So much information to try and cram into one reasonable length video. There’s loads of things I didn’t mention. The main thing is that it does play the games well, feels and looks great. The downsides are the software. The fact they didn’t make their own software which would have made this thing perfect is a big shame. However I’m sure they just didn’t want to face any legal problems with Nintendo. Let me know your thoughts! Hopefully you still enjoyed the video. :)

I love how pride filled and brave of a decision it was to randomly bring out that long boy Gameboy without warning.

I never bothered with the smartboy software, just downloaded my boy and configured it as a controller in settings. Ya you have to use roms instead of it physically ripping them each time you insert, but having the option to play advance and change games easier makes this a nice controller.

I feel like the Homebrew Community could take a crack at this, to me it seems like it's a software issue and not a hardware issue. so if someone was able to write a new app it probably would make this device better.

It's an ok idea, but... phones are naturally ok to play old Gameboy games. Emulator like the Pizzaboy makes any phone a Gameboy Color, which works great for games like Pokemon.

I own this and what I use it for is dumping my roms and save files. If you've got a bluetooth mouse hooked up or tricky fingers, you can copy that rom file and it won't delete it. It's a great way to back up saves if you have one laying around

Have you looked up to see if there's any third party apps that let you play any ROM on the thing? Surely someone out there has made one!

Feels like this would put a lot of strain on your charging port

They're saying this about games that have been out of print for 20+ years...

This seems FAR more difficult than just buying an OG Gameboy for $20 US.

my analogue pocket can't come soon enough

I bought this about a year ago and absolutely love it. I've tried to use my actual cartridges and like you it was just a pain it's much easier if you just use the emulator, map the controls and use ROMs

Smartboy? More like Shartboy

I WAS LITERALLY GOING TO BUY THIS YESTERDAY

I like how he implicates that ROMs or having ROMs is illegal... It's very much not, the only illegal part is sharing your dumped ROMs.

These issues seem like they would be easy to fix by someone with the right know-how - ie not me.

"Everyone has a phone right?" ... Nice.

OMG I have one of those! I totally agree! Why don't you just use the cartridges on your Gameboy anyway!

the games look, play and listen great beacuse MyBoy is a great emulator on its own so what you are really getting is just a DRM'd ROM ripper, and i bet if you do some meddling around with a file explorer you could copy it elsewhere and just use MyBoy to play the ripped ROMs without the need to stick them

9:43 - oh yes! Keitai denjuu telefang. Nice game!. Always wondered how good this thing would be. Interesting to see it working :)

Imagine, in version one they wanted you to smash your phone each time you change the cardridge! So this means real progress to them 😂

You're probably better off waiting for the Analogue Pocket than getting one of these.

This seems like it could have been such a novel concept. It's a shame it wasn't executed particularly well!

I would not mind a longer video like this, love this type of content and more of it is all good with me.

Man I've always been so interested in these things since they came out, always wondered if they were any use, kind of a pity it has so many downsides, guess we will have to keep using our ips modded gameboys, great video

I've always thought this was pretty neat... great vid man 👍

If you’re concerned about downloading roms from elsewhere or whatever and have a computer, you can just dump the roms you have using a rom dumper and then just transfer the files onto your phone. That way the files will be both on your phone and on your PC in case files corrupt or your phone stops working

I really love that he plays one of the most infamous bootlegs of the game boy color era at 9:43 when showing that "it can play game boy color games" xD - Pokemon Diamond (Keitai denjuu telefang Power version). I love this game!

0:02 FBI OPEN UP!!!!!!

Doesn't seem like this should be too hard a concept to get right. I love the idea of it! Great video as always Elliot! Thanks for all your awesome content!

it seems just fine, a great concept done just fine, i hope to see more stuff like this done in the future

Wow. Just wow. You had me cracking up after ONE WORD. Keep grinding, my dude. I really appreciate the effort you have been going to with your channel. I am proud to be a fan.

I like this little thing. You can use it for many different emulators, you use the buttons to reach the options under the screen.

Wasn't it because it was basically just a front end to extract cartridges to your phone which are just Rom's

REREZ already made a review of this a few years ago but its cool seeing another review of it being done this year

Love the video! Keep up the great videos!

"ROMs..." **gets locked up and then has the video taken down**

ROMs: *exist* Prison: _Allow me to introduce myself._

Nice! It's good to see Telefang popping up! There's a fan translation of that game in the works, it's about a third of the way finished.

10:43 that's only to use the apps own save function, you can use the in game saves as many times as you want

I own a Hyperkin Smartboy and can confirm that it works on almost any Android phone with Type C and OTG support (don't know of any without). It works with my LG Stylo 4 and my Google Pixel 4XL perfectly. You can also backup your Gameboy/Color cartridges with that. Just use the included cable and while the cartridge is still in the Smartboy, go to your file manager and copy smartboy(dot)gb/(dot)gbc to a different folder and then rename it to what it's supposed to be. After you backup your games, I would delete the Smartboy app and buy the paid version of MyOldBoy. The triggers are for MyBoy. If you find out how to export a save from a cartridge or even if it can, please let us know.

