Nintendo already discontinued their absurdly popular MiniNES, in spite of all the people still trying to get one, and it’s already looking like the upcoming SNES Classic will be made of unobtanium as well. Considering the huge demand for nostalgia-based miniaturized emulators, Nintendo should take a cue from [c.invent], who built the “Keymu,” an open-source, keychain-sized Game Boy Color capable of playing NES, SNES, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games (well, the ROMs of those games), as seen in the video above.
He believes Keymu is “the world’s smallest emulation console” at a size of only 4.2cm x 4.6 cm x 1.7cm (approximately 1.65″ x 1.8″ x 0.67″). Inspiration for Keymu came from the mini-Game Boy he saw at the 2016 Hackaday superconference and says is “the coolest, nerdiest and cutest project I ever came across.” Then he took the idea of a keychain-sized Game Boy and made a smaller version that can emulate more Nintendo systems, has more buttons, and has a clamshell case to protect the screen when the toy is carried in a pocket (because you’d want to take this everywhere).
The Keymu runs on Linux Debian — allowing for the emulation of several Nintendo systems — and it was built from nine primary components: an Intel Edison SOC, a 1.5″ OLED Display 128×128 (SSD1351), a 11.7mm speaker, a 220mAh (501535) Lithium battery, a Micro-USB connector, two LEDs (one for an on/off indicator and one for a battery-charging indicator), a custom-made PCB, and a 3D-printed clamshell case with nine buttons. Although he says he’s not a fan of the Intel Edison chip, it had the right features and compact size for a case this tiny.
You can read more about the project at Hackaday, or just do what I’m doing and throw money at the screen until Nintendo starts making these.
(Via Hackaday and Boing Boing)