Nintendo patents a Game Boy smartphone case with physical buttons hinting at an official GB emulator! – Exploring its potential from the point of view of someone who uses hacks

Aurora

I'm a girl that's liked technology from day 1. Mostly interested in the PSVita/PSP scene but I've always modded my stuff when it's possible, that is :) Contact me via DM at @KawaiiAuroraA on Twitter if you have any questions/concerns about my articles or if you have any article requests.

15 Responses

  1. Swiss Colony says:

    My guess is that it isn’t for a smart phone as they come in too many shapes and sizes, but rather it’s a case for the Switch.

  2. meh says:

    Meh these cases won’t work/fit properly on your phone unless you buy Samsung or iphone, since manufactures seem to think thats the only phones that exist

    • Emiougus says:

      I haven’t done in proper research on it but from Nintendos point of view I would imagine that looking at Popularity statistics the Samsung and Apple brands are at the top of the list when it comes to Smartphones hence why they would only make it for that variety of phone. Making them for other phones would not only have the trouble of them picking which line of phones to produce it for and sales for that brand probably wouldn’t be as guaranteed as Samsung phones due to their being more available statistics.

  3. Jack Attack says:

    I’d rather they just re-release a Gameboy Pocket Classic for $50 with 30 games. Nintendo’s emulators are also shockingly bad considering that they should still have the necessary engineering docs to do it right but instead do it hamfisted like homebrewers who do it mostly in the dark and yet still pull off more feature rich and accurate emulation…

  4. Franky says:

    I hope this is an official emulator that lets you download games quick and easy. Nintendo doesn’t do enough to make their retro games easily available in my opinion. I mean you gotta buy the latest gaming console from them, make a new account that was bound to that console making that a pain if your original console went dead, then connect to their crappy servers which takes forever for the small N64 games for example despite a 10mbps connection being capable of downloading even the largest N64 games in like a minute, then you gotta hope they don’t stop supporting that console and your current one lasts forever.

    At least my Google account is easy to access and remembers what I purchase.

  5. Simon Lawrence says:

    You seem very sure. I read the patent, didn’t see any mention specifically for smart phone. Sure, the source given here (Silcon Era) and others I’ve seen all think it’s for a smart phone, but this is just conjecture. No one knows (including me) for sure. Just strikes me this lends itself more to the Switch than to smart phones which come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

  6. narayan says:

    iOS don’t allow emulator, only Android does. Nintendo will probably ‘remaster’ old GB games for smartphone, which supports special GB case.

    • Emiougus says:

      Are you sure about this? I mean wouldn’t it be fine if it was an official emulator from the company who produced the games and owns the licensing to them? I’m also pretty sure that the “Emulator” would be pretty locked down and would be more of like a Arcade app that has multiple classics included with it kind of like the Xbox 360 with “Sonics Ultimate Genesis collection”. Surely the iOS store would allow that.

  7. Jeff says:

    So this is the reason why Nintendo suddenly hunted ROM hosting sites. It’s highly likely that it’s for the switch. Phones differ in shape and sizes.

  8. Zeke says:

    I have a Samsung S9 Plus primarily because it didn’t have a notch, but did still feature a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot – to some people these things are still relevant in 2018. I suppose we’ll never get easily removable batteries back in phones but it is alarming that these things cost more and more each year and contain less and less features, but do contain processors probably four times as quick as the old computers and laptops people still own for basically no reason unless you like killing the still crappy lithium-ion batteries they’re all still using with touch- and gyro-based 3D gaming. It took me four years to upgrade my HTC One M8 and I see basically very little difference, certainly not enough that justifies the S9 Plus costing double new what the old phone did new. The screen is a bit better, Android is a bit more user friendly, it charges faster… um… wow that was worth paying double for.

  9. Aurora is Trans says:

    Nintendo cashing in again, will probably wipe out other emulators from the store legally.

  10. Negrodamus says:

    I hate to be the one to point out the most likely scenario, given Nintendo’s past. This is probably been done to establish legal grounds to stop others from creating and selling such accessories, not necessarily because they are planning on producing one. Despite the fact I would like to see it available for purchase.

  11. John says:

    Oh heck yes! This would be sick!