My wife has paid well over the odds to paint a mug more than once.
Yeah, I think that is a good assessment, I found a video and edited into my main post.
Fair point, the experience is definitely worth the money for some as well as the hands on assistance. I guess this is more targeted at someone whos eyeing up a $250-300 modded gba on eBay
Thanks! Totally get your perspective on this, I would definitely not expect this to be same price as if I just did the research and shopping myself. I guess the upcharging is that someone is there to help you out and for people who would normally not think of doing something like that.
Can I ask you another question, how does it work with games on old Gameboys, are you forced to keep buying old cartridges or is there some way to load ROMs into these. They don’t have any storage on them, right?
You can buy a flash cart and load your ROMs onto an SD card which then goes into the cartridge. I’m not sure who all makes them for older game boys though apart from Everdrive. Its a bit spendy, but its absolutely worth it if you intend to use the device a lot.
Yeah as the other person pointed out, if you want an experience that’s up to you. The upcharging makes sense for a class as they’ve got a lot more overhead. The upcharging makes far less sense for an already modded gameboy sold on ebay or marketplace
For roms you’d want a flashcart. No mod there, just buy the flashcart, put roms on sd, put sd in flashcart, play. There are flash carts for literally every cartridge based console you can think of. Even the disc consoles (eg Dreamcast, psx, GameCube) almost always have something like an optical drive emulator the replaces the disc drive with an sd card filled with roms (these are less “plug and play” than flash carts though, which literally are just cartridges with an sd slot and some firmware to load roms)
Imo a flashcart is necessary. There’s basically no drawback, unless you’re specifically into collecting originals. Occasionally they can struggle with edge cases (eg games on snes that used superfx chips or games that used rtc like Pokémon) but at this point 99.9% of those issues are solved (except maybe if you get a cheap Chinese clone cart with unknown firmware. Everdrive is the standard but for like 1/3-1/2 the price you can get lesser known models or clones and tbh most of these are fine. It’s pretty urgent to check Pokémon or Mario rpg works when you’re developing one of these I’d assume
I’ve casually perused some Gameboy mods over the years, but never actually done any
And I have no idea what these shops are offering
But to give you an idea of what I’ve seen out there in general
There’s of course shells and buttons, and replacement parts to replace worn/damaged components (and I would imagine that in some cases those new components might be better than the original)
There’s options for better screens, and backlit screens on models that didn’t originally come with them
USB charging (and charging in general for models that originally used disposable batteries, and higher capacity batteries for those that already had rechargeable)
Video output to hook it up to a TV or whatever
Amplifier circuits and such to improve audio quality
And I’m sure there’s others, but that’s what I remember seeing off the top of my head.
50000 yen is around $315 right now. I feel like I’ve seen some places selling pre-modded Gameboys at roughly about that price point, so depending on what they’re offering that’s potentially a pretty solid deal.
But a lot of mods seem like they’re pretty much just a matter of opening the case up and popping the new components into place, and the parts aren’t terribly expensive, so you could probably shave some money off by DIYing it at home if you’re more interested in having the Gameboy than the experience of going to a workshop to do it. Some mods do require a bit of soldering, it didn’t look like it was particularly complicated soldering, but I know that a lot of people just aren’t interested in attempting that themselves, don’t know what your personal comfort level with that is.
Thanks, appreciate all the info!
I found a video of a blogger going to one of these and it sounds a lot like you describe, for a second one could see two extra ports on the left side which looked like a usb and maybe hdmi port? But batteries seemed still an option too somehow, not sure. Have a look if you are curious but it is a 13 min video, so maybe not your thing to watch.
Lots of good advice in this thread, so I’ll just addy 2¢. I suck at soldering, but I’ve modded several GBA, a couple GBC, a couple DS’, as well as home consoles. If you can afford it and want to do it for the experience, I’m sure a class would be fun, but if you just want a modded GBA, its incredibly easy. Just make sure you take it slow, and have all the right tool on hand before you get started. Nothing worse than getting halfway through a mod and realizing you need a specific tool in order to continue.
