Your iPhone will soon be transformed into your favorite 90’s gaming handheld.
Earlier this week, an artist working for Hyperkin dropped the Smart Boy on Reddit and Imgur. The concept? An iPhone accessory that would turn your Apple slab into a legit Game Boy replacement. Complete with a Game Boy cartridge slot, working D-pad and buttons, the Smart Boy seemed to good to be true.
And it was, for a time. The initial leak on March 30th had a scent of legitimacy, but the Facebook post by Hyperkin late on March 31st screamed “April Fools!” between the lines. The Internet had a laugh, but amongst the laughter, there was a sizable group wishing the device was real — me included. (I don’t own an iPhone 6, but you can be sure the jealousy would be undying.)
But Hyperkin is now saying the sort-of-April-Fools’ prank is now a legit product, and that the holiday-timed leak was meant to test the waters.
“A lot of you were speculating that the Smart Boy is an April Fools’ Joke,” said Hyperkin on its Facebook page earlier this week. “Well, it sort of was. We “leaked” it with the initial intent of testing the market, seeing whether or not it should be something we’d actually make, under the guise of an April Fools’ Joke.”
At the risk of simplifying what is definitely a complicated engineering process, the Smart Boy is something that could be rapidly prototyped and tested. Given Hyperkin’s extensive history with retro consoles, the Smart Boy should be familiar ground for the company behind the Retron 5.
Official details are slim, maturally, but it appears that the Smart Boy will be compatible with the iPhone 6 Plus at first, with other models to follow. Hyperkin has said the unit will have a five-hour battery, and a free companion app will allow you to play both Game Boy, and Game Boy Color cartridges.
Source: Hyperkin (Facebook)
