The Datel Power Flash

The Game Boy was designed to be played in your hands, but almost from the start people wanted to see it on a television instead. This arrival is one of the more ingenious answers to that wish: the Datel Power Flash, a third-party device that lets Game Boy games be played on the Nintendo 64.

The Game Boy, dragged onto the big screen by sheer third-party willpower.

What It Is

Made by Datel and dating to 1998, the Power Flash was built mainly for the older Game Boy titles, though it also runs Game Boy Color games with some limitations. Using it is a small ritual: an N64 cartridge of the matching region code goes into a slot on the back of the unit, the Game Boy game itself goes into the top, and the device does the rest. Its software layer adds a few conveniences the original never had, a zoom, an optional colouring mode and a cheat function, though there is a catch worth noting: it cannot play the games' background music. It is a clever, imperfect bridge between two very different machines.

Zoom, colour and cheats included. Sound, sadly.... no

Why It Joined the Collection

One of the running themes in the collection is the many ways people tried to play Game Boy games somewhere other than a Game Boy. The Power Flash is a fine addition to that shelf, sitting beside the other devices that carried the handheld's library onto other hardware. Each of these adapters is a little monument to the console's popularity: nobody builds a bridge to a platform nobody wants to reach. Documenting them together shows just how much demand there was to keep playing these games, on whatever screen happened to be nearby.

The Datel Power Flash is documented, with photographs, on its own page in the collection.