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

 

[the_randomizer]

Electrical tape works fine enough if you're a newbie or never soldered anything before, I've got 4 or so GBC games with battery replacements that I did 3 or 4 years ago that use tape and they still work just fine. Soldering is more secure, of course, and probably the better option, but electrical tape is fine too.

Doesn't it lose its adhesion though?

 

[VinsCool]

I'm tempted to get one of them myself.
They looks pretty nice.

 

[grossaffe]

Doesn't it lose its adhesion though?

Doesn't matter. The case itself is a tight fit so it'll be held in place regardless.

 

[the_randomizer]

Doesn't matter. The case itself is a tight fit so it'll be held in place regardless.

Fair enough indeed.

 

[Zhongtiao1]

@Chary you misspelled "renown" in the post

Otherwise, this actually looks pretty cool. Just bought the gameshell though so I don't exactly have the money to waste...

 

[Shadow#1]

looks cool but for that price you can get an authentic gameboy light.

since when can a gameboy light play gameboy color games?

 

[Sakitoshi]

since when can a gameboy light play gameboy color games?

My mistake.
I was lead to relieve that it didn't do color because I didn't read carefully enough and the front page image shows a monochrome screen.
But if the final unit has a color screen, mono games ain't gonna look pretty. The gameboy screen has a unique look that cannot be replicated with any color screen.

 

[romanaOne]

Is this for real? Only one picture? Perhaps they've not really made anything yet and just used a picture of a backlit GB Pocket. The screen looks about as good as a real GB Pocket after you stuff a ~ $10 backlight panel in it.
As for shoehorning a lithium battery in there....not worth it. My backlit GB Pocket lasts long enough on NiMH and it's easy enough to swap them out.

If it works with Everdrive GB/X{3,5,7} it might be worth considering if it were $50.

 

[osaka35]

so, this is just emulated through use of those on-a-chip things, rather than getting close to hardware as possible. Anyone know of anything like this that actually tries to get hardware close?

i'd imagine it'll be possible to solder on a microsd slot for this thing, but i'd rather just find an out-of-box device i'd like.