New Arrival: The Joyplus Handy Power II

The original Game Boy had one famous weakness: its appetite for AA batteries. That single problem spawned a whole cottage industry of power solutions, and this new arrival is one of the neatest of them. The Joyplus Handy Power II is a rechargeable pack that does away with the loose cells entirely.

What It Is

External power banks of the era were often criticised for being bulky, hanging off the console on a cable, so some makers took a tidier approach: build the rechargeable cells into a pack shaped to drop straight into the Game Boy's own battery compartment. The Handy Power II is exactly that. It replaces the four AA cells with a single rechargeable unit and gives up to around eight hours of play before needing a top-up. No trailing wires, no fistful of disposables, just a self-contained swap that keeps the console's clean silhouette intact.

The Game Boy's battery appetite, finally satisfied without a fistful of AAs.

Why It Joined the Collection

The many ways people tried to keep the Game Boy running are a small, revealing theme in the collection, and the Handy Power II adds another chapter. It joins its own predecessor, the Handy Power I, a quick-charge external pack that is also catalogued here, so the two together show one maker iterating on the very problem that defined the handheld's daily use. Accessories like this rarely get remembered, yet they are precisely the objects that made the console livable, and documenting them keeps that everyday reality in view.

The Joyplus Handy Power II is documented, with photographs, on its own page in the collection.

See the full feature: powering the Game Boy.