Wow.
This is one of those projects that immediately raises the question: why would anyone do this? A YouTuber has built an enormous LEGO-style Game Boy, complete with a full-size screen, oversized buttons, and just enough engineering madness to make it genuinely interesting rather than just daft. It’s a bit different to the other LEGO Game Boy projects you might have seen, official and unofficial…
No, it doesn’t play Game Boy cartridges. It’s a model, not a handheld. But that’s not really the point.
Scaling up a Game Boy is harder than it looks
The clever bit is the screen. Instead of using a modern LCD and calling it a day, the builder went hunting for something that behaves more like old display tech. Scaling retro visuals cleanly tends to expose every pixel in a way the original hardware never intended, while CRTs — bulky and impractical here — softened everything through glow and blur.
Take a look:
The solution was an electroluminescent display, a thin panel that emits a soft, diffuse glow when electrically excited. It doesn’t use HDMI or VGA, so a custom graphics card was built to drive it, complete with a modified BIOS.
Most novelty builds don’t go that far.
The giant shell itself was 3D-printed, painted, assembled, and decorated to resemble LEGO, housing a PC-style motherboard and finished with oversized buttons and transfer stickers. It’s completely over the top, and clearly meant to be admired rather than used.
The finished screen image is soft, warm, and slightly dreamy. Colour support is limited, but that almost helps. It suits stylised visuals and retro imagery far better than a razor-sharp modern panel ever could.
A model that understands retro aesthetics
I like this project because it understands something a lot of retro builds miss: old games didn’t just look the way they did because of low resolution.
They relied on the quirks of the displays they were designed for. This giant LEGO Game Boy doesn’t try to be practical or authentic in a literal sense — it’s chasing the feel instead. And honestly, that makes it more successful than many projects that actually try to play the games.
You can learn more about the giant LEGO Game Boy project on Hackaday.
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Christian Cawley is the founder and editor of GamingRetro.co.uk, a website dedicated to classic and retro gaming. With over 20 years of experience writing for technology and gaming publications, he brings considerable expertise and a lifelong passion for interactive entertainment, particularly games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
Christian has written for leading outlets including TechRadar, Computer Weekly, Linux Format, and MakeUseOf, where he also served as Deputy Editor.
When he’s not exploring vintage consoles or retro PCs, Christian enjoys building with LEGO, playing cigar box guitar, and experimenting in the kitchen.
