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
These days, various companies are milking the retro cash-bandwagon and Nintendo is no exception. Following the success of its micro-consoles, Nintendo is possibly taking its retro-themed products a step further with a potential Game Boy smartphone case with controls on the front!
What Do We Know About The Game Boy Smartphone Case?
A few days ago, the website Silicon Era discovered that Nintendo had, in March 2018, filed a patent for a Game Boy case for smartphones. From the published schematics, it’s been possible to discern the following:
- On the front, the case has physical buttons with a conductive sheet underneath in order to emulate a touch on the smartphone’s touchscreen
- This allows the user to pass input to the touch-screen with the case on even if one’s hand has non-conductive gloves on.
- Apart from conductive buttons, the front of the case also has a window which drops further hints about Nintendo’s possible intentions to make an officially sanctioned Game Boy emulator for smartphones
- It obviously includes the regular spaces for a USB connector, front-facing cameras and the speakerphone on the front. I’m personally curious about how this case would look if adapted to a notched smartphone like the iPhone X!
As of right now, Nintendo hasn’t released any official this case but it’s likely that they’ll do so soon as the patent has received substantial media attention on the internet.
Can this case be used for other games/emulators?
While Nintendo will most likely release a feature-lacking Game Boy emulator for this, I personally think that it has lots more potential due to its physical buttons. Some ideas of software that would play well with the button combination of the Game Boy are:
- Other emulators especially ones with moveable controls
- Consoles that would play well with this are the NES, GameBoy Advance (although there’s the lack of shoulder buttons), Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Sega Genesis/SMS (many Gensis games only use 2 buttons) and many others.
- Some retro-themed 2D platformers would also run well if their developers could be bothered to support such a button arrangement
- J2ME games, with software like J2ME Loader, would work great as many older mobile titles can be played with two buttons and a d-pad. The screen window would also be welcome as most J2ME games were designed to look nice on 2-3″ screens not 6″ ones!
Conclusion
As things stand right now, the only thing you could do is wait and hope that Nintendo will release this for your specific smartphone model. Prices may be somewhat steep but they may be worth it in the long run as this case offers physical controls without the added bulk of carrying around a controller!
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.
It’s a case for smartphones. Namely, the iOS variety and maybe one specific line on Android.
Just read section 0066. It’s a smartphone case.
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
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.
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…
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.
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.
iOS don’t allow emulator, only Android does. Nintendo will probably ‘remaster’ old GB games for smartphone, which supports special GB case.
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.
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.
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.
Nintendo cashing in again, will probably wipe out other emulators from the store legally.
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.
Oh heck yes! This would be sick!