
In Depth: The Game Boy Printer - gullyfur
https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art2.html
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serf
When I was a kid I had a gameboy camera and a gameboy printer.

It was basically a low-res instagram/polaroid hybrid.

Take a selfie (the camera rotated, pretty revolutionary at the time), add
borders and effects in-software, print out a instant photo.

It was sort of like an instant portable photobooth, what with the borders and
frames and decals and so on.

It felt pretty magical when I was young. As an older person it feels as if
it's a niche that could probably still be filled profitably by someone with
the right stuff and marketing.

~~~
knodi123
> As an older person it feels as if it's a niche that could probably still be
> filled profitably by someone with the right stuff and marketing.

It's a whole product category:

[https://www.lifewire.com/best-portable-photo-
printers-415640...](https://www.lifewire.com/best-portable-photo-
printers-4156401)

~~~
serf
Yeah, I know, but I don't think that product category is very profitable, and
they fill a wholly different role. They're marketed towards scrap-bookers and
mobile professionals, and they aren't usually very cheap.

What I meant is that I think there is a profitable idea there exploiting the
concept as a fun toy for younger people.

I know a ton of people that'd be psyched at the prospect of printing out their
selfies as stickers from their phone or a very mobile phone-like device.

~~~
loser777
It's funny that you say cheap, when I remember the printer being about $99 (in
late 90s dollars!) which was close to the price of a Game Boy (color) as well.
In all my years of school and daycare I remember seeing exactly one kid with
one, and even then it wasn't used for photos since no one had a camera. We
ended up just printing Pokemon sprites.

6 AA batteries was also an extremely luxurious allotment...

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gullyfur
The end mentions that it's supported by GBE+ ... though getting paper for the
Game Boy Printer is a bit of a challenge for enthusiasts. Some have taken to
cutting non-official thermal paper to the right size.

While, we're on the topic, GBE+ just had a birthday (both GBE and GBE+ were
released on April 1).

[https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/GBE%2B](https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/GBE%2B)

~~~
thomasswift
I have take thermal paper and cut it down to size, but then you need to double
it up to produce the right thickness

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monocasa
A part that's not super clear here is that the gameboy link cable comms are
basically SPI. Running this over an Arduino is probably the easiest way to use
this today.

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joshu
anyone know what connector the gameboy link cable uses? i actually have a
gameboy printer and it would be fun to print to from a PC

~~~
monocasa
AFAIK it's only the gameboy link cable. It went on to inspire firewire, but
it's it's own connector.

~~~
realslimjd
FireWire predates the Game Boy by three years.

~~~
monocasa
It started development in 1986, but didn't finish development to be released
into a product until 1994, five years after the release of the GameBoy.

Edit: Also Michael Johas Teener, the one time chair of the FireWire working
group, says here in slides from a presentation about the history of firewire,
hosted on his personal website, that the "Connector based on Nintendo
Gameboy".
[http://www.johasteener.com/docs_files/1394HistoryAndMarket.p...](http://www.johasteener.com/docs_files/1394HistoryAndMarket.pdf)

There's some what would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad commentary on the
GameBoy Link Cable wiki talk page about how that isn't enough of a reference
for some reason. The deletionists have certainly won wiki.

