The LEGO firm has an extended historical past of releasing kits which are fashions of different merchandise and so they are typically fairly well-liked, as they entice followers of each these merchandise and of LEGO generally. However most of them are non-functional, within the sense that they don’t work just like the merchandise they’re impressed by. The Pixar Luxo Jr. lamp, for instance, doesn’t really gentle up and is solely ornamental. Natalie the Nerd was disenchanted to be taught that the brand new LEGO Recreation Boy was equally inert, so she went about changing it into a practical console that’s really playable.
Natalie is an skilled on every little thing Recreation Boy. She sells an entire catalog of components for modding numerous Recreation Boy fashions, presents restore providers, hosts a variety of helpful reference documentation on her wiki, and performs every kind of enjoyable conversions of her personal. Earlier this 12 months, as an example, her clear Recreation Boy Coloration — full with clear PCB — received a variety of consideration within the Recreation Boy modding neighborhood.
This challenge is Natalie’s finest work but. She took the LEGO Recreation Boy set, which is simply presupposed to be lifeless pile of bricks within the form of the console, and made it practical. Much more spectacular, she did most of that work earlier than she even received her palms on one of many units.
Natalie received began when she noticed LEGO Japan’s tweet concerning the launch of the Recreation Boy set. Instantly, she noticed the chance and commenced designing. She didn’t have any actual dimensional data to base her design on and so used the display screen inserts as references for dimension.
She knew two issues: that she wished to make use of actual Recreation Boy {hardware} and that she’d must make the mainboard as small as doable to suit. For that cause, she used a Recreation Boy Pocket CPU, which is simple to help and has inside VRAM, eliminating the necessity for exterior VRAM on the PCB. She used her personal Secure Charger board energy provide circuit and different space-saving strategies to supply a mainboard that’s concerning the dimension of a Recreation Boy cartridge. Which means it may match within the house between the cartridge and the display screen on the LEGO Recreation Boy.
Round that point, Natalie was in a position to snag a LEGO Recreation Boy equipment to place every little thing collectively. The one piece left within the puzzle is connecting the LEGO buttons to her mainboard. She ought to have that discovered quickly and can publish the challenge particulars when does.
