Nintendo is putting a lot of effort into refreshing its old classics these days, but with proper care the original items can still work just fine. Leiden Observatory astronomy student and tour guide Alex Pietrow offers proof in photographs of the solar system taken with an original Game Boy Camera.
Blimey.
The Game Boy Camera had a short shelf life of four years, lasting from 1998 through 2002. With a 128×128 pixel CMOS sensor, the camera also came with the ability to store 128×112 black and white digital images and could print with, you guessed it, a Game Boy Printer.
The camera made a few pop culture splashes, getting into the 1999 Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest digital camera (since broken) and taking the photography for a Neil Young album. But as cameras became more embedded within technology, Nintendo moved away from standalone devices.
Pietrow writes on his website: "it was relatively easy to properly align the camera with the telescope eyepiece. The biggest issue was a typical Dutch one: waiting for a cloudless night.
When the skies finally cleared, Pietrow "rushed to the observatory and clicked away." While perhaps not impressive strictly from a modern angle, it's still pretty cool. He then moved on to Jupiter. If Galileo was able to discover the planet's moons in 1610 with rudimentary technology, there's no reason why a Game Boy couldn't deliver the same results. Pietrow was able to easily identify the four Gallilean moons.
With Nintendo moving through its old line of systems for nostalgia sales, it's only a matter of time until they get to the Game Boy. With clever uses like this, there's no reason why they couldn't reissue a Game Boy Camera to go alongside it.
Source: Motherboard
