This GameBoy wasn't made by Nintendo

A GameBoy that plays GameBoy Games, but wasn't made by Nintendo?
Screwdriver: ebay.to/2xpZxBV
Soldering Iron: ebay.to/3de1HUJ
Support The Channel: / theretrofuture
Merch/Socials/Extra -
The Retro Future
PO Box 174
JERSEY, UK
JE4 9RF
#TheRetroFuture #GameBoy #Retro
(Links are affiliated where possible to support the channel)
Please note links above are affiliated where possible to support the channel. Thank you for your understanding.

[@TheRetroFuture]

Join the discord - discord.gg/fJ7rCJ Support the channel - Patreon.com/TheRetroFuture

[@Ahahahhdjdjebhshd]

Make a DS that has the touch screen on top of the top screen

[@RI-yy6ll]

Where can i buy one unit ?

[@Juan-ln8rb]

Where did you get that Wii hat from

[@kubanowakowski3869]

@@Juan-ln8rb He said that he bought it on eBay 👍

[@airplane6417]

Hey Elliot, how do you get scratches off of old Gameboy screens? And what brand would you choose (American)

[@DoubleU555]

Glad I could help with this one. Hope that more people will learn about this console.

[@TheRetroFuture]

Thanks again man!

[@KoolAids-vj1ll]

You are a god among men

[@Billy_Souls]

DOUBLE = POGLORD YOU ARE A FANTASTIC PERSON. THANK YOU FOR THE FACILITATION OF THIS CONTENT!

[@HouseCzechowski]

@Double you should let know arhn.eu about that pegasus gameboy clone. I knew it prgasus nes clone but I bet many Polish people never knew it that they had pegasus gameboy clone

[@Lestr_Coto]

@theretrofuture, we think this comment is well-deserving of a pin to the top! Good stuff here.

[@ezijo.5155]

hi Elliot! i'm polish and some people here think that the the "pegasus" is a real nintendo console. it's weird.

[@DoubleU555]

Z fartem

[@lukasjuszczak1664]

Biorąc pod uwagę iż są ludzie uważający polskiego fiata za nasz projekt..

[@thelastmagnifi8369]

i thought you said polish. Like nail polish

[@kabanagos]

elo

[@SBG-gn6hu]

interesting

[@TheVirusGuy]

I'm Polish and i knew from the beginning that it is indeed a Pegasus Game Boy :)

[@12x_art37]

Ayyyy

[@hissatme]

same here lmao

[@gabrish-spud7213]

Same

[@corinbertrand]

If possible you should build a Gameboy from scratch completely out of aftermarket parts, I think that'd be pretty cool

[@DasAntiNaziBroetchen]

I have yet to see *anyone* make aftermarket CPUs. The Game Boy CPU is a proprietary modified Z80. The closest thing I've seen was someone making a new PCB and swapping the CPU and some other parts onto that and adding new caps, volume controls, etc. to it.

[@MixUpTheVideos]

@DasAnti...any chance you have a link or photos? This sounds very interesting.

[@Confruggy]

@@DasAntiNaziBroetchen nowadays you can just utilize FPGA and program it to function like a Gameboy CPU. It's what Analogue is doing with their soon to be released Analogue Pocket.

[@KyussTheWalkingWorm]

@@Confruggy An FPGA implementation isn't automatically accurate. The only console I know of with completely reverse engineered hardware is the NES. For example the SNES clone sold by Analogue still contains some guesswork in the PPU because no one has gone through the trouble yet. However for a company intent on mass production, such reverse engineering of old 8/16 bit hardware is perfectly feasible if they're willing to pay for a couple engineers full time.

