Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Hyperkin SmartBoy Mobile Device for Game Boy/ Game Boy Color (Android USB Type-C Version)

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2024

Easy installation and the buttons feel quite good, except for the L and R buttons, but luckily those buttons aren't that important for most GBA games. Seen way too many negative reviews and had to give this product 5 stars. For the price this product is an easy 5/5. Very happy.

It really was an easy setup. I used the wired c cable and attached the smartboy to my phone. Took a minute and then it started working. I use the MyBoy app on my android with it. I went into the settings and configured to keybinds to the Hyperkin. Works perfectly now.

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carlos

unplayable

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2024

Verified Purchase

the two emulators the manual said to download are the problem. the smartboy companion is no longer on the play store and my oldboy cost four dollars to install and is unusable. wish I looked into this before I spent forty dollars.

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Little Joe

Even better than I hoped it would be.

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

Very easy setup with the included cable. My g fast phone fits nicely. Google play would not let me download the apps for some reason. Just go to an apk site to install. Everything I tested works great. An unexpected bonus is it will continue from the save on you cartridge but cannot save new data to the cart. Very happy to have this thing. Buttons are not the best but okay.

3 people found this helpful

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Steven L.

Great product to play Gameboy Games!

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

I love this product and is well worth it's price in my opinion it can play official Gameboy Cartridges on your Phone (USB-C) as well as ROMs (though I cannot "Condone" piracy so don't do that.) And can play GBA ROMs with some button setup in options on a GBA emulator. This can also be used as a way to transfer saves to your PC for backup as it stores the save file on your cell.

Some downsides:
- You need to remove your Phone Case as the space is very small.
- The side facing your phone's screen is PLASTIC meaning it can damage your screen if you're not careful!
- Only works with phones that have a USB TYPE C plug, adapters will not work.
- Covers your headphone jack if it's on the bottom along with any lower speakers.
- Shoulder buttons are a bit of a pain to use but I am glad this thing has any at all.

One person found this helpful

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Jason olsen

if you really need to play gameboy games this is fine

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2019

Verified Purchase

but there are better options than this of course, honestly i'd say just get a gameboy.

the big draw to this of course is running it on a nice high quality screen which is great, the games look great and sound is good too depending on the phone. the buttons and feel are all fine as long as your phone fits in which most should, i have a 10 + and there's still more room than needed.

the biggest issue with this is that set up is tedious, you have to install 2 different programs to get it started and while using them and having the adapter you can't access all of the menu options as you can't see them and the screen doesn't adjust to fit them in the usable space so you'll have to take off the unit to make sure you select the right options.

and here comes the big one, it doesn't save the game data on the cartridge. while it does allow you to play the game from a cartridge, basically what it is doing is dumping the ROM, pulling it in to the emulator and then allowing you to play. if you want to save you have to do it on your phone but you won't be able to transfer it to an actual cartridge for use on a proper gameboy after the fact.

it's a nice novelty item, but again, there's better options.

One person found this helpful

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Wong Chun Wah

Great, Played GB/GBC/GBA/NES/FC flawness

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

Updated (2018/12/24)
Hi, Keep you guys updated.
In order to use Smart Boy as a "physical controller" for your games, you must first install (Floating Apps).
Then, open Floating Apps, and you will see a "floating folder" icon near top of your smartphone screen.
Now, connect your phone to Smartboy.
After (Smartboy App) is launched, you can press the "floating folder" icon to open (Floating Multitasking),
go to Launcher and open one of the following emulators - My Oldboy (GB/GBC), JohnGBA (GBA), or RetroNES/NES.emu(NES/FC games).

Now, you can use Smartboy and play the backup ROMs of the game cartridges that you own.

**************************************

Great, I received my SMARTBOY today. Very easy to set it up.
*It basically dump the ROM from the cartridge into the internal memory of the SMARTBOY device. Once you disconnects your phone from the SMARTBOY, the ROM is erased.
*For GB/GBC emulator, you can launch MyOldBoy/MyOldBoy free" and then do some keymapping (while connecting to SMARTBOY) and you can run MyOldBoy directly.
*For GBA emulator, SMARTBOY does not run GBA cartridges, you only can use it to run "John GBA emulator" (paid version removed the ads on top ). *same thing as MyOldBoy, you can do some keymapping and play GBA games via John GBA emulator.
REMARK: always play games that you own.

6 people found this helpful

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karina h.

It's awesome!!

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

Set up is a little difficult but totally works!!! If you aren't an idiot like most of the people leaving reviews, you would know this doesn't work for regular port Android phones. But if you actually researched the product you would see what the connection is. So those people should not be leaving reviews because of their own faults. Anyways stepping off my soap box, it is so fun to see my Gameboy games in color! I had the original Green GB and I still play it but can't really see the screen. With this I can see everything and it is amazing having a bigger screen.

