If you’ve been with Retro Dodo for a long time, then you’ll know how much I love to cover modded consoles and handhelds. The ingenuity of the Retro Gaming community continually surprises me, and it’s thanks to all of your brilliant minds that we keep old tech alive for newer generations.
Just recently, we’ve seen modders creating a system that emulates a broadband connection for the GameCube, allowing for more online multiplayer options than ever before to be unleashed on Nintendo’s ingenious indigo powerhouse. We’ve seen Modded PS1 consoles turned into handhelds, and tonnes of exciting crossovers between tech that we would never have expected.
Now, a clever modder has provided us with possibly the most nostalgic Nintendo Switch controller of all time by turning another Nintendo horizontal handheld into a gaming pad. How do you fancy controlling your favourite Switch games by using a Game Boy Advance?
It’s a nice picture, right? For handheld Nintendo gamers, the GBA will forever feel comfortable and easy to use, bringing back thoughts of playing with a worm light in the dead of night, putting in hours on Pokemon Sapphire, and taking Mario Kart on the go with us for the first time.
The GBA Bluetooth TX Cart comes from the brain tank of modder insideGadgets, who has shared a video of the cart in action, using a GBA to move Luigi around on their Nintendo Switch Lite in Super Mario Wonder.
As you can see from the beginning of this YouTube clip first shared by Time Extension, the cart itself is the same size as a GBA cart and, after slotting in the back, lets you use your GBA as a controller instead of loading up a game. And, because it runs using Bluetooth, you can use it on other Zero 2-supported devices that run Android or Raspberry Pi, as well as on your PC.
A Game Changer For Nintendo Switch Online
The Nintendo Switch Online service is fast becoming the go-to place to play retro Nintendo titles, especially since Nintendo has begun wiping out all the other emulation competition on the internet. The inclusion of Game Boy titles on the console sat incredibly well with us here at Dodo, with the GBA games making up a large portion of our playtime stats.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense to have a GBA as the main controller used to play GBA games. Heck, Nintendo even brought out N64 and SEGA Mega Drive controllers to play games from both consoles on the Online service – that’s how much we love to get into our nostalgic retro groove when playing old games. Our muscle memory never leaves us, and having another excuse to give the original hardware a new lease of life is always going to make us happy.
We’ve checked out the insideGadgets website to see how much this cart will cost, and it has a price tag of $89. That might seem a lot to you when you can buy other Bluetooth controllers for cheaper (the 8BitDo Micro comes to mind), but I think that for the nostalgia factor alone and because of the work that has gone into making this possible, it’s quite fairly priced.
Anyone looking to purchase the cart for their Game Boy Advance should sign up to the stock alert on the insideGadgets website for more information!
