

"I remember a while back I'd seen one with a bar across the two hinge points," he explains. While it might look like this encroaches on the display, even in a darkened room the screen's brightness ensure that the LED doesn't 'bleed' light onto it. Where the top screen hinge once was he has fixed a light bar which is illuminated by a single LED, found in the left-hand hinge section.
JUMP COBTACTS GAMEBOY MACRO PROFESSIONAL
"However, it was such hard work and I never really achieved the professional finish I wanted." Heaton decided to take a slightly different approach and leave the hinge parts in place, making this a much neater job. "I looked into making a Game Boy Macro, where you have a single screen unit and remove, fill, sand and paint the shell to hide where the hinge parts used to be," he continues. Stuck with a collection of spare parts and loathe to simply bin them, Heaton hit upon an idea. I bought a few faulty job lots of these consoles and the most frequent problems were faulty top screens or broken hinges, so after doing quite a few refurbished DS Lites, I was left with a lot of functional bottom halves."
JUMP COBTACTS GAMEBOY MACRO HOW TO
"In the new year I wanted to try something new after spending so much time modding Game Boys over the last few years," Heaton replies when asked how the idea came about. "So I decided to learn how to re-shell DS Lite consoles with repro shells after they had suffered from damage. We've been lucky enough to get our hands on the 13th Neon Advance ever made, as well as the chance to sit down with the man behind the magic, Joe 'Joe Bleeps' Heaton.Ī prolific modder and chiptune enthusiast, Heaton crafts the Neon Advance from the broken carcasses of DS Lite systems, breathing new life into dead hardware. We've seen a wide range of 'Macro' models appear online, but none of them have bowled us over in the same way as the Neon Advance. You'll no doubt have heard of the 'Game Boy Macro' concept before it's basically a Nintendo DS (Phat or Lite) with its upper screen removed – the main intent of this intentionally-crippled system is to play Game Boy Advance games on the DS' bold and bright screen. The Game Boy Micro is cute and truly pocket-sized, but its screen is tiny, it can't play original Game Boy or Game Boy Color games and is so small that anyone with hands larger than those of a child is going to struggle to play it for prolonged periods.ĭespite the wide array of options no single version of Nintendo's handheld hardware ticks all of the boxes, which is perhaps why modders are so keen to create custom variants to suit their own personal needs and wants.

The GBA SP fixes both of these shortcomings but is a little on the small side for some players it also lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack and (unless you pick up the increasingly expensive AGS-101 version) uses a crummy front-lit display rather than a superior back-lit one. The original GBA is an ergonomic dream, but lacks a backlit screen and relies on AA batteries. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Where do all those bloody odd socks go? However, none of these perplexing quandaries is more troubling than the ultimate question: which is the best Nintendo handheld for playing Game Boy Advance games on? You might assume this is a silly thing to lose sleep over, but when you begin to comprehend the pros and cons of the various models available, it will keep you up at night.

Humanity has been troubled by many great questions during its time on Earth.
