The Easy Way to “Print” Your Game Boy Photos

The Game Boy Camera is really hot right now as younger people experiment with the wonder of primitive digital camera technology and enjoy the novelty of the experience. But using the Game Boy Camera is a huge challenge, because there isn’t any way to store the photos without a Game Boy Printer — and that just spits out glorified receipts. To make life much, much easier for Game Boy Camera users, Facelesstech designed this Wi-Fi “printer” for the Game Boy.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Game Boy Camera is an accessory for the original Nintendo Game Boy and subsequent handhelds that can capture 128×112-pixel grayscale digital images. While those photos aren’t good by any means, they are interesting and the Game Boy Camera is one of the first consumer digital cameras to sell in appreciable numbers.

But there wasn’t much a Game Boy users could do with those photos. A couple of games could make use of the photos, Game Boy Color owners could transfer the images to each other, or people could print their pictures on the Game Boy Printer. Facelesstech’s device pretends to be a Game Boy Printer so it can receive pictures, which users can then access and use however they like, as they would with any other digital image.

Facelesstech designed some of the hardware and created the instructions, but didn’t program the firmware that emulates the Game Boy Printer. That was done by Andreas Hahn, AKA HerrZatacke, who coded WiFi GBP Emulator. That’s meant for use with an ESP8266 microcontroller, so Facelesstech chose a NodeMCU development board for the job.

The other hardware consists of a TP4056-based lithium battery charger, a small lithium battery from a vape, a switch, and a Game Boy Link port. If you’re building this and don’t already have one, you will also need a Game Boy Link cable. Facelesstech’s simple 3D-printable enclosure tucks those components into a little box for protection.

After flashing the firmware, retrieving photos is as simple as connecting to the device’s Wi-Fi hotspot. From there, it’s possible to access a self-hosted web interface in any browser. When a Game Boy connected with the link cable “prints” a photo, it will show up in that interface where it can be saved to the smartphone or computer’s storage. From there, it is easy to upload the photos to Instagram to impress all of your friends!