The Gameboy is the one toy that we loved in our childhood era where everyone must have this hand-held gaming console. Now, we do not need to reminisce on how awesome the retro games were as iPhone 6 users will be able to play these games again without going through the horror of dodgy emulators!
On April Fools Day, Hyperkin joked on their Facebook page about releasing this Smart Boy add-on for the iPhone that allows us to play the retro games from Gameboy and Gameboy Color. On the next day, Hyperkin admitted on Facebook that they secretly wanted to see the demand for this product and it was so high they announced they will get this developed!
“A lot of you were speculating that the Smart Boy is an April Fools’ Joke. Well, it sort of was. We “leaked” it with the initial intent of testing the market, seeing whether or not it should be something we’d actually make, under the guise of an April Fools’ Joke.
Looks like you awesome folks ACTUALLY WANT IT, so the Smart Boy is now in development! Thank you all for your enthusiastic responses!”
Features Of The Smart Boy
As this awesome peripheral is going under development, the Smart Boy will most likely have the following features:
- Compatibility with Gameboy and Gameboy Color cartridges
- An eight-way D pad
- Two action buttons
- A start and select button
- A battery output for the phone that allows up to 5 hours of gaming
- The iPhone will be the screen for the whole gameplay
Should theses features come true, everyone will be happy with the fact their old Gameboy cartridges will not be sitting in boxes collecting dusts anymore! It is also very interesting to see how the extra battery pack on the add-on will work. From my interpretation, it works similar to the portable chargers to keep the iPhone batteries lasting a bit longer by charging it with whatever charge the peripheral has left. I am hoping that the battery pack will either be the common batteries that we can put in ourselves or through charging via a USB cable.
As much as the Smartboy is aimed for the iPhone 6 Plus, Hyperkin is said to try and adapt for other smartphones too. However, we will not know how long the first prototype will finish and by the time it is made, a possible newly shaped iPhone could be released and may not fit the Smart Boy anymore and same with any Android and Windows smartphones as their designs are forever changing.
It Might Be A Disappointment
There is no confirmation on a release date as it is still early days. I am truly hoping that the Smart Boy will be designed well for the future smartphones and can adapt to a slight change in size or shape. Whilst the concept seems really good, practically I do not think it is possible with smartphones forever changing and that smartphones battery lives are still terrible on running apps let alone a huge peripheral add-on like this.
