(upbeat music)
- Are you waiting on me?
- [Andy] Yeah.
Okay. Well, you might think that this is some kind of
knockoff, emulator handheld, like an Arcade 2020,
or one of the Raspberry Pi powered ones like the GPi
or the Pi Boy but no.
This is a real honest to goodness Nintendo Wii
that can play Wii games, GameCube games and more.
I built it and you can too.
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(upbeat music)
G-Boy is the brain child
of longtime console portablizer Gman.
And it was originally called the WiiBoy
on its development blog.
The case is 3D printed by Shapeways using nylon powder
and is roughly the size and shape
of an Oji Nintendo Game Boy.
Having finalized the project roughly halfway through 2019,
it's now available for purchase as a kit
on hobbyist site, BitBuilt.
To put it all together you'll need obvious things
like an original Wii console
and a micro SD card to hold your files.
But you'll also need a D-pad and face buttons
from a Nintendo DS Lite.
Two 18650 lithium-ion batteries.
Just make sure you get these from a reputable source
to avoid counterfeits and some tools.
A temperature controlled soldering iron
and a rotary cutting tool
are two absolute must haves to make it work.
I mean, I guess you could use a saw
instead of a Dremel, but come on.
To make life easier, here's a list of
some other stuff you'll need.
With the most important being the wire and the screwdriver.
An iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit can get your Wii apart,
but isn't going to reach far enough to assemble the G-Boy,
as I discovered early on.
You also need some time about a day for a first time build.
And a lot of patience.
My day started with some prep work,
which included softmodding,
a stock Wii console using LetterBomb,
which allows it to run a Homebrew software
and setting up BitBuilt's BBLoader,
which allows us to boot into a new home screen
rather than the Nintendo default one.
Then taking it all apart for some
(laughs heuristically)
physical modding.
As you might imagine, fitting one of these
into this involves more than just
removing the motherboard from the Wii.
It actually needs to be cut in a pattern
that's lovingly referred to as the OMGWTF trim.
Yes, by friends, this is literally all of the
original motherboard I am going to keep.
There are components mounted to the rest of the board,
like the real time clock if you want to play Animal Crossing
and the Bluetooth chip set,
if you want to connect a Wii mode
that will need to be harvested and reattached,
if you wanted to do that,
but that's a small price to pay.
Time to get out the Dremel.
(Dremel grinds)
Before assembly, the edges had to be smoothed out in order
to prevent anything from shorting.
How do I do this, you ask? Sandpaper.
It's recommended to finish it with no lower
than 600 grit and focus on removing any copper
on the edges by going in at an angle.
Once that's done a little de-soldering
and relocating components later and it's assembly time.
lttstore.com.
This is almost entirely just a matter of dropping things
into place and screwing them into the chassis.
There's a lot of wires that need soldering
and power needs to be attached to the correct pads
and only those pads.
Or else you're looking at chopping up another Wii.
BitBuilt recommends using some extra lengths of wires,
impromptu cable ties to keep this mess under control.
The final step is to install a safety thermistor
that automatically cuts power
once the Wii reaches 70 degrees.
That's far short of dangerous thermals.
And the only time this should happen
is if it powers on in an enclosed space,
like a backpack or something like that.
And there you go, one portable Wii.
Let's take it for a spin, shall we?
(Anthony taps)
And just like that,
here we are in an open space with Linus
who is currently fascinated.
- I can't believe that this is all you actually need
from the original Wii for it to function.
- That's all the logic.
Yep, the RAM, the SOC, GPU.
- I mean, cognitively, I know that.
- Yup.
- Yup. Okay, there's the RAM, there's the CPU,
blah, blah, blah.
Just the idea of chopping up a PCB
of a device, this complex,
and then just kind of trying to find
the right daughter points and turn it into
something like this it's just unreal to me, I love it.
- Well, I mean the Wii is one of the more
researched consoles out there
as far as more modern machines go.
So it's not really that surprising that people are like,
"Hey, we only need this voltage from here
and this voltage from there and away you go."
(motherboard bangs)
- Oops.
So this is the kit that you use then?
- Yes, this is the G-Boy Rev III.
- I wanna try it.
- Yeah, I'll go over here.
- Okay.
- This is kind of where I'm gonna live
for the rest of the video.
- Okay, cool.
Let's crack open my copy
of Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess and
(compact disc taps)
- Yeah. Now would be a good time to mention
that you should probably rip your games from the Wii
before you do the mod.
This thing's got no optical.
- Okay, this is so cool.
I mean the battery life can't be very good though.
- I haven't really tested the battery life.
