Retrofitted

Gunpei Yokoi, the late father of the Game Boy, famously embraced a design philosophy of "lateral thinking with withered technology," in which one found cool new ways to entertain with cheaper, older equipment. One can only wonder if Yokoi ever even considered the notion that, 25 years later, his iconic gray brick would be the subject of others' lateral thinking projects.

The hdmyboy project on Kickstarter is offering the means of converting the original Game Boy (sorry, no Pockets or Colors!) into its own little console capable of full HD and NES controller support. It's still classic Game Boy, but with the dottiest matrix and stereoist sound to be commonly found in this day and age. The device requires itself to be inserted between the front and back halves of the handheld, but the Netherlands-based designers say this is an easy and harmless modification to make.

You may perhaps be wondering to yourself whether displaying Game Boy graphics in full HD is really all that great an idea. This is understandable. The Mona Lisa is timelessly beautiful as well, you know, but that doesn't mean it'd be best to blow it up to the point where you can see her every pore and nosehair. The hdmyboy actually looks quite sharp on full display, though; at least judging from the offscreen-recorded footage that has been submitted. According to the design team, the direct connection to the digital signal means there's no need for blurring or emulation, and multiple colour palettes can be swapped in and out as well.

The designers are asking for €65,000 in funding for the project, with the goal about a quarter of the way met at the time of this post. Do you like the idea of playing Game Boy in high definition, or is tech like this just the definition of lunacy to you?

[source kickstarter.com]