Smart Boy Controller Will Let You Play Game Boy Games Onto Your Smartphone

The Smart Boy is a controller shaped like the original Game Boy, but without a display. Instead, you slide a smartphone inside to act as the screen. The combination unlocks the ability to play Game Boy games using an emulator running on the phone combined with a real cartridge inserted into the back of the case. So your smartphone becomes a Game Boy while side-stepping the whole issue of game ROMs and piracy.

Here’s the Alpha Build of the peripheral:

The design of the final case looks much more like the original Game Boy design, a fact that could get them into trouble withNintendo. But when it comes to actually playing Game Boy games, Hyperkin isn’t breaking any laws. Emulators are not illegal, and the case requires you own a copy of a game on a cartridge to play.

The Smart Boy is going into full production, but we don’t have a release window for it yet. We can expect it to work with both Android and iOS smartphones, although it’s unclear if that means there will be two versions of the Smart Boy on the market.