tag: game boy printer

My Game Boy Printer still has plenty of life left in it.

Power duo

Essentially a receipt printer for kids, the Game Boy Printer uses thermal paper (and 6 AA batteries) to print stamp-sized images from a surprisingly robust list of games. Of course, I had to run a few tests using my favorite subject with the classic Game Boy Camera/Printer combo, such as this multiprint test with 0 margin.

Triple Mochi

Just for fun, here are some images from Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (top/middle) and Austin Powers: Oh, Behave! (bottom), the latter of which has a modes where you can just print whatever you type on screen, and even a "realtime" calculator feature that prints as you enter calculations. Developed by Rockstar, the game is presented like a mobile "OS" and is bizarre in its own right, but maybe I'll write about it another time (plus its companion game, Welcome to My Underground Lair, because every Game Boy title needed two versions in a post-Pokemon world).

Super Austin Powers Bros Deluxe

Finally, a handful of games have illustrations that you can print, such as Link's Awakening DX and Pocket Puyo Puyo~n.

Pocket Puyo Puyo~n, currently the best way to get a tiny, low-res printout of Arle

Some of the fun is lost without the sticker backing of the original printer paper but hey tape exists.

After a short archeological dig at my mom's house, I found my old Game Boy Printer. I have a lot of great memories with this, and it even still had some paper inside, though unfortunately well past its shelf life, being thermal paper. Luckily, I found that Seiko produces thermal paper rolls that fit the printer perfectly, albeit without the sticky backing.

Game Boy Printer, with the box and instructions!

We couldn't find the cable, so now I'm waiting for one to arrive from eBay - sadly a bit of a collector's item. Are there better ways these days to get pictures off of a Game Boy Camera? Yes. Do I have said ways? Yes. But also, I have this.

I was worried that it might be dead due to some corrosion on the battery pins that I managed to mostly pick off. Turning it on while holding the feed button prints a test image and after two tests, it was looking good.

Hello!

Goodbye!