[@ETXAlienRobot201]

@@KyussTheWalkingWorm give a dedicated enough hobbyist hacker, the same results would probably be achieved. a lot of old tech right now is being reverse-engineered and/or re-implemented quite extensively. [in fact, it almost seems like interest in this field has gone up drastically] and there's some powerful tools available now that range from free to dirt cheap. even for a commercial product, there's a possibility of running it fairly low budget. a company might benefit more from leveraging the open source community that does this either for fun/education or for preservation. and a smaller team need not worry about paying proper engineer salaries, or worrying about needing to hire a "qualified" engineer. just get a bunch of people together with a passion for the stuff, the job will get done. even in cases where you need a scan of the IC's die is required, there are probably guys who'd lend the time/equipment to do it. and it'd also probably be cheaper by far even if you had to pay just one to do that single job. i don't think anyways the person meant 100% accurate functionality via FPGA. however, those are capable of running faster than pure software implementations, and can really streamline the process of hardware cloning. either way, assuming you know how the real stuff works, you can make an aftermarket chip[set] for basically ANYTHING with FPGAs. also, being 100% accurate may not always be the best, depending what 100% accurate means. MAME goes to a real extreme for this. it's known to cause problems. to me, 100% accurate would be behaves the same or as close as is reasonable/feasible to do. [really, there IS a point where you need to decide "it's good enough", long as that doesn't mean major bugs or noticeable loss of quality] unless i'm mistaken, MAME wants 1:1 matching of every transistor on the original hardware to the software 'drivers' for a given system. it causes support/stability issues, and it can theoretically cause performance issues when you consider what "transistor accurate" [can] mean[s]. as-is, some don't like just how much technical debt that emulator definitely causes for one reason or another.

[@JoducusKwak]

i live in Germany an i remember a friend had one of those clones. i was really confused when there was no Link Cable connector. however we where not able to tell that it was fake because the only point of reference was my Gameboy Pocket

[@da-1995]

Hallo bin auch aus Deutschland👋😂

[@Tom2404]

Hast du das neuste Video der Space Frogs gesehen? Diese Kommentarsektion ist jetzt nämlich Eigentum der BRD

[@da-1995]

Tom 2404 😂👌

[@froedlmetallmann4643]

Kenn’ ich gar nicht.

[@da-1995]

Froedl Metallmann wohnst du hinterm Mond?😂

[@DieAlteistwiederda]

That Zimbabwe dollar conversion was definitely needed. 😂😂😂 I heard about some of this from people here In East Germany where we have a lot of people with polish families. I remember someone shipping a good amount of GBAs ans games to their family back when I was a child.

Ahh, these "mystic" Pegasus Boys. Yeah, in Poland in mid 80's and 90's, clones like this was very popular. Not only the GB clones, or NES Clones, but much much more, like the "Rambo" console, a cheap knockoff of Atari 2600. But honestly, the most popular was of course "Pegasus", a cheap NES/FC clone. Games for this "console" was almost everywhere. To the late 2000's you could buy games on the local marketplaces like between vegetable stalls. By the way - One of the founders of BobMark, lately create a big drink company, and to this day, they produce a... Cola :D Greetings from Poland!

[@TheDolanar]

Sad that I found your channel because of the pandemic but super glad I did. Love the channel and the quality of the production value. Keep it up.

[@dragontechtales5156]

Parts were "shared", as most likely these were made by all of the same OEM company at the time. In Asia, a lot of companies produce the same/very similar product that is just simply rebranded for market in a different area.

[@pjdolont9012]

We had the Nintendo branded gameboy clones in the Detroit area during the early 90s.... From what I remember a friend from school got his at a comic book shoppe. Detroit does have a substantial Polish population but we always assumed that they were Canadian Imports.

[@rgr0703]

You can easily trick someone by saying it it's a newer model.

[@ritzjones9764]

Why trick someone though?? 🤷‍♂️

[@zopbdq3215]

@@ritzjones9764 idk, maybe bad people would..

[@HelixAdamOxford]

Ritz Jones some people would to sell it on ebay

[@lactate]

Like how all the new middles of phoned don't have the headphone jack lol

[@dreamworldtony]

The speed up would be great for Pokemon grinding.

[@dryve4427]

It's weird how close they were at making clones. If you gave me one of those I would actually think it's a real gameboy

[@kubanowakowski3869]

In Poland we don't say "I have official GameBoy", we say "Biorę tą konsolę, bo jest tańsza. Trzeba zacebulować" and I think it's beautiful.

[@AugustTheStag]

Hahahaha

[@TobuscusSkylander]

I am always so hyped when elliott uploads

[@ferrochrom2191]

Aaah, these magnificent clones equipped with the wrong crystal making the games run like crazy...

