The Game Boy Advance’s design patents expired years ago, and that’s opened the floodgates for creative reimaginings of Nintendo’s beloved horizontal handheld. Game Bub is one of the most ambitious takes on the formula yet, combining the nostalgic appeal of transparent shells with cutting-edge FPGA technology that promises true hardware-level accuracy for your collection of Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges.
Game Bub feels like someone took the best parts of the Game Boy Advance and asked, “What if we could do this right in 2025?” With Nintendo’s design patents now expired, we’re seeing a wave of GBA-inspired handhelds, but most of them are just cheap emulation boxes with familiar shapes. Game Bub is different. It’s not just copying the look; it’s recreating the experience at a hardware level, and doing it with the kind of transparent shell that made the original Advance feel special.
Designer: Crowd Supply
The see-through design comes in Transparent Purple and Transparent White, and it’s not just nostalgia bait. The clear plastic lets you see the engineering inside, turning the internals into part of the aesthetic. You can spot the circuit traces, the shielding, the standoffs—all the stuff that makes tech feel real instead of mysterious. It’s the kind of design choice that appeals to people who actually want to understand their gadgets, not just use them.
What makes Game Bub stand out is its use of FPGA technology instead of software emulation. The heart of the system is an AMD Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A100T chip, which is serious hardware that can recreate the original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance at the circuit level. This means your cartridges don’t just run; they run exactly like they did on the original hardware, with perfect timing and zero input lag. It’s the difference between playing a cover band and hearing the original recording.
The 4-inch IPS display runs at 720 by 480 pixels, which gives you crisp, bright visuals that make those old sprites look better than they ever did on the original’s reflective screen. Colors pop, text is sharp, and scaling is clean without any of the blur or artifacts you get with cheap LCD panels. Whether you’re playing something simple like Tetris or detailed like Golden Sun, everything looks exactly as intended.
Game Bub keeps the horizontal form factor that made the GBA comfortable for long gaming sessions. The button placement feels natural, the shoulder buttons are where your fingers expect them, and the weight distribution doesn’t make your wrists hurt after an hour. In a world where most retro handhelds are going vertical, sticking with horizontal shows they understand what made the original work.
The audio setup includes dual 1-watt stereo speakers and a headphone jack, so you can enjoy those classic soundtracks properly. Connectivity covers all the modern bases with USB-C charging, a microSD slot for firmware updates, display output for big-screen play, Bluetooth Low Energy, and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. The 3000 mAh battery should handle several hours of play, which is reasonable for a device this capable.
An ESP32-S3 microcontroller handles the system management and connectivity, while the memory architecture includes 607.5 KiB of block RAM, 32 MiB of SDRAM, and 512 KiB of SRAM. This isn’t just marketing speak; it’s the kind of setup that ensures responsive performance and authentic timing.
At $249 on Crowd Supply with February 2026 delivery, Game Bub positions itself alongside premium devices like the Analogue Pocket rather than budget Android handhelds. You’re paying for accuracy, build quality, and the ability to use your actual cartridge collection. For people who still have shelves full of Game Boy games gathering dust, this represents a proper way to play them again without compromise.
The post Finally, Someone Built the Perfect Game Boy Advance Successor… and it ISN’T an Emulator first appeared on Yanko Design.