Make one today portable nintendo gamecube It is not a very complicated task. It can be done in several ways. For example, the easiest way to get back to playing titles from that console is with the new Steam Deck, which natively supports the Dolphin emulator. Others tend to make it a bit more difficult and use Raspberry Pi boards to achieve the goal. And finally we have this youtuber who has achieved it using authentic Nintendo hardware.
A youtuber turns a fake concept art into a real project
El youtuber GingerOfOz He barely has five videos on his channel, but he has already earned more than 70.000 subscribers thanks to his ingenuity. He is exclusively dedicated to creating portable consoles. In fact, the first video of him, which was uploaded more than 3 years ago, already showed his first project: a pocket Wii. Subsequently, the modder he would upload videos making his own pocket PlayStation 2 and also a Wii in the shape of a Game Boy.
However, this week, GingerOfOz has outdone itself. Browsing the Internet, he came across a curious "concept art" that mixed a Game Boy Advance SP with a GameCube. The image has been circulating on the Internet for years, and surely if you like consoles, you have ever seen it published somewhere. Well, GingerOfOz saw this image again and considered that it was possible to materialize it.
In a first investigation, the youtuber he discovered that the image dates from the year 2005, and even came across a forum post discussing whether or not the image was real. However, the render had enough imperfections to make it obvious that it was a fake.
However, our protagonist is an expert transforming consoles, so, inspired by that false image, he got down to work to turn the fake into reality. And of course he got it.
Slicing up a Wii to make a portable GameCube
The first thing GingerOfOz did was calculate the size of the fake console in the image by reference to one of the real GameCube miniDVDs. After designing a first sketch of the casing and printing it in 3D, the modder confessed that he did not plan to use a Raspberry Pi or any other generic hardware to emulate the console, but rather original parts. However, instead of using GameCube hardware, decided to use a Wii board. This is because they pretty much use the same hardware, but on the Wii it was optimized for both size and power. It was also more interesting in order to insert a custom firmware —much easier on the Wii than on the GameCube—, since it would be the only way to introduce the games on the console, since there are no miniDVD drives so small that they fit into said firmware. Case. However, it did leave the groove to be true to the original image.
The real madness came when assembling all the equipment. Obviously, the Wii's motherboard was bigger than its case, so he cut it in different parts and joined them by welding to make multiple layers of PCBs. And, although it may seem like a lie, the invention worked. After connecting the screen and adding a keypad created by himself on a 3D printer, the viral fake's Nintendo GameCube became a reality. And not only that. After asking for help on Twitter, GingerOfOz managed to speak with the original creator of the image, who, curiosities of life, had been following him on Twitter all this time.