shockrah
06756cd3c5
3.4 KiB
title, description, date, draft, category, image
| title | description | date | draft | category | image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Gameboy Mod My Younger Self Always Wanted | The backlight LED mod on GBA's is literally so good | 2026-06-21T20:32:08-07:00 | false | article | /media/img/gba/opengraph.jpg |
The Starting Point
A while back I decided I wanted to get back into some retro mobile games because it feels comfy and gives me an excuse to do some basic resto-modding. My first target in this case was the Gameboy Advance that I've had since I was just a lad :3
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/basic-off.jpg" "Close up of Gameboy" >}}
As soon as I turned on the thing though I realized that the total lack of backlight completely sucks. For those that don't recall how bad, here's mine before doing any modifying and in the sunlight ;-;
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/saphire-save-closeup.jpg" "Saphire save closeup" >}}
Ignore the custom buttons, this pic was taken during my testing period :3
Opening Up to Replacing the Old and Dull with New and Bright
It seems weird in hindsight but I intiall ythought that a backlight mod would require soldering and modifying the original screen when in fact the "easier" way of doing this was just replacing the old screen with a newer more modern one.
The one I picked was the {{< link "No Cut IPS Backlight Mod Kit" "https://retrogamerepairshop.com/collections/gba-displays/products/gba-game-boy-advance-drop-in-ips-backlight-mod-kit" >}} from {{< link "Retro Game Repair Shop" "https://retrogamerepairshop.com/" >}} which is an awesome kit and comes with nearly everything to do this mod. The only thing that it's missing is a tri-wing screw driver which makes doing this substantially easier. I didn't have one and thought that Harbor Freight would help me here but as you can see below the tri-wing that you can get required some..... sharpening to make it fit into the tiny screw heads.
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/hf-tri-hex-fixing.jpg" "Closeup of tri-wing" >}}
I did manage to sharpen the bit by clamping some 80 grit sandpaper to my workbench and slowly removing material until I had a good enough fit. Luckily once the tri-wing screws holding the case are gone we are greeted with phillips head screws securing the motherboard to the front of the case which are easily removed.
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/internals.jpg" "Closeup of tri-wing" >}}
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/internals-close.jpg" "Another closeup of the internals" >}}
I didn't get any pictures of the process for replacing the screen but I did get one of the testing phase. ⚠️ Testing ended up being super crucial because the first screen unit I bought was actually DOA. Luckily the second unit was fine and I was also able to get some nicer buttons becaue I ended up not really liking the clear button aesthetic.
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/testing-led-screen.jpg" "Testing the new screen" >}}
Closing everything back up should have been easy though one thing I had to do was shave down some of the after market buttons since they were just barely too big. Other than that however just going slow led to a very smooth re-assembly process. Turning it on I'm greeted with this :)
{{< pic "/media/img/gba/gba-splash-led.jpg" "Closeup led splash screen" >}}
Also going with black buttons was definitely the move I think because it just looks so much cleaner :3
But of course what good are pictures when you could watch this lovely little thing in action.
{{< youtube "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENgrivaA4gY" >}}
conclusion: very nice and epic :3