Read your instructions!! Do your research on the product, if the red image shows up disconnect your phone and reload. And boom it's gone, don't get mad and leave a bad review because you don't have the brains to do a one minute fix.

10 people found this helpful

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Andrew

Not what you think (or want)

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

So... this looked like it would have been endlessly entertaining for any retro game lover, however, this thing is extremely far from being a good product. First off, it is nothing more than a CONTROLLER you put your phone in as a screen. The SmartBoy is NOT a Game Boy player in any way. It won't even work unless you have the John GBC or My Old Boy GB emulator apps.

2. While it requires actual GB/GBC carts to play, it DOES NOT PLAY FROM THEM. All it does is dumps the ROM file from the cart onto the phone TEMPORARILY and creates a new save file in the emulator you have. NO PROGRESS IS SAVED TO THE ACTUAL CARTRIDGE!

3. While it fits many phones, it will NOT fit any phone with a case one, despite claiming to. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note9.

4. At $45, you can (and really instead should) buy a REAL Nintendo Game Boy Color for $45-50. Or even better, the Chinese GB Boy Colour GBC clone. It costs about $35-40, is backlit, and has 60 games built-in if turned on with no cart inserted. Only downside is a slightly squished (vertically) aspect ratio and slightly jittery framerate.

Don't waste your money on this. It looks amazing, but doesn't live up to expectations.

33 people found this helpful

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Philip M

but it was annoying. Another issue I have is that the Hyperkin ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

I have a Pixel XL, and this did what it was advertised to do. But it presented some issues for me. The first was that when you plug it in to the USB after loading the Hyperkin SmartBoy app, a window will immediately pop up asking if you want that app to be the default app to run the hardware and the confirmation button for that window can't be reached because lands under the edge of the SmartBoy. If you remove the phone, the window disappears. Without confirming, you can't continue to the emulator. It took me a second to figure out that if you turn the phone so that it goes to landscape mode the button finally ends up on the right side of the screen where you can actually touch it. It's minor, and you only have to do it once unless you delete the apps cache, but it was annoying.

Another issue I have is that the Hyperkin app doesn't doesn't have an emulator. You have to down load My Old Boy and if you don't want ads in the menus (they don't pop up during game play) it's $5.00.

Lastly, it doesn't run the game directly off the cartridge; it downloads the rom temporarily. This may be obvious to some, but I had assumed that it would run it off the cartridge. Because you're not playing off the cartridge directly, you are dependant on save states. The only real drawback is the fact that you can't save a slot on something like Zelda and then play that save on another device.

On the plus side, the buttons and d-pad feel pretty good and it's responsive. If you don't have a backlit Gameboy, backlit Gameboy Color or backlit GBA and want to play a few games occasionally, it you like the novelty, then maybe get this. However, you may want to consider if you think it's worth it to spend twice the amount you'll pay for this and get a backlit real Gameboy off eBay.

11 people found this helpful

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Lon J. Seidman

Currently only half a product.. Software improvements are needed!

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

The media could not be loaded.

Important note: I believe this only works with Samsung phones at the moment. I tried this with a One Plus Three and a brand new Moto Z2 Force phone and neither worked with the Smartboy. I am using a Galaxy S8 in the video.

At the moment this is half a product.

The hardware itself is actually pretty decent. The dock is nicely constructed with high quality plastic, the game controller is a close approximation to the original Gameboy, and the cartridge reader does a nice job of pulling the game off of your 25+ year old Gameboy cartridges. That half is great. The other half of the product, where one actually plays the game, falls short.

The underlying issue here is that Hyperkin does not provide any software to actually play the game as part of their Smartboy app. The app dumps the cartridge data to the phone and then requires downloading a third party emulator to get the game up and running. The emulator does not account for the fact that half the screen is cut off by the Smartboy, so a number of features are not visible on screen - including the option to close the emulator so another game can be played.

Removing the cartridge immediately results in a red piracy warning that can't be dismissed unless the phone undocks first. Swapping out the cartridge and putting in a new one will dump a new cartridge rom but you will still first need to exit the emulator to load up the next game. It's cumbersome and feels very disjointed especially given how easy it was to swap games on the original gameboy.

Another issue is some tremendously bad input lag. I'm measuring well over 100ms of lag between the time a button is pushed and when something happens on screen. This is surprising given the controller is connecting directly via USB-C and not through bluetooth.

If Hyperkin can more tightly integrate the actual game playing into their cartridge dumping app I would be more favorable to the product. But right now it's something that feels very disjointed and aggravating to use.

232 people found this helpful

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