Hyperkin, a company known for its retro gaming hardware and accessories, leaked some initial details and concept drawings for an upcoming Game Boy-style iPhone add-on recently. Initially considered an April Fools’ joke by many, and it partially was, but the company has since confirmed its validity:
“A lot of you were speculating that the Smart Boy is an April Fools’ Joke. Well, it sort of was. We “leaked” it with the initial intent of testing the market, seeing whether or not it should be something we’d actually make, under the guise of an April Fools’ Joke…Looks like you awesome folks ACTUALLY WANT IT, so the Smart Boy is now in development! Thank you all for your enthusiastic responses!”
As you can see, the Smart Boy smartphone peripheral is clearly a reality and currently in development. Head below to find out more about what it has to offer:
Smart Boy is a sort of Game Boy style dock/controller for iPhone 6 Plus (with other smartphones getting support in the future, apparently). It provides all the typical controls many of us remember (as well as some upgrades) from the Game Boy and Game Boy Color including an 8-way D-pad and 2 face buttons, plus the typical start and select buttons. As you can tell from the concept images, Smart Boy will use your smartphone’s display while providing up to 5 hours of gameplay with its own internal battery (rechargeable via your iPhone).
Where it really gets interesting though, is with its original Game Boy/Game Boy Color cartridge support. Along the backside of the machine, users can load up original titles from the Game Boy library on what might be the best mobile display they have ever appeared on (obviously excluding not commercially available home-brews).
Needless to say, this is a prototype/concept and the final product may (will likely) vary from what we are seeing today. Let’s just hope the physical controls get the MFi treatment and will work on titles from the App Store as well. Keep in mind, it wont be long before we start seeing familiar Nintendo’s characters appear on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
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Kickstarter? Me want this…but what about future or past iphone iterations? Pay like $100 for this every iPhone generation or 2 isn’t gonna work!
That doesn’t matter because this will never launch on the App Store. You can get it to plug in Atari 2600 carts and it will still need an app to emulate the internals of the console. What you will be left with is a cozy for your iPhone cause the pad will be cutting off part of the screen.