Went to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo over the weekend with kids. We had a great experience! I picked up some Xmas presets too. They love playing mine, so the GBC’s are for them along with a Pokemon game each. My plan is for the 3 of us to run through original Pokemon together and do some modding. Should be a ton of fun!

In short, I've been playing through Pokemon red, and am going to buy my gf blue soon. As I understand it, the only way to get all three starters is to trade with other players

Theoretically, I could trade a starter on blue for a burner pokemon (i.e. ratatta), reset the game, and do it again to have all three on red. My question is, if I got an extra set of the starters, could I trade them back once she starts her playthrough so she has all three as well? Or is there some kind of lock stopping you from trading already traded ones?

Playing on two SPs with an original GB link cable if that matters

I have a GBA SP AGS-101 that won’t charge. So far I’ve tried swapping the battery and cable, the contacts and connections on the charge port do not appear to be damaged, but I cleaned them up anyway, and I checked the EM8, but it shows continuity on all 4 connections.

Kind of at a loss at this point, and would like to see if I can get any advice on what else I can check before I go through the trouble of blindly swapping out parts or performing miscellaneous sacrificial rituals until it starts working again.

I snapped at the chance when I saw this listing. I can't see any obvious dirt in the port, and it doesn't look malformed compared to my childhood SP. The charger doesn't "lock into place" like it does on my childhood SP and it will often stop charging, or show a very dim charging light.

Is there something obvious I am missing?

TIA

In 1990, my dad came home from Germany with a Game Boy and SolarStriker. Apart from the bundled Tetris, it was essentially my first video game.

Tough as nails. It took me over 20 years to beat it.

Felipe turned 6 this week. For his birthday, I made him SolarStriker DX: Captain Felipe. His face, his name, his own cartridge, box and manual. Running on a real Game Boy Color.

Getting to share this part of my childhood with him was pretty special.

I worked with a friend on the pixel art, animation, redesigned scenery and lots of small details. This is our first game project together, and it got a little out of hand 😅

What started as a birthday idea became quite a bit more than a colorization:

• All six stages in color, with animated scenery.
• New intro, mission maps, cutscenes and endings.
• An animated pilot who walks over and jumps into the ship.
• Ship banking when moving left and right.
• Colored weapon upgrades.
• Bombs with blast waves, explosions and screen shake.
• Animated shields, and boss orbs that let you choose between bombs and shields.
• Extra-life pickups, three difficulty settings, and retries.
• The Contra code for 30 extra lives. I did say it was tough as nails.

It still runs on the original Game Boy, too.

There’s also a slightly ridiculous Darth Vader Easter egg. Finishing the game reveals an unlock code: different ship, red shots, flame shield, Imperial March and his own cutscenes. Yes, he ignites his lightsaber and spins into the cockpit.

This started as a birthday present for my son, but we’ve put a lot of love into it.

Would anyone here be interested in a general SolarStriker DX version, without the birthday personalization?

Power will not turn on! I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed the battery contacts with 91% isopropyl alcohol and some corrosion still remains - considering purchasing some replacements. Anyone more knowledgeable than me see any other issues? Some of the copper plate looks pretty rough as well.

So I got this Gba Sp a while ago, the owner said they re-shelled it, but after about a month of usage it started corrupting saves and not loading games properly.

Today I decided to open it up to see if I could spot anything, and I found this chip super glued to the cartridge lever.

This isn't original right? I've re-shelled my old Gba and didn't see this, sorry if this is a stupid question but is this a mod chip? it gets hot when it's powered so no matter what I think I gotta get it off.

