VGA Out Hacked Into Virtual Boy Console Using FPGA

Here’s a new one. Retro game console enthusiast and hardware hacker Furrtek created a great hack with his Nintendo Virtual Boy 3D console. He knew the Virtual Boy didn’t have a stock video output so he decided to use his Altera DE-1 FPGA board to make his own. One problem though – he wanted to fit the FPGA inside of the console’s case, and the DE-1 was simply too big. He did a bit of research and finally arrived on the XESS XULA-200 FPGA board because the size was right. Furrtek gives a very good breakdown of everything involved in adding the VGA out to his Virtual Boy over on his project page. This is what the hack looks like inside the Virtual Boy:

The Virtual Boy was originally released in Japan and North America in 1995, and was a complete commercial disaster. While it didn’t prove to be comercially viable, at least cool hardware like this is still around for us to hack! Awesome project, Furrtek!

(via Hackaday, Furrtek.org)