The Retro Future Builds a Dual-Screen Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP "for No Reason"

The Retro Future's Elliot Coll has published a video detailing how he "upgraded" a classic Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP with a second display — "for," as he admits, "no reason."

Released back in February 2003, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance SP used a clamshell form-factor that would follow through into its next-generation Nintendo DS dual-screen system — but had only a single screen. Apparently, one screen is simply too few for Coll — so the project to add a second screen was born.

"About six months ago I was looking around Google to find some stuff to work on my Instagram, and I came across this Photoshopped image of a dual-screen Game Boy Advanced SP," Coll explains. "And it had me thinking: why?"

"So I decided, six months later, to just have a go at building it myself. Now, please don't take this video seriously — realistically there is no practical benefit of having a dual screen. There are loads of technical reasons why this is potentially damaging to your Game Boy, so I don't advise you to do this yourself."

Despite having, in his own words, "very limited tools and knowledge," including "one half-used sheet of wet and dry sandpaper [kept] under the sink in case we ran out of toilet roll," Coll takes the Game Boy apart and successfully installs the second screen — for certain values of "successful," anyway.

"Unfortunately, I didn't get this to work," Coll admits. "I did get two Game Boy Advance SP screens running off of one Game Boy Advance SP motherboard, [but] in the process of shoving big bunches of cables through hinges and all the rest of it one of the wires broke free. When I went back to repair that one, and I put it back on again, the two other sides came off - and when I went to solder the three back on I just created a bigger problem for myself."

Despite this, Coll is able to demonstrate the concept of running both displays from a single motherboard in the full video on his YouTube channel.