Gamer Turns Game Boy Camera Into Working Webcam

In a time when PC builders and gamers spending thousands of dollars buying the best and latest peripherals to power up their beast-rig, one gamer turned back the hands of time, went full-retro and turned the humble Game Boy Camera into a working webcam.

The Game Boy Camera became the talk of the town when Nintendo released it as “Pocket Camera” in 1998. The accessory was labeled more as a toy back then and was used mainly for user-generated content and capture grayscale images. Owners can also edit and create original drawings and even transfer them between other Camera units or print them onto thermal paper using the Game Boy Printer.

Having a Game Boy Camera in today’s advanced world may be obsolete, but Twitter user Bernard Capulong answered one of the gaming community’s most enduring questions: Can a Game Boy Camera be used as a webcam?

The question was posted on a Game Boy subreddit where user eye_for_an_homunculi said that they need to “complete a professional development test” and with it came a “long list of insane rules” which included the user to stream using a webcam during the exam.

The user continued by asking the obvious question of using his Game Boy Camera as a webcam “because it will fit all of the required criteria” and that he thinks it would be “badass to video call with people who get the aesthetic.”

But while the user found little way to convert the old-school cam into a webcam, Capulong came the rescue.

Capulong took to Twitter and posted a video of himself in a Zoom call using the Game Boy Camera. According to Game Rant, the peripheral was connected to a Super Game Boy 2, another Nintendo accessory that allowed Game Boy cartridges to be played on the Super Nintendo console.

Capulong further explained that he inserted the cartridge into an Analogue Super NT that acts as an HDMI out port. This connects to an external capture card which then sends the signal to his laptop via USB-C, Review Geek reported.

The camera’s brightness and contrast can be controlled, audio capture was made via an external microphone, while an external lighting source proved to be useful, Capulong added, said Rame Rant.

It’s not the most “practical” way to use what’s lying around as a webcam and it’s not the most affordable too, said Capulong. It was an experiment and, to say the least, he made a point and answered the question “in the nerdiest way possible.”