Hello, I have a problem. I bought an old Game Boy DMG and installed a new screen, and everything seems to work fine. The problem is that the games aren't being read at all, or rather, they're not being recognized.What could be broken? Thanks

Looking at picking up a pikachu edition gba, person seems trustworthy but I want to double check, is this real or a reshell?

im thinking to purchase everdrive gba pro but i keep wondering, does it have sleep mode now like ezode or it still didnt support. for your info i really value sleep mode on the gba as it helps me pause games during my work shift so i didn't lose my progress

Antique video game :(

I bought a beat up looking GBA online for cheap planning on swapping the motherboard over to a spare shell I had lying around, it turned on like normal with no cart inserted to the GBA splash screen but after I opened it up and cleaned the motherboard which was pretty dirty but nowhere near as bad as some other ones I have seen online, it now boots to the GB/GBC screen even with no cart inserted, i checked the switch and it flips like normal and is not stuck up, I tried pulling it up and putting a drop or 2 of isopropyl alchohol in it then working it back and forth about bit, but nothing seems to make it boot to GBA

Definitely well loved as you can see from the pictures of the outer shell, still works perfectly. bought it to play some games on the original hardware, very happy with the purchase.

Hi, I have my two Game Boy Color here. The battery springs are kind of bent. They turn on just fine if I bend the spring a little so it makes good contact with the batteries, but I want them to be in perfect condition. How can I fix them? Is there any way to fix them without having to replace parts or anything? Because no matter how much I try to bend the spring with tweezers or something like that, it doesn’t fix the problem.

DISCLAIMER: I DID NOT MAKE THIS. I AM NOT SURE WHY IT INCLUDED SAMPLE CARDS. I DO NOT KNOW IF THIS EVEN WORKS. DO NOT PIRATE! GO MAKE YOUR OWN GAME AND TURN IT INTO A PLAYABLE PIECE OF PAPER! GOODBYE!

Ive been wanting to mod a gba for so so long now and I finallu got a gba in Japan so I was curious what the current best solderless screen mod is because I have never soldered in my life. Thanks a lot in advance

Hello, I recently bought a GBA SP AGS-001 from Japan that's in pretty beat up shape, so I've been thinking about doing some mods on it (mainly the shell and battery, but I'll try to figure out if anything else is necessary).

The battery has issues, so I'm looking into replacements (I've got my eye on the Makho one). The problem is, I'm concerned about whether or not a battery replacement from the USA/Europe would work properly on a Japanese system. I know the batteries are around 3.6-3.7V, and I assume the AGS-001 seems to be the same model regardless of region, but I would like some second opinions so I don't accidentally mess anything up (lol).

I'm also concerned about what charger I should use, Japan uses 100V and I live somewhere that uses 120V, I use a 100-240V transformer for other devices of mine but if I change the battery I'm not exactly sure what kind of charger I should go for in this specific case.

Apologies, I'm not too experienced with hardmodding or sort of thing and was unable to find any more specific information on it, so any feedback or suggestions are welcome. Thank you!

I've made a writing and diary app for the Game Boy Advance called gbawriter, and I'd like to find some people who are willing to try it out!

It uses its own typing system instead of an on-screen keyboard. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but once you build up some muscle memory, you can write pretty fast with it.

I'd love to hear what you think about it, especially how the typing feels after some practice.

It's free!

You can find it here: https://halimj.itch.io/

Any feedback is welcome!

The typing system has also helped me build other tools for the GBA, like a music player (gbamp3), an e-reader app (gbareader), and a flashcard trainer/dictionary (gbavocab). Without an on-screen keyboard, you can show more things on the screen at once, which opens up a lot of possibilities...

I also think the typing system could be used for some fun game mechanics. It would be interesting to see what other people could do with it!

---

For everyone who wants to start typing right away, here is a very short quickstart guide to learn the basics:

Holding one of the four directions on the D-pad activates one of eight letter groups, and each letter group consists of three letters.
You will have noticed that the D-pad has only four directions. That is why holding the L button and a D-pad direction will show the second group of each direction. Thus, in reality, every direction covers two letter groups, not just one.

While a letter group is activated, pressing A, B or R activates the given letter of that letter group.

Maybe you noticed something... The letters "g" and "w" seem to be missing from the letter groups.
"g" is typed by pressing "j" twice while holding D-pad right continuously.
"w" is typed by pressing "v" twice while holding D-pad left continuously.

START+A saves the file.

Enjoy!