Gaming

This tiny playable Game Boy clone is the size of a fingernail

The clone can stand on a quarter without covering it.

A pair of hands can be seen holding a very small Game Boy clone.
Bateskecom / YouTube

Handheld gaming systems and their related accessories are constantly updated and improved to give the best and most addictive gaming experience. But what if your handheld gaming device was, hear us out, smaller than an inch, able to stand on a quarter without covering it? It's that kind of mind-boggling engineering that went into creating the Arduboy Nano Game Boy clone, which can be described as gaming for ants and garden gnomes.

Arduboy

The little clone has a 0.49 OLED display with a mere 64x32 pixels resolution. It's powered entirely by the ATmega 32u4 microcontroller, has a 25 mAh lithium polymer battery, a stunningly small 15mm piezo speaker, and can run for about an hour. It ain't bad. At all.

Take a look — They're not kidding when they say it's tiny. Unless your vision is perfect, it might be hard to play on this thing but it still looks fun. With the small sized speaker in it, it's a pretty quiet handheld device. Right now it features Space Trash as its only game.

This isn't the first time the creator behind this miniaturization experiment, Kevin Bates, did something to make a Game Boy clone remarkably small. In 2014, Bates made a gaming device that was as thin as a credit card and allowed you to play Tetris on it. Imagine sliding your card-shaped gaming device back into your wallet.

With this Game Boy clone, Bates is playing around with the concept of tiny systems even deeper. It's not even an inch tall. You could make it stand on an American quarter and it still won't cover it. And just like the credit card-sized gaming device, Bates' tiny Game Boy clone is fully functioning. Hopefully your fingers aren't too huge to operate the device.

Where to buy it? — Now, let's talk about procuring the thing. Bates has not spoken of any plans for turning this tiny Game Boy clone into a product. You can't find it online for sale anywhere. But he says he would be interested in putting this in the market should consumer interest spark. "Currently there are no plans to produce this," Bates wrote on his community forum, "but if it goes bananas online, I’ll consider finding someone to help me turn this into a real product. Keychain anyone?"