My First Gameboy Advance Mod

The Mission

Some of my fondest memories growing up are from long car rides on family vacations waiting for the minivan to pass by each dim, yellow streetlamp. As the sepia beams cast shadows across the cloth seats I would contort my arms along their paths so I could get the next glimpse of which Pokémon Flannery had thrown out next in my battle for the fourth gym badge.

As we’d drive into the night I’d move back and forth, bouncing any light I could off of the retroreflective LCD of my Gameboy so that I could reenter the Pokémon world for another brief moment. Then, just as we’d pull into a late-night motel to stop for the night I’d notice the battery indicator light on my handheld flip red. I’d hurriedly save my game and click the console off for the night, knowing that once we were unpacked I’d bug my dad for two more of those precious double-a batteries he’d gotten at a gas station in the first days of the trip.

I loved those long car trips, and because of them I will always have a soft place in my heart for the unlit screen of a Gameboy.

For pure nostalgia’s sake I often pull out my old consoles to replay my old games. Diving back into Metroid Fusion or Pokémon Emerald helps ward off the new challenges of adulthood and helps me focus on solving the problems I encountered that day. I’d be lying, though, if I said the lack of backlight and rechargeable batteries was always the heavy dose of history that I was looking for after a long day at work. Luckily, I’m not the only who wants to play these old games, but with a few of the creature comforts we’ve come to expect in 2020.

My dream Gameboy Advance console is an AGB-001 model. This is the first-generation GBA, with the controls to the left and right of the screen. It’s comfortable, light, and durable – and it’s the generation I spent the most time playing. My mission was to install two main mods: An IPS backlit LCD (think modern smartphone-quality display), and a rechargeable battery pack with a charge port.

The Process

Instead of modifying my original Gameboy and risking damage to a relic of my childhood, I opted to grab a used unit off Ebay. Because I was going to reshell the unit, I looked for the worst-condition unit that still had a working motherboard. I found a couple of cheap auctions and placed some surprisingly low bids. The one I ended up winning shipped with a defective screen, but the shell was actually in great shape. Still, it was so cheap that I pounced on it and now I guess I have a spare Glacier Blue GBA shell for future projects!

The IPS LCD I grabbed for this mod is genuinely amazing. It’s exactly twice the resolution of the original screen, meaning that when the signal from the GBA motherboard is 2x upscaled the lines between the pixels become almost imperceptible. Additionally, since it is an IPS backlit screen, it is bright, crisp, responsive, and has awesome viewing angles. This screen is slightly larger than the OEM screen, meaning that in order to view it in its entirety you have to use a special screen lense. My screen came with a glass screen lense that specifically fits the larger dimensions.