GBA SP With DeWALT Battery Will Outlast the Apocalypse

Handheld gamers obsess over battery life like it’s a matter of survival. We swap cells, carry backup chargers, and baby old consoles through one more dungeon before the screen flickers off. Battery anxiety is real, especially for something like the Game Boy Advance SP, where the original cell barely lasted through a single flight. This mod responds to that anxiety by going completely overboard, bolting a GBA SP onto a DeWALT power-tool battery big enough to run drills and apparently several full-length RPGs.

The project comes from a Reddit build where a modder mounts a GBA SP onto a DeWALT XR FLEXVOLT lithium-ion pack, creating what commenters immediately dubbed the “jobsite Game Boy.” The console’s original tiny battery is gone, replaced by a buck converter that steps down the tool battery’s eighteen volts to the four-ish volts the SP expects. The result looks like Nintendo and DeWALT secretly collaborated on a rugged portable for construction workers.

Designer: Bangoo H

The battery is rated at nine amp-hours at 18 volts, which works out to around 162 watt-hours compared to the few watt-hours of the original cell. Reddit did the math and estimated hundreds of hours of runtime, with one commenter joking that the battery might finally die fifteen minutes after the nukes start flying and another suggesting you could finish your entire childhood backlog before needing a recharge.

The wiring is straightforward if you squint. The modder dropped a buck converter into the SP where the original battery lived, wired it to the battery contacts via a dummy cell, then connected that to a custom holder that slides onto the DeWALT pack’s rail. Charging still happens through the regular DeWALT charger, so the Game Boy just thinks it has an absurdly large external battery that never quits.

The aesthetics are what really sell it. The SP shell has been resprayed in black with yellow buttons, and the lid wears a big DeWALT logo, so when it’s closed, the whole thing reads like a tiny power-tool accessory. Open it up, and the screen pops out of the battery like a work light. It even has a little Nintendo badge on the back, making the mashup feel weirdly official.

Of course, the DeWALT pack turns the SP from a pocketable handheld into a luggable brick. Commenters joked about dropping it on your face in bed or finally silencing anyone who says the SP is too small for their hands. It’s not exactly travel-friendly unless your idea of travel involves rolling a toolbox around, but it does give the console a much larger grip.

The DeWALT GBA SP mod turns battery anxiety into a punchline and shows how far you can push an idea just because it makes you laugh. By strapping a beloved handheld to a power-tool battery, it mixes serious electrical work with a sense of humor, reminding us that modding can be joyful and completely unnecessary in the best possible way.

The post GBA SP With DeWALT Battery Will Outlast the Apocalypse first appeared on Yanko Design.

Custom-built inside out, ModRetro Chromatic is the ultimate tribute to the Gameboy

Gameboy was a cultural icon in the 1990s when I was growing up. Almost every video game enthusiast in my close circle had his handheld from Nintendo, which meant that before being discontinued from production in 2003, it was arguably the best-selling console ever made. Since, then there have been many iterations of the popular handheld console trying to revive the lost era of portable gaming, but none has been as identical as what Palmer Luckey’s ModRetro may have achieved with the Chromatic.

Combining nostalgic charm with modern tech, the ModRetro Chromatic inherits the Gameboy DNA to give enthusiasts the most realistic experience of the classic handheld console in the blood and body of the new-age device. It’s a result of seventeen years of endeavor to make the ultimate device to play Gameboy games as they were played on the original console.

Designer: ModRetro

According to Luckey, the Chromatic is his best tribute to the Gameboy. Designed and constructed to be the most “authentic, highest quality” device to mimic Gameboy, Chromatic is an heirloom quality piece of retro-futuristic art “that would last for generations.” To that accord, this cartridge-playing Nintendo Gameboy will retail for $199 and can be pre-ordered now at ModRetro.

Compatible with Gameboy and Gameboy library, the Chromatic is 100 percent custom-made. It has a one-to-one LCD with an identical pixel structure to the original Gameboy. To maintain authenticity and closeness to the real, the device alongside its Gameboy-like 160×144 pixel backlit display features a similar layout, resolution, and size. Its sapphire screen is scratch-resistant and it is housed within a magnesium-aluminum alloy molded shell topped with durable PBT buttons and D-pad.

ModRetro Chromatic measures 5.2x3x1.2 inches, and weighs feather light at 6.2 oz. For connectivity, the device has been provided with a USB port and 3.5mm headphone output, and to celebrate its launch, it will come preinstalled with good old Tetris, free of charge. The custom-designed lithium-ion battery, rechargeable through console, provides the Chromatic 24-hour battery life, which can be enhanced on the move with 3x AA batteries.

The post Custom-built inside out, ModRetro Chromatic is the ultimate tribute to the Gameboy first appeared on Yanko Design.