 Oh, are you waiting on me? Okay. Well, you might think that this is some kind of knockoff emulator handheld like an arcade 2020 or one of the Raspberry Pi powered ones like the GPi or the Pi boy, but no, this is a real honest to goodness Nintendo Wii that can play Wii games, GameCube games and more. I built it and you can too. Just like you can listen to this sponsor spot for private internet access. Looking for an affordable and reliable VPN? Private internet access encrypts your internet traffic and uses a safe protected IP. Check it out today through the link below. G-Boy is the brainchild of longtime console portable as a G-Man. And it was originally called the Wii boy on its development blog. The case is 3D printed by Shapeways using nylon powder and is roughly the size and shape of an OG Nintendo Game Boy. Having finalized the project roughly halfway through 2019, it's now available for purchase as a kit on Hoppiest site BitBuilt. To put it all together, you'll need obvious things like an original Wii console and a micro SD card to hold your files, but you'll also need a D-pad and face buttons from a Nintendo DS Lite to 18650 lithium ion batteries. Just make sure you get these from a reputable source to avoid counterfeits and some tools. A temperature controlled soldering iron and a rotary cutting tool are two absolute must haves to make it work. I mean, I guess you could use a saw instead of a Dremel, but come on. To make life easier, here's a list of some other stuff you'll need with the most important being the wire and the screwdriver. An iFixit Pro-Tech Toolkit can get your Wii apart, but isn't going to reach far enough to assemble the G-Boy as I discovered early on. You'll also need some time, about a day for a first time build and a lot of patience. My day started with some prep work, which included soft modding a stock Wii console using Letterbomb, which allows it to run a homebrew software and setting up BitBuilt's BB Loader, which allows us to boot into a new home screen rather than the Nintendo default one. Then taking it all apart for some physical modding. Physical modding. As you might imagine, fitting one of these into this involves more than just removing the motherboard from the Wii. It actually needs to be cut in a pattern that's lovingly referred to as the OMG WTF trim. Yes, my friends, this is literally all of the original motherboard I am going to keep. There are components mounted to the rest of the board, like the real-time clock if you want to play Animal Crossing and the Bluetooth chipset if you want to connect a Wiimote that will need to be harvested and reattached if you wanted to do that, but that's a small price to pay. Time to get out the Dremel. Before assembly, the edges had to be smoothed out in order to prevent anything from shorting. How do I do this, you ask? Sandpaper. It's recommended to finish it with no lower than 600 grit and focus on removing any copper on the edges by going in at an angle. Once that's done, a little desoldering and relocating components later and it's assembly time. Ltdstore.com. This is almost entirely just a matter of dropping things into place and screwing them into the chassis. There's a lot of wires that need soldering and power needs to be attached to the correct pads and only those pads, or else you're looking at chopping up another Wii. Bit Belt recommends using some extra lengths of wire as impromptu cable ties to keep this mess under control. The final step is to install a safety thermistor that automatically cuts power once the Wii reaches 70 degrees. That's far short of dangerous thermals and the only time this should happen is if it powers on in an enclosed space like a backpack or something like that. And there you go. One portable Wii. Let's take it for a spin, shall we? And just like that, here we are in an open space with a Linus who is currently fascinated. I can't believe that this is all you actually need from the original Wii for it to function. That's all the logic. Yep, the RAM, the SOC, GPU. I mean, cognitively, I know that. Yep. You know, yep, okay, yep, there's the RAM, there's the CPU, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just the idea of chopping up a PCB of a device this complex and then just kind of trying to find the right solder points and turn it into something like this is just unreal to me. I love it. I mean, the Wii is one of the more researched consoles out there as far as like more modern machines go. So it's not really that surprising that people are like, hey, we only need this voltage from here and this voltage from there and away you go. You know? So this is the kit that you use then? Yes, this is the G-Boy Rev3. I wanna try it. Yeah, I'll go over here. This is kind of where I'm gonna live for the rest of the video. Okay, cool. Let's crack open my copy of Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and... Yeah, now would be a good time