Rescue Your Game Boy Camera Pictures With The Bitboy
Do you still have the Game Boy Camera, a lens that attached to the original monochrome Game Boy in 1998 and let you take fuzzy pictures? Do you wish there was some way to get those old photos off the camera and store them as digital image files? Someone’s working on that.
From the tireless efforts of a German geek comes the Bitboy, a device built for the sole purpose of transferring Game Boy Camera photos. It plugs into your Game Boy via a once-common Link Cable. The Game Boy Camera thinks the Bitboy is a Game Boy Printer, and when you select “print,” it starts sending data to the Bitboy which re-renders it as an image. And you’ve got your photos! You have to do them one at a time, of course, but still…wow, right? And to think it almost never happened.
The Bitboy’s builder, Alexander Bahr, was originally going to fund the device through Kickstarter, but other events in his life got in the way, and by the time it was finished, the Kickstarter market had cooled in Germany. But after the website US Gamer wrote about his invention in “The Greatest Game Gadget That Never Was,” he got an offer from the website Gameboyphoto to enter a partnership to produce Bitboys and sell them.
Once it’s available, the Bitboy will cost $65 and will come with a link cable, an SD card and a charging cable. In addition, the device will also allow you to “print” images from the Japanese version of the Game Boy Camera, Pokemon Yellow, and for some reason Mary Kate and Ashley Pocket Planner. Compatibility with more games that had Game Boy Printer functions will be added via firmware updates. You’l be able to get one by going here.