[@chamoo232]

I wouldn't blame them too much. The Super Gameboy also runs at the wrong speed and that's made by Nintendo themselves.

[@ferrochrom2191]

@@chamoo232 super gb runs slow, right? But in that case I think it's the SNES's fault...

[@chamoo232]

@@ferrochrom2191 The Snes does absolutely nothing when it comes to the Super Gameboy. It only serves as a link to the TV and link the controller. The Super Gameboy is actually a Gameboy in a cart without buttons and screen. The crystal in it makes the games run about 4% faster. Not a huge difference but it's still faster. Nintendo fixed the issue with the Super Gameboy 2 but that only came out in Japan

[@WH250398]

You can tell what kind of "crystal" they're on lol

[@kanpaifighto]

chamoo232 not entirely correct. The original Super Gameboy DOES use the clock signal from the SNES, albeit subdivided in a way that gets it “close enough”...as a result it does run slightly faster. The Super Gameboy 2 was the only model to contain a crystal. I can confirm this because I used to make drop in crystal boards for modding original SGBs (mostly for chiptune use where the speed difference actually matters)

[@nithpro1385]

It seems like one clone company did all the hard work in copying a gameboy but other clone companies took that clone and made identical copies of the board but made their own shell for the clone.

[@iLbstr]

Several years ago I bought a similar GameBoy clone (to salvage some parts and fix my original DMG). In comparison to this model it had a link cable port, and all the connectors were in place. Even the little battery light. The only telltale sign was somewhat shoddy plastic and the lack of “cpu-x” under the battery flap thingy. The screws were also Phillips style, not tri-wing. The insides were similar. Oh, and the timings on the CPU were off; it ran games at twice the speed. All in all it was a weird find

[@iLbstr]

Here are some pics, if you’re interested imgur.com/a/O6qfY

[@SpikerDragon95]

The Speed issue I think can be fixed by swaping the crystal of an OG Game Boy

[@tails64dsntchannel8]

Probably has different clock dividers in the clone chipset, still with a variable clock you could dial it pretty close to Gameboy speed

[@baldguywithbeard]

I'm super surprised how clean and well organized those PCBs are! They actually look really well produced! I used to own a famiclone as a kid (and never new what I had) - I really wish I still had that console, so I can rip it open and have a look at the insides now...

[@tizianorecchioni8185]

Been enjoying these videos a lot in quarantine!

[@SWPLGAMING]

This video is awesome because I had some questions.thanjs for the up load🙏🏾

[@Blore07]

As a big fan of the gaming historian this is one of the best videos you've ever done in my opinion; facts on an obscure console and a tear down, Great job!

[@adrianmalkovich7101]

That crunchy speaker also sounds like the Gamate speaker.

[@logan_cadfgs]

Love this weird obscure stuff. Would definitely like to see more of these clones! Surprisingly little info online about ‘em

[@danna3308]

I had no idea we also had Pegasus GameBoys, that's pretty neat! (Also I got a polish AC New Horizons ad at the end, the Polish marketing finally exists)

[@NunofYerbizness]

3:12 Correct me if I'm wrong, but those are straight-up the controllers that come packed with the Dendy Junior (a more famous NES clone, originating from Russia).

[@echogames1036]

As always: Great video and super interesting, Elliot! Keep it up!

[@ChicagoMel23]

I remember a commercial for a game where a dad gets Genesis and Pegasus mixed up because he sees all the ads in the toy store. Funny there actually was a Pegasus console

[@daftpunk218]

Finally, I have waited so much in Polish (I'm from Poland) in Poland there were many interesting taps but also many originals, greetings from Poles and the retro future

[@MystalurDimensh]

I'm Polish and I've never heard of a Pegasus Game Boy! :O That's awesome! I used to have the Pegasus (a famicom clone) which was one of the best things a child could have back then. Also I think you got average monthly salary rates wrong. In 1993 it was approx. 969 USD, and as of march 2020 it's approx. 1,300 USD.

[@VanguardRaven]

I'm late for the party, but I'm a Brit living in Poland and I have been scouring Polish online marketplaces for a few weeks looking for GB/GBA stuff, and the amount of clones and Pegasus for sale is off the charts.

