How To: Hack an Old Game Boy and Wii Remote into an Awesome Android Phone Gamepad

Google Play has no shortage of Nintendo emulators:

• SuperGNES (Super Nintendo)
• Gameboy Color A.D. (Game Boy Color)
• My Boy! (Game Boy Advance)
• nds4droid (Nintendo DS)
• DroidEmu (SNES, NES, GBA, GBC, etc.)

Those are just a few of what's available out there. The only problem with these emulators is that you have to use the touchscreen on your Android device to play. At times it can be distracting because your finger ends up covering some of the gameplay, while other times it's just uncomfortable to use because you're so used to using a pad with buttons to play these games.

Ah, that feels much better.

There's nothing like the feel of a track pad and A/B buttons while you go around eating mushrooms and spitting fire. Thanks to Instructables user alpinedelta, you can now combine your old Game Boy with your Android smartphone!

Using a Wii remote (as the Bluetooth interface), he combined his old Game Boy with his Galaxy Nexus smartphone. He nestled the inside of the Wii controller inside of the battery compartment in the Game Boy and connected it to the Game Boy buttons and track pad.

To place the phone on the Game Boy, he removed the screen and replaced it with a smartphone case.

Finally, he downloaded the Wii Controller IME Android app, which allows you to control your smartphone games with the Wii controller.

The project was built for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but it should work with any other popular Android smartphone, like the Samsung Galaxy S3 or Google Nexus 4 by LG.