Nintendo may be working on a case that turns your smartphone into a Game Boy
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credit: iOS '86 concept by Anton Repponen used

Images from Nintendo's patent filing
But I digress. A new Nintendo patent filing from earlier this year, as first spotted by Siliconera, reveals that the video game company may be working on a Game Boy case for smartphones. By the looks of it, it will be a flip case that overlays a set of buttons over the screen — a D-Pad, A and B buttons, and Start and Select buttons — and uses a "window" to limit the screen area to roughly match that of old Game Boys (as far as aspect ratio goes, at least).

You are now playing with power. Smartphone power
And speaking of the classics, another question that this rumored Nintendo peripheral rises is what's going to happen with the plethora of Game Boy emulators available on the Google Play Store, should the case ever be made available for Android phones. Emulation falls in a legal gray area, but with Nintendo's recent crackdown on ROM sites, we wouldn't be surprised if the company tried to pull some popular emulator apps from the store. Why? Because these apps have been offering everything Nintendo's rumored flip case could offer for years and years. Well, aside from the buttons, but believe me, should this accessory come out, all popular emulator apps will try to add support for it. That's not something that's going to fly with Nintendo.
We still don't know if and when the Game Boy case is going to launch, but it's really not that surprising that Nintendo is interested in the concept. After the company made bank with the NES and SNES Mini Classic, and with Sony recently jumping on the bandwagon with the PlayStation Classic, something like a Game Boy case for smartphones makes a lot of sense. I, for one, am guilty of owning the NES Mini (as are some of my colleagues) and I'd buy such a case in an instant. Excuse me while I wipe my nostalgia goggles.
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via Siliconera
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