I think it's a couple of hours.
Like it's not amazing but --
- So it's like the Game Boy experience
in more ways than one.
kind of wish the screen was
a little better than this, but
- That's the screen that comes with it.
I think if you really had a mind to it,
there were probably some IPS displays
that have independent brightness controls
and all that kind of stuff.
The menu where you were on is called BBLoader.
And that was created especially for this kind of device,
like a portable device that doesn't necessarily have,
shall we say, motion controls built in.
- Right. they were cut off.
- Yeah. I don't remember if I put
the Bluetooth module back in that.
So pairing a remote is gonna be hit or miss.
(horse neighs)
- [Linus] The sound is surprisingly good
even if the screen ain't great.
- Yeah, if you wanted to turn the volume up,
you should just be able to hold the Y button
and the Z button and press up on the D-pad.
It's about --
- Y and Z?
- Yeah.
Sorry, is the Z rear?
- Z is rear right but it's above the trigger.
(upbeat music)
Okay. It distorts a little, but that's fine.
It was already very loud before that.
- Yeah. The amplifier circuit,
I think kind of goes a little bit
too hot for those speakers.
- [Linus] Yeah.
- If you put it too high,
but that's how you know it's good.
- [Linus] Link, nope.
(game beeps)
this is crazy.
- [Anthony] Yeah. It's not an emulator.
It's straight up playing the game.
- Like what?
- Fun fact, Twilight Princess is reversed
on the Wii versus GameCube.
- [Linus] I did know that because Link is lefthanded.
- Yep. Whereas the majority of the population
is right-handed.
- [Linus] I don't know where the horse is.
- One thing that you do lose
with a control setup like this is analog triggers.
So those are just straight up digital buttons.
- But of course, if you just wanted to play
Wii games on the go, there are maybe less legal.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, the fact that I'm running ...
Okay, so I'm running ripped software,
but on Nintendo's own hardware.
What is Nintendo's take on this?
- I think Nintendo's take is you need to buy it again.
- You got to buy it again,
but this is my hardware.
- [Anthony] Right. That's your hardware,
but you only have a license to run that game on that disc.
- On that disc.
- Whereas, there are laws that say that format shifting
is a thing that you can do.
Nintendo doesn't necessarily agree with that.
- Nintendo doesn't agree.
Okay, so then since we're doing something
Nintendo doesn't approve of anyway here,
there's definitely ways that you can more easily
and more cheaply play Wii games on the go.
So this is gonna have to justify its existence
in some other ways.
Fortunately it is Homebrew bow AF.
So why don't we go back to that launcher
and have a look at what else we've got on here.
- [Anthony] Just power it off and back on again.
- [Linus] Oh, is that the only way?
- I don't know if it's the only way,
but there's not a whole lot of documentation
on the button shortcuts.
- Does it have an AC plugin so
that you can just run it not on batteries?
Oh, I guess type-C.
- [Anthony] Its got type-C, yeah.
- That is so cool.
- And when the unit is off
type-C actually automatically switches it over
to the internal storage.
So you can just connect it up to your PC
and browse the files.
- It just blows my mind.
Okay, so right now I only see GameCube games.
- [Anthony] Okay, If you use the right stick.
- [Linus] Yeah.
- That'll bring up a radio menu so you can choose.
Wii games, the HBC logo is for Homebrew channel games,
which would be things like SNES emulator
and a few other things.
I think this early version of the software
doesn't currently support running WiiWare titles
and virtual console,
but that is something that's going to be coming.
- [Linus] Okay, so virtual console.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so that's GameCube games for some reason.
- [Anthony] Yeah. The virtual console menu doesn't work.
So it'll just keep you where you are.
- [Linus] I see. What about Wii games?
Wii games don't work.
Oh, Hey, there we go.
- [Anthony] Wii games do work.
- [Linus] Wow, sick.
So, yeah, Mario Kart Wii suckers.
- This uses a compatibility layer slash hack called Hydra,
which allows it to actually emulate the Wii mode.
So you don't have to worry about having
to hook up an external Wii mode you can use the sticks.
- It's actually not crazy warm.
- [Anthony] No, it shouldn't get that hot.
(upbeat music)
- Well, I don't know.
I mean, it's a living room console.
I've never given much thought to how much heat it outputs.
- Well, the full unit only really has a
tiny little heat sink and fan on it.
- [Linus] Yeah. I guess.
- That's all we got on there now.
- [Linus] Nah, I missed that.
Okay, no, come on.
So lame,
(bubbles bust)
Hoop blue shells, you right before the finish line,
bad people that's who.
