Ike T. Sanglay Jr photograph.
Some hacks are impractical, done for the pure act of creation. This macOS Gameboy may be one of those projects. Built from a rugged looking 3D-printed shell, this hackintosh Gameboy runs an emulated version of Nintendo’s old software and can, if you want, be hooked up to a regular monitor and keyboard to run as a semi-normal Mac.The project is the work of Ike T. Sanglay Jr, an engineer living in the Philippines. He built the thing with a Lattepanda Alpha motherboard loaded with Dortania's OpenCore, a piece of software that let him install MacOS on an X86 based PC system. The buttons all function and can be used to play Gameboy games or work the mouse. It’s beautiful, surreal, and impractical. “You might ask: ‘Why not just use a Raspberry Pi instead?’” Sanglay Jr. said in his video over footage of an unassembled Pi. “Well wow, you must be a genius. I had not thought of that.”Sanglay Jr told Motherboard he had a Gameboy Advance as a kid and considers himself a console enthusiast. I started tinkering with electronics and programming when I was in highschool,” he said. “I previously worked as a firmware engineer dealing with Internet of Things. But I've been unemployed since the pandemic so I've been having more time creating projects.”Sangjay Jr’s YouTube channel is full of strange projects. He’s built a 5 inch iMac using a similar method employed in the Gameboy hackintosh, a small screen that monitors YouTube subscribers, and a hack that converts a PS5 controller into a handheld that plays PlayStation 1 games.