This beautiful modded Game Boy Camera fits entirely inside a cartridge

theverge.com:

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Twenty-five years ago this month, the Game Boy Camera arrived in the United States and Europe. Now, a modder has made the chonky 118 x 112-pixel greyscale digital imager fully fit inside a standard Game Boy cartridge. And it’s so damn clean.

Christopher Graves is calling their creation the Game Boy Camera Mini, and here’s some video of it in action:

As a refresher, the original Game Boy Camera was an absolute unit. Here’s how far we’ve come in a single image:

While you can’t swivel this one around to capture selfies, it does still have a hidden notch for compatibility with the original 1989 Game Boy and a built-in switch to change between the original Game Boy Camera software and a custom ROM of your choice.

And yes, that is an iPhone lens on the front! While the Game Boy Camera’s imager is the same, you seemingly get a sharper, more contrast-y look with the iPhone lens:

How did this happen? The short version is that Graves is a Game Boy Camera photographer and wanted a better walkaround version for themself. In 2022, they devised a mirrorless-inspired model called the Game Boy Camera M:

But they wanted something a bit more pocketable and with a more durable lens than the OG plastic. “It was totally a selfish project so I could have a more compact carry lmao,” they tweeted.

They tell The Verge they spent about a year experimenting with iPhone lenses ordered off Alibaba and with reducing the size of the circuit board. The latter required some reverse engineering, he says, both of the original Game Boy Camera board and of Martin Refseth’s reflashable