[@turbinegraphics16]

Its really interesting how it needed 4 big chips to do something so simple as to drive the gb lcd, they could off the shelf parts.

[@madhattermikey]

That's insane, I always knew of bootleg NES and Megadrives but I didnt even consider bootleg handhelds (I mean back then I though bootleg gameboys was only like a modern day thing)

[@hacked2123]

Noticed the speed difference before you even boosted the audio the first time.

[@TJ-lc3pm]

Thanks for the video cant wait till the next one keeping me sane in these times

[@TJ-lc3pm]

Lol you have ❤️ nearly every comment I have sent the last few months

[@bensmith5612]

You can tell the difference @ 13:00 The fake one has a ‘crosshairs’ shape inside where the official one is missing one side to the ‘crosshairs’ shape, making it more of a ‘T’ shape.

[@mutahard1632]

A Gameboy that was not made, or licensed, or endorsed, or associated with Nintendo

[@klayer9990]

Was looking forward to this video! The gun you showed from those pegasus consoles is actually a carbon copy of my PlayStation 1 clone's one. These fake consoles are so peculiar, but very interesting

[@spontaneousspazoid]

This one of the most educational videos I've seen by you. LOL

[@daleanguiano6780]

Love your channel. Also love how you heart so many comments. You don't have to heart this one but I find it pleasant to know that you read your fans comments.

[@davidprice5563]

Now the fun bit: putting the official pieces and the cloned pieces back in places, fair play.

[@RumblePirate]

When did you get your hands on this relic, mine stopped working some years back. Not had time to repair it, it's a bit different to them

[@m1zd515]

I just fixed my first gameboy color, thanks to you for doing videos about those.💙

[@LubieArbuzy]

I'm from Poland and I remember pegasus consoles from my childhood, but I newer knew there was a pegasus game boy :o

[@gerog2595]

Fun fact: Pegasus even made copy of SNES. And other fun fact is that even Pegasus are rare in Poland

[@MoaiGaming394]

I will admit though the screen on this is comparable to the Pockets in terms of picture clarity which is actually amazing for a clone

[@BlazingKhioneus]

I thought this was a gameboy assembled from only aftermarket parks

[@LordIvul]

Pegasus is quite legendary in Poland, it was the first succesful console in here, being affordable even in the early 90's thanks to the fact that it was pretty much an outdated tech at this point. Even into the mid 2000's you could find 1000000 games in 1 famicom cartridges sold on the streets. As to how Bobmark was able to sell the console without a fear of Nintendo taking it down, well, that's very simple: Poland, as a post-Soviet country, pretty much didn't have any copyright laws whatsoever, so in the 90's, video game piracy was rampant, with PC and console games being sold on burned disc in contemporary packagings. Famiclones in particular were very popular in post-Soviet block, with many countries having their own version, if I recall correctly there was a popular famiclone being sold in Russia called Dandy.

[@CommodoreFan64]

If I had lived in Poland as a kid, was given one of these, and did not know better, I would have been happy.

[@mattgeek49]

I think I actually found the exact listing of your gameboy on a polish reselling site (kind of a polish ebay), if you search for pegasus game boy it is one of the first results in the photos section

[@wavy2154]

Hi Elliot! Love the channel! Been watching since 40k subs

[@TheRetroFuture]

Thank you!

[@SatoshiMatrix1]

Discrete hardware clones are very interesting. I have a Famicom clone from the late 1980s from Taiwan that is a 1:1 copy of the Famicom, before NOACs existed. The only thing they couldn't 100% replicate was the PPU. The PPU of a discrete hardware clone of a real Famicom is an approximation based on reverse engineering and sometimes displays wrong colors as well totally not working in certain mapper configurations. But because the clone I have a 1:1 clone and even better, that the major chips are socketed, I was able to desolder the PPU from an NES that has a dead CPU and socket it in place. Now my clone runs with a real Ricoh NES PPU and it is EXACTLY the same in capabilities as a Nintendo Famicom, just not made by Nintendo!

[@cheycheyc]

I had a Pegasus famicom clone iq502 when I was growing up in Dubai. Played the original snes cartridges.

[@mint_kyuu99]

So it was a super famicom clone?