(Mario hops)
Mario you piece of human garbage.
- [Anthony] Well, we all know and have known forever
that the AI cheats in Mario occurred.
- Yeah.
Just like,
(Linus chuckles)
Alright. Yes, I reigned supreme.
- [Anthony] So how's the experience with Wii games.
- Great. Perfect.
- Yeah. The fact that it's actually a good experience
is the result of quite a lot of community effort.
It's not just Gman.
I believe some of the PCBs
that were custom built were made by Aurelio
on the BitBuilt forums
and there are several others
who contributed all kinds of research and time
and effort into all of this.
So it's really a very team effort kind of thing.
It was just all kind of put together by Gman.
SNES9x GX is the Super Nintendo emulator
that you can use in lieu of virtual console,
which currently doesn't work.
- [Linus] Sick. Most of these menus don't do anything.
- [Anthony] Yeah. This is really early software.
- [Linus] Got it.
- [Anthony] They just released it back in June.
- [Linus] Okay. Got it.
- [Anthony] Yeah.
- So, SNES9x GX.
(upbeat music)
Holy smokes. This is it.
This is everything.
(upbeat music)
Okay, what I need to know though
is Super Mario World, does it actually run well?
I have my doubts, do you?
Love this four by three display.
Well, yeah, I have my doubts,
cause like getting the latency good
is something I've seen a lot of people screw up.
- There would be more latency with a remote though.
- Okay, we're gonna try it.
We're gonna try playing Super Mario World
with an analog stick.
I've never actually done this before.
And it feels a little bit, a little spongy.
- I guess the Nintendo DS Lite
had kind of spongy buttons anyway, didn't it?
- [Linus] It's hard to play Super Mario World
on anything other than a SNES controller,
especially if you're used to that sort of thing.
To be clear, it's not like I'm missing
my jumps and stuff here.
(game beeps)
Yeah, these buttons are really not.
They're really not great.
- That may be a side effect of the 3D printed shell.
Maybe some sanding would help with that.
- What other consoles can you run,
emulate the games for?
- Well, on anything that has a Wii emulator for it.
So DOSBox is available, ScummVM.
So like old Lucasfilm or LucasArts schemes.
Take a Genesis, bringing them Nintendo.
There's an N64 emulator that's sorta okay.
(game sound plays)
What else?
GBA, regular Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System.
- Okay. So good.
- [Anthony] Yeah, the Wii is actually a really good
retro console emulating system.
- Why this over someone like one
of those super portable PCs?
- Well, I mean, there's the simplicity
of the interface for one.
And two, I mean, did you build that super portable PC?
- Okay. That's fair.
(game music plays)
Oh, wow that was some hardcore slowdown right there.
Yeah. This D-pad leaves a lot to be desired.
(game music plays)
It's starting to heat up a little bit too.
I can feel it.
- The good thing about the D-pad and the buttons
and everything like that,
that's all stuff that you can swap out yourself.
So you can get different rubber membranes.
You can get different D-pad, face buttons,
that kind of stuff.
If you really didn't like it.
- [Linus] No, not the big crunchy things.
I thought these were swamps for the longest time
because I was a little kid
and I couldn't actually get very far in the game.
And I read the manual obsessively.
Remember when reading the game manual
was as much fun as playing the game.
- [Anthony] I used to do it in the car all the time.
- Oh, yeah.
It's not that heavy.
- [Anthony] No.
- Oh, well there's your cooling problem.
We have tape over the vent.
Come on boys, let's give it some breathing room.
(Linus chuckles)
There we go.
And look, if I get straight onto the camera
that actually gives you guys a better look,
at what it looks like.
If you're straight onto it, it's not that bad.
(Linus exclaims)
Very cool.
I don't know that I would personally put the time and effort
into building one of these
versus using a a GPD type device
or something like that instead.
But there is absolutely nothing else like it.
And look at that.
It's got a headphone jack.
(game music plays)
- At $325 plus the cost of batteries, SD card, face buttons
and a Wii, this project is not for the faint of heart.
It's really less of a practical thing
and more of a passion project.
Sort of like building a ship in a bottle
except you actually get to play with it in the end.
(game music plays)
Are there more capable,
portable consoles out there for a lot less?
Absolutely.
But you didn't build it, did you?
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So get down there.
- Thanks for watching guys.
If you're looking for something less DIY and more DIY,
why not check out our recent cardboard case challenge?
I swear it's a lot more fun than it sounds.
And also let us know if you wanna see more videos like this
that are a little bit more,
I don't know, DIY project D.
It's kind of a different video for the channel.