Twenty-five years ago this month, the Game Boy Camera arrived in the United States and Europe. Now, a modder has made the chonky 118 x 112-pixel greyscale digital imager fully fit inside a standard Game Boy cartridge. And it’s so damn clean.

Christopher Graves is calling their creation the Game Boy Camera Mini, and here’s some video of it in action:

As a refresher, the original Game Boy Camera was an absolute unit. Here’s how far we’ve come in a single image:

While you can’t swivel this one around to capture selfies, it does still have a hidden notch for compatibility with the original 1989 Game Boy and a built-in switch to change between the original Game Boy Camera software and a custom ROM of your choice.

And yes, that is an iPhone lens on the front! While the Game Boy Camera’s imager is the same, you seemingly get a sharper, more contrast-y look with the iPhone lens:

How did this happen? The short version is that Graves is a Game Boy Camera photographer and wanted a better walkaround version for themself. In 2022, they devised a mirrorless-inspired model called the Game Boy Camera M:

But they wanted something a bit more pocketable and with a more durable lens than the OG plastic. “It was totally a selfish project so I could have a more compact carry lmao,” they tweeted.

They tell The Verge they spent about a year experimenting with iPhone lenses ordered off Alibaba and with reducing the size of the circuit board. The latter required some reverse engineering, they say, both of the original Game Boy Camera board and of Martin Refseth’s reflashable Game Boy cartridge. (Graves says Refseth is a friend, and Refseth has been retweeting Graves’ camera, so I guess Refseth doesn’t mind?)

So that’s the short version. Here’s the longer one they sent to me:

As far as the mini camera project, the original schematic for the re-flashable Game Boy Camera cart is by a friend Martin Refseth. Since he didn’t share the schematics publicly, I reverse-engineered his work as well as the original sensor board to build this fella. Early on, I did mess up a trace and sent voltage to the wrong place - fried one Game Boy Camera mapper (the MAC-GBD chip) on accident, but by v2 it was all good.

This is actually the 2nd generation of my mini camera. The 1st gen used the original sensor board. The GBCamera has 2 PCBs inside - one for the cart, the other for the sensor and it’s connected with a set of wires inside. This allows the “eyeball” to twist around. I was afraid to remove the sensor my first go-around because it’s encased in resin, meaning too much heat can damage it. I attempted a repair job on a GBCamera once and damaged the resin and since then, I was nervous about trying again. But that was about a year ago, told myself I’ve improved my soldering skills since then - sure enough, it was much easier this next time.

Getting to the thinness of an original GBCam cart was a challenge. There’s a bulky aluminum capacitor that needed replaced with a smaller tantalum capacitors. Plus, the original lens is quite large.

Switching to an iPhone lens was kind of an accident, honestly. I was actually experimenting with higher-quality replacement lenses - asking around companies on Alibaba if they could make a higher quality glass replacement (the original is plastic). It was proving harder than I thought due to a lot of unknowns surrounding dimensions of the lens. At the same time, I was working with another Game Boy-related project making an iPhone-like design with that glass-and-metal sandwich and I thought “maybe I can do a version of this camera like that” - you know, just sort of spitballing design ideas. That’s when it hit me.

I bought a LOT of iPhone lens replacement parts on Aliexpress - iPhone 7 all the way up to 14 Pro Max (which proved to be WAY too big). Honestly, I chose the XR lens (which is also the same lens as the X, interestingly enough) because it was not only a good middle ground, but I figured it could match the metal camera lens ring as well (plus color options for future makers when I eventually share the files).

I just bought a 5C lens however and I think I can get a version without the camera bump, but I’m concerned it may have some vignette - I need to experiment more. Also the 13/14 lens has some potential as a slightly better quality at the detriment of larger camera bump.

Worked on the project (if you include my original version) for about a year off and on. I started this particular version in March and finished in May. Minus the equipment, I’d estimate it cost me about $150 to build if you include all the test lenses, shell iterations, and GBCams bought on eBay.

So... can you buy one? Graves says they’re weighing options there — but says they’re at least planning to make the files available so you can do it yourself. Note that, among other things, you’d need an original Game Boy Camera chip and sensor to make it work.

Graves already offers files for smaller Game Boy Camera shells (though not this small) at their Ko-Fi.