[@cheycheyc]

MetalMatiaxs X no I don’t think it was a super famicom clone just famicom. It came with a pirated cartridge with some 100 games I remember and a light gun too.

[@thisisbhm]

Few more things and a bit of a correction. Pegasus is like Kleenex in Poland. It generally means a knock off console that has a port for cartridges. Depending on the seller on local market place you could buy something that looked like a PS1, Sega Saturn, Atarii, or an IBM model M keyboard. They all had one thing in common - cartridge port. They all would play the same type. People would swap, resell. All fairly cheap. One crazy story involving actual NES in Poland. A girl I worked with got an original NES, but hated it. She could not trade with other kids as NES cartridges would not fit into knockoffs. Everyone else she knew had a knockoff. As Ogar Niety points out, these knock offs were available way into late 2000s. Especially in eastern Poland. It may depend on the part of Poland, but PS1 and PS2 did not really take of. PC gaming did because of piracy and rapid expansion of ISPs. Only because an average income increased and game prices fell a bit(also because of piracy) PS3/Xbox360 games took off. Hopcola (thing in the commercial) is also well known. Also everyone knows it's a knockoff like with Pegasus. But I don't think many people buy it.

[@thrallfaec6130]

Seeing Pegasus commercial actually made me cry.So many memories.

[@batvaleska]

I really do like your content. No idea why, I’m not extremely interested in this sorta stuff, but now I’m starting to think I’m gonna get into it..

[@cztech2631]

Very interesting video you put out. It's interesting to me how consoles blow up in terms of value. The SNES Classic is only 2 years old, but has a value of $160 on the used market. Older consoles don't hold up all the time in terms of rarity and gaining value. The DMG and GBC seem to be appreciating in value quickly. The GBA seems to not be that expensive if someone gets one without an LCD screen mod. I do see the Original DS seems to be a console that no one wants, and those can be had for dirt cheap. I got one online for $18 not a great deal, but pretty dang cheap for a fully functional Nintendo DS just the top casing was cracked, so I am going to refurbish a few parts on it and fix it up. Would be interesting to see if the Original DS or DS Lite become more rare and valuable over time.

[@luke27luis]

Wow, what an interesting clone! Did they bothered to change the boot sequence or is it a bios written from scratch? Seems this could have been very expensive to manufacture, for the time it came out!

[@TheJunky228]

I have a Gameboy made in 1989 I picked up in an estate sale that sat untouched in a kids closet, inside a carrying case with games, the foam of teh case disintegrating all around it. It has regular philips screws, not triwing screws. (Serial starts with G0540...) There was no evidence that it was disassembled in the past either. Based on that, I wonder whether Nintendo didn't start including triwing screws until later on...so yeah for other obvious reasons this Pegasus Gameboy was not real, but I don't think that philips screws would disqualify a GB from being authentic

[@TwesomE]

I do hope it has a year it made although this is a long shot i believe,and it is probably from those newer close systems someone worked on after 2000 like many others did!

[@hovanthecool1995]

Love the comparison sir!

[@SavingPrivateBob]

Hi, Retro. Did you hear FunnyPlaying are now making their own custom motherboards for GameBoy colors? Will be interesting once you do a video on one.

[@thefacelessgamer2641]

I have an idea for another project why don't you take a Sega game gear TV tuner and update the TV to a HD TV tuner so you can watch HdTV on it

[@sloth3869]

Yesterday I refurbished my first Gameboy advance sp because you gave me the inspiration to do it but I got one question are you using 70% isopropyl alcohol or 99% isopropyl alcohol?

[@wcisnijstart]

Holy Grail for Polish collectors, very hard to find it! Excellent video.

[@CarlosHernandez-nf4xd]

Thank you for showing us Gameboy clone. For the first time I didn't know it existed until now.

[@fineman1064]

I am Polish and didn’t know that there was pegasus gameboy. I even did a research about pegasus while making a presentation in junior high school

[@MarcosCodas]

Wow, he ended up doing it. I remember his posts on the Facebook page.

[@wisteela]

Very interesting. I find clone consoles rather fascinating. I noticed there is a blank space for a ROM.

