You can run Game Boy emulators on your desktop, but are you really doing that emulator justice if you’re typing on a regular keyboard?? Meet the Game Boy keyboard, designed by YouTuber ‘The Lesser The Better’. What do I mean by a Game Boy Keyboard? Well, it’s literally a keyboard outfitted with Game Boy Classic-style buttons for keys.
The inspiration? Pure, unadulterated “what if” curiosity. Imagine the tactile click of a mechanical keyboard melded with the iconic form factor of a Game Boy. It’s a beautiful collision of past and present – except my brain’s oscillating between loving this keyboard and hating myself for loving this keyboard!
Designer:
Let’s face it – the Game Boy’s buttons are perfect for mashing so you get the perfect Super Mario score – but those buttons aren’t the first you think of when you hear the word ergonomics. Yes, the buttons and their design have a lot of emotional value, but if you had to type emails on it, the nostalgia would turn to nightmares pretty quickly. Still, as a one-off prototype, there’s a certain rose-tinted beauty to the keyboard’s memory-evoking design.
The keyboard has essentially a 75% layout of sorts, with your standard keys front and center modeled on the style of the A/B keys on the Game Boy, and special keys (including a function row) modeled on the style of the smaller, sleeker Menu and Select keys found on the Game Boy.
But here’s the kicker – pull the housing apart and you’ll basically find a Logitech K380 keyboard on the inside. This outer shell basically serves as a 3D printed fascia that has a Logitech keyboard on the inside, converting an existing wireless peripheral into something visually new.
For The Lesser the Better, most of the challenges came in modeling and 3D printing this fascia. He created his 3D model (even downloading the Game Boy font) and printed each component separately. The shell got printed in multiple parts and were glued together with the Logitech keyboard in between. A flap was built to access the keyboard’s battery area, allowing users to swap out old batteries for new ones.
Each component was printed in a filament matching its original color, eliminating the need for paint. Even the text on the keyboard is actually a 0.2mm 3D-printed graphic inlaid into white plastic. The magenta keys were printed flat, but given a glossy dome finish using UV glue and some good old surface tension. The keyboard’s body was created using a ‘fuzzy’ printing technique that gave the surface a gorgeous ‘noisy’ texture. Programmed within the slicing software, this fuzzy method allowed the nozzle to vibrate as it printed, generating a unique texture with a rough surface that contrasted the glossy UV-glue keycaps wonderfully.
The Lesser The Better first started with printing out a small patch of the keyboard and laying it on the K380 to test input. After the proof of concept worked, he printed out the entire Game Boy keyboard’s parts, assembling it around the K380 almost like a car getting a new body kit.
The result’s visually gorgeous, but everyone on Reddit has the same consensus. “I feel like […] this keyboard will be absolutely infuriating and addicting at the same time. I need it.”, said one Reddit user. “I love hate it,” said another, echoing exactly the emotional conundrum I’m having too. The keyboard is a great example of something you desperately wish was a good idea, but actually isn’t. The buttons are a tad too tiny for regular typing, which means there’s a much higher likelihood of missing keys than actually hitting them. Plus, those tiny buttons weren’t really made for pinky fingers, which benefit better from larger buttons that feel more comfortable. That being said, I’d throw money at the STL files for this. And if the folks at are watching – you guys need to license and mass-manufacture this!
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