Hyperkin, a company reknown for making reproduction consoles like the Retron, have revealed their latest project; the Ultra GameBoy. Announced officially at CES 2018, the Ultra GameBoy sports an aluminum body, as opposed to the original GameBoy's plastic chassis, and most importantly, it has a backlit display.

Both original GameBoy and GameBoy Color cartridges will work with the system, and the handheld will include a lithium ion battery which can last up to six hours. That means no more having to deal with AA batteries! There will be a USB-C port as well, to charge the unit. Lastly, it'll feature stereo speakers on the unit, compared to the original GameBoy's mono speaker. Hyperkin claims that this is to allow chiptune musicians to use the system to create music.

The Ultra GameBoy is scheduled to release "later this summer", for a price of $100.

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Hyperkin official site

 

[godreborn]

I liked the retron 3, but the retron 5 just seems poorly made. the software in mine is really screwed up. I updated the software hoping that would fix it, but it brought on even more problems. I tried contacting hyperkin only to get no response. I did a little research, and someone said that when they contacted hyperkin, it took nearly a year to receive a response. I think I'll pass on this one.

 

[cearp]

GB Boy Colour(by kong feng) is a fraction of the price and does the same thing? There are various versions of it, some with built in battery, link cable support, built in games, great build quality etc

Gb boy has the wrong aspect ratio.
This new product has metal housing.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

In 1989, the original gameboy cost $89 at launch. Factoring in inflation and discounting the need for original r&d/platform dev/library/etc.. , this repro with an aluminium chassis at $100 today sounds fair.

It's far from fair. You can get a GB Boy Colour for like $30-40 which also has link cable support. I wouldn't pay an extra $60 just for aluminum casing.

 

[souler92]

todd howard would say: release another gameboy micro 2.0 xl

this is cool and all that stuff, but its cool for only 1/2 weeks. then itt'l just be dust catcher in the cabinet sigh...

 

[Haymose]

This could be an interesting device for chiptune makers. Will need to know more about the hardware because if it’s just a basic emulator then it’s pretty much useless for music.

 

[pedro702]

why not just buy an sp with backlight? plays gb,gbc an gba and its batery lasts 6 hours too, i see no point in this becuase it has no extras, if it readed micro sd so you could dump cartriges/saves and such then maybe but just a gbc with backlight that reads official cartriges? no point at all imo, just get an gba SP and you can even play gba games too...

 

[Haymose]

why not just buy an sp with backlight? plays gb,gbc an gba and its batery lasts 6 hours too, i see no point in this becuase it has no extras, if it readed micro sd so you could dump cartriges/saves and such then maybe but just a gbc with backlight that reads official cartriges? no point at all imo, just get an gba SP and you can even play gba games too...

I do agree to a certain extent. SP has no headphone jack making it useless for music, even with the adapter sound quality is less than ideal. Also the aspect ratio of gb/gbc games is different than advance games. You sacrifice quite a bit of screen size when playing gb/gbc games on an SP. I see a market for it, just not at its current price point.

 

[pedro702]

I do agree to a certain extent. SP has no headphone jack making it useless for music, even with the adapter sound quality is less than ideal. Also the aspect ratio of gb/gbc games is different than advance games. You sacrifice quite a bit of screen size when playing gb/gbc games on an SP. I see a market for it, just not at its current price point.

yeah you can get a very cheap used gba sp and you can play all gba games its an huge plus.

 

[the_randomizer]

I wish companies would stop riding these old 8bit and 16bit consoles and start making mobile N64s, PS2s, and Gamecubes.

Let me know when clones can emulate N64 and PS2 properly. Most such devices can't emulate N64 worth shiz.

 

[J-Machine]

6 hour rechargable? you'd have to be stupid to take that kinda downgrade

 

[chrisrlink]

OOOOHHHH SHINY if i had a few gb/gbc games i may buy it but i've seen Pokemon silver for like $40 at a brick and mortar shop

 

[wiewiec]

View attachment 110873​

Hyperkin, a company reknown for making reproduction consoles like the Retron, have revealed their latest project; the Ultra GameBoy. Announced officially at CES 2018, the Ultra GameBoy sports an aluminum body, as opposed to the original GameBoy's plastic chassis, and most importantly, it has a backlit display.

