The GameBoy made of wood doesn’t just look great. You can also build it yourself
Have you ever held the very first Nintendo GameBoy in your hand? The legendary piece of video game history is probably an integral part of most gamers’ hearts
YouTuber Sebastian Stacks now shows on his channel (“there oughta be“) that the GameBoy also has a special place in his heart.
He has built a wooden GameBoy and also shows you how you can copy it. It’s probably easier than you think.
The walnut GameBoy
How it all began: It all started with a simple idea: Stacks wanted to learn how to use his CNC router. So he decided to upgrade an old Pokémon edition with wood.
To do this, he removed the plastic cover of the games and attached the circuit board inside to the wooden cartridges, which he had previously designed and milled himself. You can see what this looked like in the end in the following picture
How did the wooden GameBoy come about? After uploading a video about the Pokémon games as short videos on social media, he received more and more requests to see an entire GameBoy made of wood. Stacks seems to have liked the idea
How did he go about it? First, Stacks ordered a partially broken GameBoy online. Then he opened the plastic case to remove the mainboard. He bought new parts such as the D-pad, the buttons and even the screen.
He then took a plank of walnut wood and machined it with nine different tools for the CNC router in order to realize his design.
He rubbed the milled parts with linseed oil to achieve a natural wood look.
He shows you what this looks like in his YouTube video:
Build your own GameBoy from wood
On his (Blog), which is also called “there oughta be”, Stacks describes in detail how he went about it and how you too can mill a GameBoy. He provides his CNC files for this purpose. So you no longer have to design and test it yourself
The problem: Access to CNC milling
You’ve probably been thinking for a long time: “Who has access to a CNC milling machine?”. But the probability is not so low that you can use a CNC milling machine in your area.
In many cities, there are workshops that you can use for a certain amount of money, a club membership and sometimes even for free. These facilities often also offer courses or simply assistance in working with CNC milling machines.
Of course, whether you have access to such a workshop depends very much on where you live. Fortunately, the (Verbund offener Werkstätten) has a search engine on its website where you simply enter your zip code and select the type of workshop you are looking for, in this case “CNC milling machine”.
This should hopefully help you find the right workshop quickly.
Would you like to build your own GameBoy? Do you have any crafting experience? Which wood would you use? If you could recreate any console in wood style, which one would it be? And which games would you play on your new masterpieces? Let us know your ideas in the comments below:
