Game Boy Deconstructed! #Helpful Post

 

 

 

 

 

Game Boy Deconstructed! #Helpful Post

 

 

Hey guys, this is Austin.

The Nintendo Game Boy is probably the most important

handheld console of all time.

But what I want to know is

what happens when you deconstruct it?

Alright, so it is time

as I do a few more claps

for the first episode of Deconstructed.

And what better way to start

than with the original Nintendo Game Boy?

Unlike some of the other things

I may be taking apart soon

this is pretty simple.

Just a single Philips screwdriver.

So the Game Boy used four AA batteries

which seems kinda crazy today

but some of those old consoles

had crazy terrible battery life.

You would get six or eight AAs

that would last you two or three hours.

So we've got six screws here

so we have four that are exposed

and we have two underneath the battery door.

I've got to say I've actually never opened a Game Boy.

I've owned Game Boys since I was six?

I mean this console is 25 years old?

No, it's even older than that.

It's 27 years old.

What was your first Game Boy, Ralphy?

Game Boy Color, there you go!

My very first Game Boy I actually ended up saving money

which is really hard when you're six years old.

So I ended up having to save my birthday money.

I saved allowance for a few months

and I finally had enough to buy myself a Game Boy Color.

But I didn't have myself enough money to buy

an actual game for it.

So I remember and I still feel bad about this to this day.

I went to my grandma and I kinda just said

oh it's been so hard to be able to save so much money

to be able to get this Game Boy

but I just don't have enough for a game.

She handed me 30 dollars and the next day

I went and bought Pokemon Red.

Still feel bad about that

but you know you gotta do what you gotta do.

Alright.

Number five.

And let's see if we can get this.

Uh oh, uh oh. Here we go.

OK, maybe not the moment of truth

because there's still stuff holding it together

but it's kind of apart.

We've got the display and the speaker.

Alright.

So the Game Boy is apart.

So we've got actually a fair bit in the front half.

So basically this is where the screen is.

We've got the main buttons.

We've got the contrast switch.

We've also got the speaker which is pretty big.

Let's see if we can kinda ease this out.

Oh, there's more screws.

Of course there are.

It's crazy how different electronics are these days.

I mean today this would all be glued into place.

There would be maybe like a screw or two.

You'd have to remove and destroy all kinds of stuff.

I mean not destroy.

Depends on if you're me or not.

I don't know.

It's just something kinda like therapeutic about it.

It's like you spend so much time with technology

but it's nice to just take a look

and see what actually makes it work.

I've got to say there are a lot of screws in here.

Every time I think I'm about done

I see like five more screws.

Alright.

The board is free.

Let's see what we've got.

Alright, wow.

That is cool!

So basically the screen is kinda come

it's all built into one board.

We've got all the buttons

which actually come out.

So there's this little silicon piece

where the buttons.

Oh, wow!

It actually feels like a button.

I never actually realized this.

There's no spring.

There's nothing.

Literally the entire action of what you feel

when you press a Game Boy button

is just the rubber kind of bouncing a little bit.

So if you look at the actual circuit board

you can see that all it's doing

is making contact right here.

Can you guys tell I'm having fun right now?

So there's a little daughterboard here

for the headphone jack.

I could probably detach that

but I think it's probably easier to just unscrew it.

So one of the things is with the original Game Boy

one of the big things they touted

was it had stereo sound.

You actually see dot matrix with stereo sound

which is funny because it actually had

a single speaker.

So if you ever play like some of the older Game Boy games

some of them would have a option

to turn the stereo sound

which you actually only realize that

when you had headphones plugged in.

And that's the rest of it.

So this is actually the guts of the Game Boy.

So on this side we can see

where the display connects.

We've also got the daughterboard.

We've got some of the connectors.

And we flip it over.

This is the heart of the Game Boy.

Wow.

So it's 4.194304 megahertz.

I like how they had to be very specific.

We've also got 64 kilobytes of RAM.

It's crazy to think what was on these.

Like I know these Game Boy cartridges

they were so tiny.

Like the amount of data and stuff

that they actually were able to pack

into such a small cartridge is crazy.

And speaking of the cartridge

we actually can see this is where it plugs in.

So if I drop it in right here.

There we go.

So when you think about it

the board is actually fairly compact.

So we've got quite a bit of stuff.

We've got the link cable port.

We've also got the switch here.

That satisfying 

I always appreciate being able to open up electronics

and really kinda understand what's inside of them.

And the Game Boy is.

It's something special.

Like it's simple.

There's not a lot here.

I mean like one small Philips screwdriver

and you're through it in like ten minutes or so.

But it's a really special thing

to be able to kinda appreciate

all the engineering and all the ingenuity

that went into it especially back

over 20 years ago.

So that's it for this episode of Deconstructed.

Let me know what you guys think

in the comments below.

And if you guys want to see me do more stuff

give me your suggestions.

Whether it's new stuff, old stuff,

whatever it is.

Let me know.

And yeah.

I'm gonna go put this back together

and play some Pokemon