"THE RETRO FMTURE", my favorite KZfaq.

Great video Elliot! I didn't buy one of these. I do remember when they first came out with them, I was working at a small business video game store, and we stocked these. Not a lot mind you, but I think we had 3 or 4 in the store for sale. I'm pretty sure we never sold one. When it comes to me and Hyperkin, it's hit and miss. For instance, I LOVE my Retron 5! But I know not everyone feels the same way about it as I do. I've been told some of their other "clone" consoles are hit or miss too. Keep up the good work! Brendan

Lmao that intro. Keep it up I love your videos 💞

Technically speaking, since you're dumping your own games for personal use, it's perfectly legal in the U.S.

Finally ill be able to take some high quality pictures with my gameboy camera!

When you pulled out the long gameboy I burst in laughter 😂😂 I didn't expect that

Fun fact: My Old Boy Supports Super Game Boy boarders and pallettes, Game Boy Camera, and if I remember correctly you can use the Game Boy Printer features in games which saves a png of what'd be printed to your photo gallery, also bluetooth in order to use link cable games

Such a fun idea. Looks really well made and I guess it shows there’s a huge demand for games like these on mobile devices.

nobody: teacher:whats the magic word Elliot:ROMS

Going to be honest, this is one of my favorite videos you've made so far. Perfect timing that it landed on my birthday (by obvious obvious coincidence)! Keep up the awesome content man, it's truly amazing.

I have one. Its a read only product. It'll read the game and load it and the saves. If you go to create a game save on the game itself on the other hand, it'll say the game saved successfully, but when you go to reload it again at a later point in time, the saves will not be there that you made using the device

"It looks lovely and feels lovely. (Pause) And then it all goes downhill." Yep. That got a good laugh from me. Nice job!

oh god, i've never thought that would happen sincerely this product never caught my attention that much, i really want to get an original gameboy and i love to play some gb games on my 3ds!

This video is worth watching! More of this, please!

I don't often like youtube videos. but literally lmfao I had to. the title, and the first 3 seconds of the video, pure genius.

woah, im here like 2 minutes after release... That's sick!

I bought this years ago, played it once then forgot about it....

Elliot: I'm not gonna get into how to set it up Begins to get into it

Interestingly, when the Smartboy first came out, they were specifically for iPhones. This USB-C version is the second revision. That said, I have one of these. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to use, but I absolutely love it all the same. My biggest issue is the obscured menus and such at the bottom. I didn't even realize it came with a USB-C extension cable, that's disappointing. And I've never had issue with that piracy screen, I can get it to go away just fine.

The Retrode 2 existing (and therefore the ability for anyone to dump their stuff easily) puts the attitude toward ROMs in this video in a pretty weird place. Just saying, this approach never really needed to be here even if you wanted to play your dumped carts onto your phone.

This thing failed SO HARD that I ACTIVELY answer as many Amazon questions as possible, telling everyone how much this thing sucks and telling them to just drop their $50 on a real DMG-01.

I always wonder how this would work... thanks for showing 😅

All they should have done is make a spring loaded eject. Push the phone down, it pops up. Or even a keypad that can flip open, that would do the trick as well. In Tetris I feel like the key repeat when you keep it pressed is a bit slow, am I right?

Not gonna lie, I've considered getting one of these. I would see them in my local GAME store all the time and was really tempted, but I wasn't sure if my Pixel 2 XL would fit in it properly. I'm glad I went for the alternative instead... revamping my existing DMG with an IPA screen. Beautiful!

Emulator apps: I'm abouta end this whole man's career...

Onscreen HW buttons - absolutely awesome idea, I was even thinking of creating my own DIY version of this, that will be much more portable. Back in day, there were even a kickstarter project called G-Pad, it was silicone buttons for emulators, but the project unfortunatelly failed, and the multiple G-Pad "prototipes" are nowhere to be found. Beacause of covid, I don't have access of HW that I need to build this gamepad, so I bought Flydigi Wee2T and call it a day. Now I can emulate basically every handheld till PS Vita and 3DS. Not that portable solution, that I was so keen on previously, but much more universal.

You could probably get a task killer app and make a home screen shortcut specifically for killing the companion app I've been meaning to grab one of these for a while, thanks for the video!!

