Video: It was a tragic day when, after being dropped on the floor, my original Game Boy was left with a bunch of dead lines on its screen. But it lived a good life, and has the scars, knicks and scratches to prove it.
However, it wasn’t quite as abused as this Game Boy that YouTube’s Odd Tinkering purchased and managed to painstakingly restore back to perfect condition.
I’ve watched countless videos on how to clean up the plastics on old video game consoles that have yellowed over the years, but Odd Tinkering goes so much further in this 15-minute video that condenses over 20 hours of detailed disassembling, scraping, soaking, scrubbing and cleanup work.
What’s most intriguing about the process is how he used a soldering iron, heated to around 300C, to melt and reconnect the soldered wires attached to the Game Boy’s screen to fix all of its dead screen lines.
I always assumed that when those lines started to appear, it was the end of the line for the Game Boy. But now I’m tempted to crack my original open and see if I can bring it back to life too.