The SmartBoy Turns Your Phone Into A Fully-Working Game Boy And We Need It

If you loved video games during the 90s, you almost definitely had some version of the Game Boy. Released in 1989, the little grey brick took the world by storm by being the first portable game console that didn't just come with one game built in!

Now you could take all of your favorite games with you wherever you went (so long as you had the AA batteries to keep it running of course)! We didn't even care that the graphics were black and white against a neon green screen.

It soon got a redesign into the smaller and sleeker Game Boy Pocket, which then got turned into the Game Boy Color, which let you play all sorts of new games in full color!

Of course, the Game Boy wasn't without its problems. The screen was absolutely tiny, and feels even moreso when you go back and play it today. Most of all though, none of these systems had a backlit screen, meaning you either had to play in a really bright room or buy an attachable light that only kinda worked.

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could, I dunno, play your Game Boy cartridges on something that already has a built in back-light and an HD screen, but also have the same buttons and feel like the system you used to love?

Well, turns out Hyperkin thought the same thing, because they've just introduced something that lets you do just that; the SmartBoy.

But what is the SmartBoy you might ask? Click to the next page to find out!

The SmartBoy is an attachment for your phone that attaches to your smartphone, lets you load your Game Boy cartridges via its own unique app, and then lets you play them with a combination of real buttons and your phone's bright HD screen!

From the looks of it, the SmartBoy is pretty simple to use. You install the app, open up the locking sides, connect the bottom of the device to your phone's USB-C connector, lock it in place, and you're good to go! You just insert a Game Boy or Game Boy Color cartridge and the app takes care of the rest!

While the SmartBoy was built with Samsung devices in mind, Hyperkin has provided a list of nearly 30 Android phones guaranteed to work with it on their website.

The SmartBoy will retail for $50 US and is set to release on August 21, 2017.

Are you interested in the SmartBoy? Let us know in the Facebook comments!