Homemade Game Boy Flashcart Project - Repro Games - Demonstration 

I have to say, after watching several of your videos, I find all this (pretty much every gadget you own and every thing you seem to do) very, very interesting. The things you do are genuinely interesting to watch. You're a very cool person!

Holy hell dude. I've been keeping tracks of your mods and game collections for a year or 2 and this is the greatest! More nostalgia with that clear game boy pocket as well haha. Thanks for putting out quality videos.

I did this one time. It didn't end well. So thankfully, now that I'm looking into doing again, I found this video. Excellent job squire.

Althought these kind of projects are far fetched for us to make, im glad people do it. It's pretty amazing what you did and it makes a great video content. Hope to see more stuff like that. I know this is an old video but i hope seeing more projects in your channel!

Hi there' I've been watching your videos for a littlw while now(about 4-5 months since I first discovered your channel) Just thought I'd say great videos and projects. It makes me want to start more hardware based projects, no idea where I'd start but I thought it be cool to mention you're a source of inspiration for me in a sense! Keep up the great vids and projects!

Thanks Ed. Good to hear from you too! Xmas/new year was a busy time! Been taking a bit of a break from making vids. Catching up on some projects and actually playing my games :)

It's an excellent flashcart and very good quality! It's what I use to play games like Shantae which can't be found easily or emulated properly.

Very nice!seems too me your soldering skills has greatly improved since I first started watching your vids.awsome job!thanks for shareing your handy work.

man you are getting a sub from me because when i found your channel recently before i was always searching for stuff like you to on youtube and it is in one big bundle :3

Dude, this is so awesome ! This is the type of stuff I want to get into. (: you're a genius

This was extremely fascinating to watch!

Oh jesus I want a repro of Trip World. Very nice work man!

you sir i ve discovered your channel today watched around 6-7 videos and i have to subscribe !!

Hey Thomas! Good to hear from you! Programmer is very cool. I think it'll come in handy for future projects :) . Surprisingly cheap too!

Very nice project, Shantae is a realy cool game for the GBC.

Thanks Luke. I'm learning a lot as I go with this stuff. It's pretty interesting! :) I'd love to have a go at making some games for my Mega Drive next.

Most excellent dude, nice work on this!

youre like my hero! :) I want to be as skillful in modding one day please dont ever stop doing what youre doing !

Sick project!!! Keep up the good work

Thanks for posting yet another excellent Video, been checking now and again, looking forward to your new vids....

If your ultimate plan is to make that game look like a normal cartridge, then I want to see the finished product. Never stop doing what you do. I believe you could work for Nintendo.

Just wiring up the socket took me about 3 hours! lol That includes cutting/stripping/tinning all those bits of 30AWG Kynar wire! It's fiddly and frustrating work! You don't have much room to work with and everything is so damn small! Thanks for watching! And I appreciate you taking the time to comment :)

If you are gonna ruin a Nintendo game, better make it a sports game, lol

Awesome job, man!

Shantae is now on the Nintendo eShop

I suppose anything's possible but that's way above of my level of knowledge/skill. And we already have commercial devices like the USB GB Smart card for that :)

Game saves are stored on the cart's onboard RAM from what I understand. That is why you need a battery to retain the save. The games on my flash ROM's will save provided they support saving and I re-install a battery :P

NES carts are supposed to be pretty complicated because they use 2 separate ROMs or something? Mega Drive is easier but I think the chips and tools needed can get a bit expensive! I'll post vids when I've finished making some repros :) Thanks for watching!

So many people do not know the different between a Gameboy and a Gamboy Color . . . . o_O

Your brilliant,I love your videos .I always learn something. Thank you.

wow you are just about amazing at anything

Haha, well It has taken me several MONTHS to get to this stage :P . But It's actually pretty straight forward stuff. Having a fine tip soldering iron and a steady hand does help though :P. Thanks for taking the time to comment :)

looks pretty nice

Thanks dude! Sockets are usually sold in large quantities and work out to be pennies each. But, you should only need one for your test cart. For the actual repro carts the chips will be soldered direct to the PCB and hidden from view :) . Chip prices vary depending on order quantity. Generally each 4-Mbit chip will cost £1-£1.50. Overall it's quite affordable :) . But soldering all those tiny wires cost me a LOT of time!! :P Lol, baby steps!

holy crap, now you are able to produce your own gameboygames O.O

Okay everyone asking for a gba or 3ds version while the gba version is possible it is more complicated than swapping chips mainly for two reasons is that the gba is not 8-bit meaning that different chips are used plus you need to have some other chips to do talking between the flash memory and gba.....3ds is out of the question EXCEPT gateway 3ds BUT since the Ds nintendo put in security checks so to prevent people from doing this (and home brew) as this causes them to lose money. To bypass this security you need an exploit which are screw ups in hardware or software that allows you to bypass security and run whatever code. Also NO YOU CANNOT JUST SOLDER AN SD SLOT INTO A CART THAT REQUIRES A ON BOARD CONTROLLER ASWELL AS RAM SINCE THE SD STANDARD IS FAR DIFFERENT THAN A SIMPLE GAME BOY ROM CHIP AS YOU'LL NEED A PROGRAM THAT TELLS THE CONTROLLER TO LOAD OF SD THEN WRITE THAT PROGRAM TO A PART OF ONBOARD RAM AND TELL THE GAMEBOY/GBA/DS TO EXECUTE FROM THAT LOCATION OF RAM.

