An Arduboy Built into a Playable Game Boy Advance FPGA Cartridge!

The Arduboy is a fantastic, open-source handheld video game console built around an Arduino microcontroller. It’s an affordable and low-power device that gives people the ability to develop their own games and play games created by others in the community. By all reports, the Arduboy is decently comfortable to hold and control, but what if you’d rather play on something you’re already used to? That’s exactly why YouTuber uXeBoy built an Arduboy Game Boy Advance cartridge.

Everyone has their favorite Game Boy model, but the Game Boy Advance was particularly popular and subsequently has seen its fair share of hacks. This one relies on a custom cartridge built on an FPGA. uXeBoy doesn’t provide any tech details in his video, but it appears that the FPGA is acting as an intermediary between an Arduino running the Arduboy software and the Game Boy Advance.

Through some sort of electronic wizardy, uXeBoy was able to pass video and audio from the Arduino to the Game Boy Advance, and button presses back to the Arduino. That does mean that most of the build is external from the cartridge, which definitely prohibits portability. But, it’s still a really impressive hack, and a very comfortable way to play Arduboy games.