Both original GameBoy and GameBoy Color cartridges will work with the system, and the handheld will include a lithium ion battery which can last up to six hours. That means no more having to deal with AA batteries! There will be a USB-C port as well, to charge the unit. Lastly, it'll feature stereo speakers on the unit, compared to the original GameBoy's mono speaker. Hyperkin claims that this is to allow chiptune musicians to use the system to create music.

The Ultra GameBoy is scheduled to release "later this summer", for a price of $100.

View attachment 110874 View attachment 110875
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Hyperkin official site

I prefer standard AA batteries since also have option for use AA akku. I do not like facts that all of technology now use batteries that is non removable by user.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't imagine I'll be getting this one, thanks to my GBA SP lying around.

That being said, the system looks sleek af. They did a really good job of replicating the look and feel of the Game Boy, especially the Pocket model.

 

[DigitalDeviant]

Their other products generally used an "on-a-chip" design, where the hardware would directly emulate the target system's hardware with no other OS overhead to go through, a bit like how those plug and play consoles that have NES or SNES games work.

Assuming this is anything like their other products, it's likely the same thing, so no actual OS is running. It's kind of like a combination of hardware clone and software emulation, without technically being one or the other. This generally means compatibility is pretty good, but it's probably not 100%, more like 98% or so.

As to the news, it's a nice price for a backlit GB Pocket I suppose, but I dunno if I'd buy one.

hmm, I've seen modded gameboy pockets with a front light for around that price on eBay. Is this really backlit?

 

[OrGoN3]

$100? Why even make it?

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

hmm, I've seen modded gameboy pockets with a front light for around that price on eBay. Is this really backlit?

That's what Hyperkin claims and I see no reason to doubt it, backlit screens are cheapo to produce these days.

You can get backlight mods for the GBC/Pocket as well, though they're a bit more expensive than your average frontlight mod kit.

 

[the_randomizer]

Aren't Retron devices not only severely overpriced but also usually fairly inaccurate as far as emulation goes ?

Yeah, they're not accurate, in fact, the Cyber Gadget Retro Freak uses stolen Snes9x 2010 code (despite the fact they conveniently don't "remember" how they ended up with it). You can see glaring emulation glitches in YT video, like Final Fantasy 6 has emulation issues with the menu colors, just like Snes9x 2010, due to speed hacks. RetroN5 uses the same stolen Snes9x 2010 code, and they got pretty pissy when developers called them out on it. Ah yes nothing quite like selling non-commercially licensed emulator code, eh?

A modded Snes Classic is simply better than a Retron5 in terms of emulation accuracy.

 

[chartube12]

Yeah, they're not accurate, in fact, the Cyber Gadget Retro Freak uses stolen Snes9x 2010 code (despite the fact they conveniently don't "remember" how they ended up with it). You can see glaring emulation glitches in YT video, like Final Fantasy 6 has emulation issues with the menu colors, just like Snes9x 2010, due to speed hacks. RetroN5 uses the same stolen Snes9x 2010 code, and they got pretty pissy when developers called them out on it. Ah yes nothing quite like selling non-commercially licensed emulator code, eh?

A modded Snes Classic is simply better than a Retron5 in terms of emulation accuracy.

stolen ha! most countries' law say you cant copy write digital code. ontop of that, these systems are heavily used by pirates. so to use the word stolen is a joke.

 

[the_randomizer]

stolen ha! most countries' law say you cant copy write digital code. ontop of that, these systems are heavily used by pirates. so to use the word stolen is a joke.

You clearly missed the memo, it seems.

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/update-on-the-retro-freak-situation/

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/...-the-new-retro-emulation-industry-in-general/

But that's none of my business, you can't profit off of something that has a non-commercial license in the US. Also, the SCOTUS has deemed emulators legal due to the lack of copyright violation and the fact the code is reverse-engineered and original works, but I digress. RetroN, RetroBit, etc have been profiting off code they had no right to sell legally. In the US, you can't copyright hardware, either, so.... yeah. Keep defending RetroBit, RetroN and every other money-grubbing douche company that profits off of others without doing any work. A contractor, located in Hong Kong, has been providing these companies and selling them code illegally, so yeah, it's funny to see people support these products

 

[DarthDub]

So, how is this better than having a GBA SP?