There’s no shortage of options for gaming on the go — you could load up games on your smartphone, but a Nintendo DS or Switch or assemble your own retro console.
Or you can tear apart a Nintendo Wii, modify the motherboard, and fit it into a 3D printed (and then painted) case to create a mobile game system that looks like a Game Boy SP, but which can play GameCube and Wii titles… and even work with a Wiimote motion controller.
At least that’s one hardware hacker has spent the last year or so doing. The result is a portable Wii console that looks a lot less frustrating to use than some others we’ve seen.
The end result is a portable device with a GameCube-style controller, an integrated fan, a headphone jack on the front, a volume dial on one side and power button on the other, and a USB port and power jack on the back.
There’s also a battery inside, allowing the device to run while unplugged (although I haven’t seen any battery life estimates).
Don’t have the skill and/or patience to build your own “Game Cube Advance SP? In a forum post, the developer says “I fully intend to make and sell these. Might even do it as a kit or something.”
via Hackaday
We could have had something you might call a “Gamecube Advance SP” 12 years ago if any of that speculation about a “Gamecube Player” for the DS ever came true.
At the time there were some mock up images floating around of a large black box that you’d clip on the underside of a DS that would play Gamecube discs on the handheld using the (single touch) touchscreen for the thumb sticks and Z.
Unless that clip on thing was a full Gamecube in its own right that just piggybacked off the DS screen, controls, and battery I don’t think it would’ve been possible and even then it would only last for, like, 5 seconds before dying.