to mention that you should probably rip your games from the Wii before you do the mod. This thing's got no optical. Okay, this is so cool. I mean, the battery life can't be very good though. I haven't really tested the battery life. I think it's a couple of hours. Like it's not amazing, but... So it's like the Game Boy experience in more ways than one. Kind of wish the screen was a little better than this, but... That's the screen that comes with it. I think if you really had a mind to, there are probably some IPS displays that have like independent brightness controls and all that kind of stuff. The menu where you were on is called BB Loader. And that was created especially for this kind of device, like a portable device that doesn't necessarily have, shall we say, motion controls built in. Right, because they were cut off. Yeah, I don't remember if I put the Bluetooth module back in that. So pairing a Wiimote is gonna be hit or miss. The sound is surprisingly good, even if the screen ain't great. Yeah, if you wanted to turn the volume up, you should just be able to hold the Y button and the Z button and press up on the D-pad. It's at about... Y and Z? Yeah. Sorry, is the Z rear button? Z is rear right, but it's above the trigger. Oh. Okay, it distorts a little, but that's fine. It was already very loud before that. Yeah, the amplifier circuit, I think, kind of goes a little bit too hot for those speakers if you put it too high, but that's how you know it's good. Link A, nope. This is crazy. Yeah, it's not an emulator. It's straight up playing the game. Like what? Fun fact, Twilight Princess is reversed on the Wii versus GameCube. I did know that because Link is left-handed. Yep, whereas the majority of the population is right-handed. I don't know where the horse is. One thing that you do lose with a control setup like this is analog triggers. So those are just straight up digital plugins. But of course, if you just wanted to play Wii games on the go, there are maybe less legal. Well, I don't know. I mean, does this, the fact that I'm running, okay, so I'm running ripped software, but on Nintendo's own hardware. What is Nintendo's take on this? I think Nintendo's take is you need to buy it again. Gotta buy it again. But this is my hardware. Right, that's your hardware, but you only have a license to run that game on that disc. On that disc. Whereas, you know, there are laws that say that format shifting is a thing that you can do, Nintendo doesn't necessarily agree with that. Nintendo doesn't agree. Okay, so then, you know, since we're doing something Nintendo doesn't approve of anyway here, there's definitely ways that you can more easily and more cheaply play Wii games on the go. So this is gonna have to justify its existence in some other ways. Fortunately, it is homebrewable AF. So why don't we go back to that launcher and have a look at what else we've got on here? Just power it off and back on again. Oh, is that the only way? I don't know if it's the only way, but there's not a whole lot of documentation on the button shortcuts. Does it have an AC plug-in so that you can just run it not on batteries? Oh, I guess Type-C. It's got Type-C, yeah. Oh, that is so cool. And when the unit is off, Type-C actually automatically switches it over to the internal storage. So you can just connect it up to your PC and browse the files. That just blows my mind. Okay, so right now I only see GameCube games. Okay, if you use the right stick, that'll bring up a radial menu. So you can choose Wii games. The HPC logo is for homebrew channel games, which would be things like SNES emulator and a few other things. I think this early version of the software doesn't currently support running WiiWare titles and virtual console, but that is something that's going to be coming. Okay, so virtual console. Okay, so that's GameCube games for some reason. Yeah, the virtual console menu doesn't work, so it'll just keep you where you are. I see. Hey, what about Wii games? Wii games don't work. Oh, hey, there we go. Wii games do work. Wow, sick. So like, yeah, Mario Kart Wii suckas. This uses a compatibility layer slash hack called Hydra, which allows it to actually emulate the Wii mode. So you don't have to worry about having to hook up an external Wii mode. You can use the sticks. It's actually not crazy warm. No, it shouldn't get that hot. Well, I don't know. It's a living room console. I've never given much thought to how much heat it outputs. Well, the full unit only really has a tiny little heat-sinking fan on it. Yeah, I guess. That's all we got on there now. Nah, I missed. Okay. No, come on! So lame. Who blue shells you right before the finish line? Bad people, that's who. Mario, you piece of human garbage. Well, we all know and have known forever that the AI cheats in Mario Kart. Yeah, just like, oh, stop. All right, yes, I reign supreme. So how's the experience with Wii