When it comes to Nineties hand held gaming devices, the Nintendo Game Boy was the clear market leader, at least in terms of sales. One of the chief selling points was its battery life: unlike rivals such as the Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear, you could get many hours play out of a Game Boy, usually enough to keep you occupied until you got a chance to replace its batteries, or plug it in to a power source.

Now, scientists have developed a solution to that perennial problem for gaming on the go and created a Game Boy homage that harvests solar power, and the energy generated when the player press its buttons. Created as a proof-of-concept by researchers at Northwestern University, Illinois, and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the implications for such a device are clear, potentially ridding the world of environmentally hazardous batteries that more often than not end up in landfill.

The platform has been named ENGAGE, and while its original size replicates the Game Boy, it also houses a small set of solar panels around its screen. By impersonating the Game Boy processor, ENGAGE can play its cartridge games, and while it’s far from perfect - losses of power as the console switches between power sources means that action-intensive games are not always playable - the positive green potential of this project is something that could theoretically change the world - or at least mobile gaming.

Both teams will present the device virtually at the interactive systems conference, UbiComp 2020 on September 15th, co-led by Northwestern’s Josiah Hester (McCormick School of Engineering) and TU Delft’s Przemyslaw Pawelczak (Embedded Software Lab) along with colleagues Jasper De Winkel and Vito Kortbeek.

You can see the ENGAGE working in this video: www.youtu.be/5VzDyvwfEZA?list=PLqhXYFYmZ-Vdtk7agYzwn8OX4VbyuJ1SR