Music

This cartridge turns your old Game Boy into a synthesizer

by Luke Ottenhof

Wipe off the Cheetos crumbs from that old grey brick under your bed, because thanks to Nanoloop, your Game Boy can now become a fully-functioning analog beat laboratory, courtesy of some nifty technological tweaks to the traditional Game Boy cartridge.

The software manufacturer’s latest venture repurposes the hand-held console’s circuitry to run three analog filters that produce square waves, percussive clicks and sounds, and just plain noise. You can orchestrate all three of these into some pretty damn sweet little symphonies.

If you speak science, here’s how it works, as explained by the manufacturer:

“On the original Game Boy models, one pin of the cartridge connector functions as audio input, connected to the built-in amplifier. This unique feature allows to generate sound on the cart and play it through the headphone output on a completely analog signal path. In the Nanoloop mono cart, the analog components (op-amps, comparators, logic cells etc) of a PIC microcontroller are connected and configured in such a way that they form a hybrid soundchip with 3 analog filters and a true random noise generator, using only a few passive external components.”

If you don’t speak science, dozens of YouTube demos of the technology have popped up already:

These advancements go to show that if you really put your heart into it, you can use modern science and technology for the greater good. Like turning a decades-old hand-held video game into a three-part synth factory.

The cartridge is going for $70 over at Nanoloop’s website.