Raspberry Pi Pico Enables Real-Time Video Streaming on Nintendo Game Boy Color

Just a few days back, a YouTuber named ChromaLock unveiled an intriguing build on his channel, where he transformed a Game Boy Color into a video playback device using its original link cable. This clever setup involves a Raspberry Pi Pico and tailored software finely tuned for handling video playback.

Typically, simpler videos translate to higher frame rates, offering a surprisingly crisp and fluid performance when viewed through a USB webcam compared to the traditional Game Boy Camera. However, for most videos, sticking to monochrome is the way to go, mainly because the limited four-color palette struggles on the Game Boy Color’s modest 160 x 144-pixel screen.

To achieve this video streaming marvel, ChromaLock developed an app called CGBLinkVideo, which he shared on GitHub. It’s built on some open-source foundations and is designed to work seamlessly with a Raspberry Pi Pico, the Game Boy Color, and its link cable. While the application compresses videos down to 1 Megabyte per second, the Link Cable’s capacity tops out at 64 Kilobytes per second. This intense compression often leads to dropped or split frames, but the video plays back relatively smoothly despite these challenges.

In his comprehensive video, ChromaLock doesn’t just showcase the actual video playback. He delves deep into the intricate development process while navigating the Game Boy Color’s system constraints. Videos in grayscale or monochrome can reach an impressive frame rate of 60 FPS, yet colored videos usually max out at around 12 FPS.

He also experimented with streaming video games, although this didn’t match up to the experience of running them directly on the console. Even older Game Boy titles struggled with streaming, and modern 3D games like Doom Eternal were almost unintelligible on the Game Boy Color’s outdated display.

The heart of this project was a showcase of “Bad Apple,” the well-known Touhou Project music video, smoothly playing back on the Game Boy Color. Thanks to the video already being in monochrome, achieving a 60 FPS playback was surprisingly doable. However, some noticeable dithering did crop up due to the streaming technique used.