[@sassafrassauce]

bruh moment

[@Green_Stache_Productions]

bruh

[@smilingmushroom32]

bruh

[@magicvampirelver1321]

📸Bruhhhh lol😄😄

[@Ruff64]

bruh

[@Dinnergaming45]

Bruh

[@wackaircaftmechanic2312]

My mother used to play USSR game and watches. I plan to buy one. I found a app and my mom was happy to see it and now I'm interested in it. I never knew my home land ever got Nintendo products until the late 2000s

[@sandr6769]

Original Nintendo consoles were super expensive back then, no wonder we did these bootleg versions. And fairly solid hardware. The funniest thing was learning how to play these famicon japanese versions (like Kunio-kun games or Double Dragon) by trial and error. BTW: please bear in mind that back in '93 we still had quite big inflation, so these were hard times

[@michaelsegal3558]

This reminds me of my Retro System a console that plays your original NES game cartridges and you can even use original NES controllers with it but also as far as I know wasn’t associated in any way with Nintendo

[@helenlockstone8567]

❤ your videos been here since 1k subs

[@sp3kd]

Wow retro future mentioned my country! :)

[@mrascensoreakakrisgames4149]

@theretrofuture please do a video also on that other yellow Gameboy clone

[@DeemienX]

As for the speed issue, I first thought it's because of some NTSC/PAL phenomenon, but then I realised there was no region difference between Gameboys ^^ But it seems they either supplied a faster CPU or they simply didn't got the timings right. But very interesting piece of hardware...

[@FemboyA]

keep up the good work, TRF :)

[@UltimatePerfection]

11:44 Looks like you can solder a rom chip from a multicart or whatever and have it run if nothing is inserted into the console.

[@geriscorner]

love that neon sign ! where can i get one ? hahaha

[@LuckyBird551]

For a minute I thought that the video was going to be about the Hyundai Game Boys...

[@rackzity7724]

At first i thought you built up your own Gameboy from Scratch and i had Questions. After knowing its a Clone i thought „yea... another one“. Still interesting how these Clones made, wondering you could made the same PCB Circuit by using Processor and so on from completely broken Gameboy. That would be interesting as hell at least!

[@Hazetar]

I'm supprised to see a piece of polish culture on Your channel. :D Dobra robota!

[@dantelopez6391]

Now you only need the game Figther to complete you dmg clone collection.

[@ZayKH]

Hey could you make a video where you replace the cartridge shell of a 3DS game? I'd love to see Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire with translucent red or blue cartridges!

[@Sparkette]

"What is going on here?" What, you've never heard of clones before?

[@zakariyapianocovers1404]

Imagine out of nowhere we'll see PEGASUS Switch and PEGASUS Switch lite lol

[@awi6040]

That’s maybe funny but now bobmark makes cheap bootlegs of coca cola (hoop cola)

[@Rantusha]

Im very curious do you think the gameboy test cartridge would work on the gameboy advance sp or normal advance

[@Srcsqwrn]

Is that screwdriver in the link actually the same? It looks quite different in comparison to the electronic one you used.

[@SonicEXEProductions]

2:53 No game? *insert Megamind meme*

[@forkboy3309]

link to the fizzy drinks commercial please

[@TheAxelay]

Poland always gets the cool stuff?! I always wanted a Pegasus famicom but all I ever managed to get was a SPICA variant which I was forced to sell sadly...Now they're all those Chinese KO's etc.

[@aibolife3627]

I was waiting for this vid for an explanation. And its actually a really convincing "bootleg", it fooled me. XD

[@samtwitch3740]

Someone help me! I'm in the middle of making a macro iv taken off the ds card slot wired the speaker on but I havent got a resistor I thought I'd test it before going any further as it's my first time ever soldering and not even with everything from top screen plugged in aswell the green light comes on screen flashes white then it dies?????

[@dotmatrixmoe]

2nd attempt to put the TRF logo onto the Gameboy to replace the Nintendo logo.

[@piotrd3578]

My first console was Pegasus in 90s :)

[@superdestrier9160]

So this is finally a video about the Mega Duck?

[@animeking1357]

I misread the title as "The GameBoy wasn't made by Nintendo" and though this was gonna be a video about how Nintendo stole a patent or something and got concerned.