While the original Game Boy and its various Pocket/Advance/Color iterations have long been out of production, this venerable system apparently never left our collective hearts. This is evidenced, in part, by the new and/or hacked hardware and software that people have come up to use with the platform; now including an ESP8266 WiFi module for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) from maciel310’s store.
Maciel310, AKA Anthony Maciel, is quick to note that, while he’s not the first to connect an ESP device to the GBA, he believes that this is the first one to be put up for sale. The idea behind adapter is that for the GBAJam2021 event, he wanted to make the first MMO game for the platform, but was limited to using a physical tethered connection.
With this hardware, you could play such a game wirelessly, as you’d expect with a portable console. It’s important to note, however, that it won’t simply enable Internet connectivity to existing games, you’ll need a game designed to work with this hardware.
You can see a bit more info on the Game Boy advance MMO on this playlist, and the clip of a GBA booting off of the ESP8266 WiFi adapter is embedded below:
Of course, this isn’t the only bit of custom Game Boy kit available on Tindie. You can also check out Prima Materia, a new Game Boy game for 2021, or this 2MB Flash Cart for custom firmware storage.