Nobody: Absolutely nobody: The Retro Future: "R̵̢̡͖̜͎̤̲̰̣͖͓͙͚͓̪̹̦̩̯͈̜̥̲̆͐̽͆̀̍͛̔́͊̎͐́̾͛̃͛͛̃͑̅̊̄̎̂̍͒̒̂̚̚̚̚͜͜͝͝͝ͅǪ̸̨̢̢̫͔̭̪̙͍͚̞͇̩͇͔̼̖̼̬̘̺̻̗͇̝̠͈͉̤͖̟̠͛̽̓̏̄̐́̔̎̔̽̽̋̉͂̽̈́͛̈́̊̕M̷̨̧̟͓̰̦̖̟͉̻̲̞͓̫̙̯͓̙̱̖̥͓̫̰̞̫̗̻̰͊̈͜͜Š̷̡̢̡̛̪̗͍̣͚̥͓̖̤̣̖̯̙̙̺͇̗̠͔̜̺͖͕̖̼̟̯̯̃̌̅͐̉̔̾̄̏̄͠͝"

It's kinda irritating that the screen is covered. And all the hiccups. Nah.

You CAN run emulators on iPhone without jailbreaking. Sideloading via AltStore or using a paid service such as BuildStore are both jailbreak-free options.

Anybody that has emulated on their phone recognized that game loading screen. They also know how to navigate to the same location the rom loader is showing the game using a file manager on your phone to copy the .gb to the phone's storage.

It also only was a usb-c device and I'm pretty sure when this released micro-usb was still common on most phones

Hey, I just remembered, some Android phones have an accessibility mode where you can do a wiggly gesture with your thumb and the screen shrinks down into one corner. I wonder if that would make this device less absurd.

Thank you so much for this video👍👌✌

I was inspired to buy this to try it out just from the look of it, so I went and won it on eBay for 20 quid. And my god, this has become one of my favourite gadgets I own. The buttons control like a dream, and sure, I'm playing on myoldboy without using the cartridge port (may get a lot of 50-100 odd Gameboy games off sendico just for a laugh though) but I am getting so much enjoyment out of it. A lovely little device that deserves a chance if found for cheap and if ready to ignore the cartridge feature

these things only seem to be for android too!

That intro.. Literally hilarious! “Ro-“ KZfaq: No.

I did find a way to emulate in iphone using eclipse, and it functions without any lag, it had fast forwarding, hood audio, butt all in all it works really well.

I own one of these. I personally dont have the same piracy alert issue that you do. My biggest criticism is being unable to write the save state back to the game cartridge. and no link cable port

Hyperkin do things quite well and quality products? Um, no 🤣

Why Just Why, Gameboy’s are easy To find!

A beter desine choice would be to have the buttons control the options or have the lay out be landscape and have a gba sort of layout because it has shoulder buttons that are never use

Since it's just touching points on the phone, there's no data from the USB aside from auto-launching when it detects that driver. You could use any phone emulator with positionable buttons

Roms: Exist Nintendo: And I Took that Personally

I wanted to like this so much, but this thing was an April Fools joke turned real and it should’ve just stayed a joke. This is what happens when dumb customers demand things.

I was told to think of things I am thankful for and I thought, "retro future"

Whoa whoa whoa that other game boy big as hell nice costume 👍🏾👍🏾

Teardown?

Damn, I'm never this early

I have SO many questions: - So the feature must've eventually been tested. That means, are _all_ the pins actually wired up and accessible? - If so, could a phone running a mobile Linux use this in order to ACTUALLY play Gameboy Color and Advance games? I would love to try that. I just wishlisted one of those on eBay. - What are the maximum dimensions of a phone to fit in? How tick can it be at most, how wide? I am thinking of eventually getting a Razer Phone and throwing myself down the rabbit hole of implementing Linux on that (which is surprisingly possible but tidious...) This is a neat device and I love it - I want one, with a proper phone, but I want to see just how far I can take this. If it has all the wiring complete, it'd be just a mere case of reverse engeneering it on a PC by plugging it in using the lead cable and seing if one could read/write to the cartridge to actually do things with the save on the cartridge. I have been hanging around Inside Gadgets and BennVenn discord servers for a while and I would personally love this. So I might end up testing this. See, I thought they never made it. I am shocked to see that they *did* make it. xD Now I want to take it to the extreme.

You know if you could fold the button part outwards to reveal the whole part of the phone while still being connected then it would be solved like sure the whole long process of exiting the app just to leave a game is awful but it certainly won’t scratch your screen and makes it easier to access

To the 1% who sees this, I hope your doing well. You should be more confidant. You should smile more. Stay safe. Where a mask and wash yo hands!!!

piracy > """legitimacy"""

0:23 Funny thing is, that this was posted by them as Joke once... But people liked it so much, they made it. In the end, a usb otg adapter, cartridge usb dumper with software is just the same, even more versatile... (It is only dumping em after all...)

They should have made that button panel fold out, like a hinge at the bottom so it can pivot out and down to access the bottom of your phone screen

"roms." Me: laughs in emulation and homebrew/modded consoles.

IM FINALLY EARLYYY

Does it run the EverdriveGBx7? and if so would you still have to pull out the cart when changing to a different game?..... 🤔 Awesome video as always, keep keepin'it up !!! 🏆💎🔥👑

0:58 there’s sites w in browser gb/gbc/gba, nes, snes, etc. emulators, u can even download roms and load them from files