Somewhere, in my neglected drawer of Nintendo chiptune kit from maybe 15 years ago, I have a Nanoloop cartridge I built into an all-white game shell from a weird donor game. That was about as far as I got with game cartridge modifications. Cutting to today there are loads of options for aftermarket game shells making re-casing a simple task. If you want to go one step further though this Tetris DX replacement board allows you to swap the components of your original Tetris DX cartridge onto this gorgeous full-colour custom PCB.
You may wonder why you might ever need to crack open an older Game Boy cartridge — well, it’s pretty likely that vintage cartridges will at some point need the SRAM battery replaced. The batteries were used to keep the save states of your game alive in memory and, while that draws incredibly little current, those batteries don’t last forever. This new PCB adds a battery holder which makes it much easier to replace the battery in the future.
It’s fair to say removing all the old ICs off of the classic cartridge board and placing them onto the new board is not a beginner-level soldering project. It’s the kind of project that lots of people will use lots of different techniques and approaches for so even a competent solderer might want to look around the Game Boy modding communities a little to see others approaches.
The PCB itself though is glorious. It has a great full-colour print design and looks crisp. Pair it up with an aftermarket clear case and you have a Tetris DX cartridge that your Tetris compatriots will be jealous of!
source https://blog.tindie.com/2024/05/beautiful-tetris-dx-replacement-cartridge/
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