Game Boy Micro Faceplates anyone?

Oh Nintendo. Why do you torment us so much. Recently, I’ve borrowed Super Mario Advance 4 from Yu-Chung. The whole Super Mario Advance series makes me just furious in itself. It’s bad enough they are re-selling old (OLD!!) games for the price of a new game. Back in the SNES times they at least had the decency to sell them all in ONE SINGLE COLLECTION. I find the idea of reselling them AGAIN one game at a time quite outrageous. Being such a disgusting idea, they appropriately chose to completely muddle the numbering of the sequels. Super Mario Advance 4 = Super Mario Bros. 3 … Thanks Nintendo, and fuck you, too.

But the reason why I write that is that borrowing the game made me use my GameBoy Micro again which is a device I adore for its sleek design, incredibly small size and amazing crisp screen. And I would like to use this place to just vent my anger about how Nintendo (or any 3rd companies) did not provide its users with enough of an important accessory: the replaceable faceplate. You see, being a great product, you can simply replace the front plastic faceplate of your GameBoy Micro with a new one if the old one gets scratched or boring. The problem is there is no such thing on the market. You can search for a long time and all you find are just rubber sleeves or hardcases but no acual replacement-faceplates. If you find them (I did and unfortunately spend money on them) they are butt-ugly and poorly made so they will stick out of your device making the buttons shallower and yielding uncomfortably when you apply pressure on the device.

So please dear Internet: if you know where to find decent GameBoy Micro faceplates, tell me. Or just send them over so I can bathe in them while playing Super Mario Advance 4.

Krystian Majewski

Krystian Majewski was born in Warsaw and studied design at Köln International School of Design. Before, he was working on a mid-size console project for NEON Studios in Frankfurt. He helped establish a Master course in Game Design and Research at the Cologne Game Lab. Today he teaches Game Design at various institutions and develops independent games.

9 responses to “Game Boy Micro Faceplates anyone?”

  1. disj0inted

    For the love of god, I agree. I’ve been searching the internet for hours looking for faceplates- can’t find anything!

    It sucks that they release old games for the price of new ones, I guess they’re just a wee little money hungry :(

    If you happen to come across a website that’s got faceplates, please let me know! :O

  2. Krystian Majewski

    Well, this solved the problem for me. I bought it on amazon marketplace.

  3. lil

    I got a few from nitendo directly
    https://store.nintendo.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay

    it is always craptacular when an old game gets resold for new (-_-)

  4. Krystian Majewski

    Thanks. I figured that one out, too. However, they do not ship to Europe and Nintendo of Europe doesn’t sell them.

  5. gukid
  6. Krystian Majewski

    Meh, those are ugly. :-(

  7. Anonymous
  8. Krystian Majewski

    Thanks but as I’ve said, the U.S. Nintendo store doesn’t ship to Europe.

  9. Alex

    dam this is wack I just bought a micro and been looking for the face plates all day nintendo doesn’t even have em any more -.-

About

The Game Design Scrapbook is a second blog of group of three game designers from Germany. On our first blog, Game Design Reviews we describe some games we played and point out various interesting details. Unfortunately, we found out that we also need some place to collect quick and dirty ideas that pop into our minds. Hence, welcome to Game Design Scrapbook. You will encounter wild, random rantings. Many of then incoherent. Some of them maybe even in German. If you don't like it, you might enjoy Game Design Reviews more.

Twitter

follow Krystian on Twitter
follow Yu-Chung on Twitter
follow Daniel on Twitter