A tech DIY YouTuber named Otto Climan worked with Retro Modding to make a beautiful classic Apple-style Game Boy Color with an updated screen and the ability to function as an Apple TV remote.
There is no way to exaggerate the love / hate relationship that consumers and technology enthusiasts have with the Apple touchpad-based remote control for Apple TV and Apple TV 4K. Many people find it practically unusable, and articles or videos about the Apple TV 4K generally receive several comments stating “but that remote control”. In addition, many users say it is so small that it is very easy to lose.
(Full disclosure: when I analyzed the Apple TV 4K, actually liked the remote. I think it is much easier to go through the content than the alternatives of Roku and others. But I didn’t speak for all the Ars on that, to say the least, and the general consensus on comment topics and Internet forums everywhere seems to be “thumbs down”).
In his YouTube video, Climan reviews the wild history of Game Boy modifications and attachments, and he starts working on modifying a classic Game Boy Color handheld console. It installs a more modern LCD screen and places the hardware in a housing designed by Retro Modding.
The video
Retro Modding also provided a cartridge, which Climan loaded with an SD card that may contain ROMs for the Game Boy to run. He then used command line tools to program a ROM that allowed the use of the existing Game Boy Color IR port (which in the past was used to transfer data between Game Boys) to communicate with Apple TV, instead of the port itself infrared remote control.
In the end, it works, and Climan notes that he was able to make it happen thanks to the Game Boy’s thriving and useful online modding community. We could only see a few seconds of the device being used as a remote control, but it’s enough to let us know that it works.
We have included some images from the video above, but we recommend watching the video because Climan deserves the clicks for his work here. The video is Italian, but if you speak English, the subtitle translation automatically generated by Google does a good enough job to convey the general essence – albeit with little nuance.
List image by Otto Climan