games? Great, perfect. Yeah, the fact that it's actually a good experience is the result of quite a lot of community effort. It's not just G-Man. I believe some of the PCBs that were custom built were made by Aurelio on the BitBuilt forums, and there are several others who contributed all kinds of research and time and effort into all of this. So it's really a very team effort kind of thing. It was just all kind of put together by G-Man. SNES 9X GX is the Super Nintendo emulator that you can use in lieu of a virtual console, which currently doesn't work. Sick. Most of these menus don't do anything. Yeah, this is really early software. Got it. They just released it back in June. Okay, got it. So SNES 9X GX, holy smokes, this is it. This is everything. Okay, what I need to know though is Super Mario World does it actually run well? I have my doubts. Do you? Love this four by three display. Well, yeah, I have my doubts because getting the latency good is something I've seen a lot of people screw up. There would be more latency with a Wiimote though. Okay, we're gonna try it. We're gonna try playing Super Mario World with an analog stick. I've never actually done this before. And it feels a little bit, a little spongy. I guess the Nintendo DS Lite had kind of spongy buttons anyway, didn't it? It's hard to play Super Mario World on anything other than a SNES controller, especially if you're used to that sort of thing. Like to be clear, it's not like I'm missing my jumps and stuff here, but these buttons are really not, they're really, really not great. That may be a side effect of the 3D printed shell. Maybe some sanding would help with that. What other consoles can you run emulated games for? Well, anything that has a Wii emulator for it. So DOSBox is available, ScummVM, so like old Lucasfilm or LucasArts games. Sega Genesis, regular Nintendo. There's an N64 emulator that's sorta okay. What else? The VBA, regular Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System. Okay, so fair bit. Yeah, the Wii is actually a really good retro console emulating system. Why this over one of those Super Portable PCs? Well, I mean, there's the simplicity of the interface for one. And two, I mean, did you build that Super Portable PC? Okay, that's fair. Oh, no, no, no, Yoshi! Oh, wow, that was some hardcore slowdown right there. Yeah, this D-pad leaves a lot to be desired. It's starting to heat up a little bit too. I can feel it. The good thing about the D-pad and the buttons and everything like that, that's all stuff that you can swap out yourself. So you can get different rubber membranes. You can get different, you know, D-pad face buttons, that kinda stuff, if you really didn't like it. Ah, no, not the big crushy things. I thought these were thwomps for the longest time, cause I was a little kid, and I couldn't actually like get very far in the game. And I like, I read the manual obsessively. Remember when like reading the game manual was as much fun as playing the game? I used to do it in the car all the time. Oh yeah, it's not that heavy. No. Oh, well there's your cooling problem. We have tape over the vent. Come on, boys. Let's give it some breathing room. There we go. And look, if I get straight onto the camera, that actually gives you guys a better look at what it looks like. If you're straight onto it, it's not that bad. No, Yoshi! Very cool. I don't know that I would personally put the time and effort into building one of these versus like, you know, using a GPD type device or something like that instead. But there is absolutely nothing else like it. And look at that. It's got a headphone jack. At $325 plus the cost of batteries, SD card, face buttons and a Wii, this project is not for the faint of heart. It's really less of a practical thing and more of a passion project. Sort of like building a ship in a bottle except you actually get to play with it in the end. Are there more capable portable consoles out there for a lot less? Absolutely. But you didn't build it, did you? Thanks LG for sponsoring today's video. They just unveiled their new UltraGear logo and they're gonna be featuring it on their new monitors. One of them is the new 27GN950B gaming monitor. Features 4K resolution, a nano IPS panel, 144 Hertz refresh rate. It is VESA certified display HDR 600 and it features Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. It's a great monitor for both gamers and content creators. So check out LG's new logo on their website. And enter the giveaway at the link below to win some great LG UltraGear prizes. It's gonna be good, so get down there. Thanks for watching guys. If you're looking for something less DIY and more DIY, why not check out our recent Cardboard Case Challenge? I swear it's a lot more fun than it sounds. And also let us know if you wanna see more videos like this that are a little bit more, I don't know, DIY, project-y. It's kind of a different video for the channel.