Extra Hardware Part 2: GBDSO, FlyBoy, BarcodeBoy, WorkBoy

GBDSO - Game Boy Digital Oscilloscope

This invention let's you use the game boy as an oscilloscope, by plugging in probes into the top of the cartridge itself:

• http://www.semis.demon.co.uk/Gameboy/DsoDemo/DsoDemo.htm
• http://engcast.com/main/tag/game-boy-digital-sampling-oscilloscope/
• http://www.gameboycarts.com/2010/06/game-boy-oscilloscope/
• http://www3.telus.net/public/a5a26316/Various_Electronic_Projects.html

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FlyBoy

The FlyBoy was built for people to take with them on gliders, it has GPS and a Pitot to measure things like altitude and display that on the game boy:

• http://www.rrsd.com/product_development/flight_instruments/index.htm
• http://www.rrsd.com/product_development/flight_instruments/Manual.htm

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BarcodeBoy

This was a specially made device that would connect via the link port and the barcode of these cards which would work as input to a small number of games that used this:

• http://junglehunt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/barcode-boy.html
• http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Barcode_Boy
• http://www.retroconsolas.com/media/blogs/Barcode_Boy_acoplado_a_la_gameboy.jpg

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WorkBoy 

A very cool device that increased the number of buttons on the gameboy massively, of course only useful on carts that would interface with this device:

• http://www.pressthebuttons.com/2011/11/workboy-wanted-to-change-everything.html
• http://www.thewebsiteofdoom.com/articles/leave-luck-to-heaven-16-a-look-at-an-unusual-peripheral/

Extra Hardware Part 1: Camera, Printer, Link, Cheats, Backups

Game Boy Camera and Printer

 The Game Boy Camera was a cartridge which includes the first smallest portable digital camera:

Here is a special golden Zelda version

and through the Game Link Port you could print out your pictures with the game boy printer, here's a special pikachu edition:

 You could also print things other than photos from games if they had the featured, for example from pokemon:

• http://www.nintendo-collection.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=1030612
• http://www.eagb.net/gameboy/p_news.htm
• http://gieskes.nl/undefined/circuit-bending-tests/?f=gameboy-camera

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Game Link Cables

The Game Link Cable was used to have serial communication between the two game boys for things like multiplayer:

There was also a 4-way game link cable:

it's not known exactly how this device works.

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 Cheat and Save-Backup Cartridges

 There were a few different cheat cartridges which would let you plug your own cart into and then by some mechaism affect parts of the game.

Here's the Game Genie:

This would patch locations in ROM as they tried to pass through the cart.

Other popular cheat carts are the game shark (which would hook into the vblank interrupt handler to patch RAM at every frame) and the action replay:

There were also Xploder and MonsterBrain

• http://nocash.emubase.de/pandocs.htm#gamegeniesharkcheats
• http://gallowsmart.wordpress.com/tag/mega-memory-card/ and color cart II

Memory Expander

Another special cart which other carts plug into, this time it would let you back up saved games!