Thanks dude! But I mostly just follow tutorials or use info other people have discovered/posted online. Soldering isn't too difficult to learn either :P

Your a Legend mate, I also think your a future Skynet employee, so therefore you may bring down this planet!

Very impressive!!!

I think you need to flash some custom code along with the ROMs to allow selecting which game you want to boot but yes :). These flash chips can be erased and written multiple times using the programmer. Very easy and safe :)

Pretty neat I can imagine that many roms wouldn't work, as they expect different hardware in the cartridges. Specifically the mbc_ chips

1 word for you sir: Amazing.

Thanks for watching/commenting :)

Are you going to be doing any more videos on this? It's very cool and I'm rally interested in it and would love to see more videos.

That is awesome, you rock!!! Also the Gameboys you have are cool!!

Thanks for the nice comment! Glad you enjoyed it :)

Awesome really impressive and interesting thanks for sharing this knowledge in the video.

Wow! That's crazy! I think I'll keep working on a solution to making my own, lol.

thats really cool, i love it

I really want to try this.

The largest capacity flash ROM I could find in a PLCC-32 package was 8Mbit. The Shantae ROM is 4Mbyte so I believe I would require at least a 32Mbit chip to accomodate the whole game. I will probably have to look into different chip types and alternative methods of flashing if I want to make a repro of that game. I'm trying to figure out and learn a lot of this stuff out as I go :P

Will you be doing an update video for these repro carts any time soon? I'd love to see how they turned out!

next time I would recommend using a old IDE /SCSI cable to solder up this project. Really cool project. Would love to see a snes prom mod.

I'll take a look. I think I might still have one of the working original R4's in my 'to sell' box.

Thanks. I've posted links in the description that have lots of info on the subject. There's also a RU-vidr called Gerry O'Brien who's already done some pretty good tutorials on making flashcarts :) . I think a GBA version would probably be too expensive and complicated for me. I'll stick with my EZ-Flash for that system :P

Not to keen on the video game pirating but im amazed at your ability to make something like this

Thanks for watching! :)

I love it so much

You may be able to get higher compacity chips if you look for PC BIOS chips, newer PC BIOS chips can be 8 MB in size.

you are the coolest person i know

Finally something new on your chenne

i really wanna say thank you im gonna build one myself! if you want any gb gbc or gba prototypes let me know ill get a list of what i got dumped on folders

Awesome, Trip World.

Looks like you can do EEPROMS with that, if you ever want to do arcade boards or even neo geo conversions.

I actually have a original pirate cart of Sonic 3D Blast 5 :D I laughed so hard first time I launched it. I was about to suggest you'd do a repro of Trip World since it's so hard to come by and is such a magnificent game. But I see you already have plans for that :)

Excellent way to get those games that are impossible to attain now, especially with the stupid internet/collector prices we have to contend with these days. I recommened flashing SAGAIA it is a great shooter if you can find the ROM.

"All I've really done...." Lol man I wish I had a quarter of your skill!

Yeah it'll do a whole bunch of different chips. I'd probably need adapters for larger arcade ROMs though.

Great video

You are my hero

Thanks!

7:54 Such a satisfying sound..

true labor of love.

Thanks dude! :)

Thank you! :)

Looks like you've saved yourself a lot of *fun*, soldering chips onto board only to find they are faulty ;) Would be funny if you managed to find Shantae in a cheap buy it now listing. But failing that, making one yourself would certainly be a fun project.

Just researching the stuff that interests me :P .There's loads of info floating about the interwebs :)

you're a freaking genius!

The gameboy boot up sound on this video came out of a different channel or something from my speakers and it sounded like it was right next to me and i have my volume on full blast and with my beefy sound chip it was fukin lowed scared the absolute shit out of me.

hey not bad, very cool to flash various chips

Hi. I like your hardware projects videos. I work with software mainly but I have built some dev boards for various things. Anyway, Have you looked into game code to make changes? I would be interested in seeing one of those projects, if not a homebrew sample.

very nice job! can you flash multiple games to those chips? that flash board thingy looks insanely complicated to a noob like me lol

Fkin awesome man!!

Can you give a tutorial on how to mod the cart to use the parts and where to buy the parts from?

Pure Genius! :D

Indeed! :)

A little off topic, no? :P . But since you asked, I just wired it up directly to an RGB Scart cable. Google JAMMA to RGB Scart for a pinout ;)

What happens with the save file after I change the ROM chip, and put another ROM chip with another game in it ?

Ah man trip world! I love that game :3

If you're going to make repro carts, you should look into replacing the sram with Feram. I can't recall the model number off the top of my head, but there's an feram chip that's a drop in replacement for most sram and pin compatible. By doing so, you can permanently ditch the battery.

Haha, I think that's probably where I got it. Well spotted!

Lol, they're worth picking up if you can re-purpose them! Hacked roms and unreleased games can be very cool. I've been wanting to try out that Streets of Rage 3 directors cut hack for a while... hmmmm...

you sir are a boss.

I've seen that you have and lsdj rom. Do you know what specs need the cartridge to be flashed and played?

Saving function will not work if you removed the battery?

Cool, I've still to try out LSDJ on mine. It looks complicated! haha

p.s. im not sure if the one I mentioned is the same as the one in your video.. I think it might be. Is there an advantage do you find between the two?

have you considered trying to install a micro sd slot onto the cartridge ?

Cool project pal, it'd be nice to play some homebrew titles on the actual system rather than via PC Emulator, I might give this a go myself.

is it possible to download every single gba game as altogether it will only be 5gb or some thing small