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Ordered a filthy, non working spice orange GBA.

Decided to grab a group photo of my tabletop games while rearranging some things. These have become one of my favorite things to collect recently I've started picking them up whenever I see them for a decent price.

9 times out of 10, there's nothing, or if there is, it's obscenely priced. Their auction cherry pickers have been slacking lately.

I'd pretty much written off ever finding anything again at goodwill, since they seem to cherry pick video games for their auction site. Since finding Gauntlet for the GameCube a few weeks back for 2 bucks, I figured I should hit them every now and then. Nothing major here, other than actually finding cartridge games, which i haven't seen there in years. Prices were 2-3 bucks per game.

I tried it today. Very Tetris 99. I like it

Titanfall 2.

I went full 850 degrees and only held it on for a few seconds. The cable seems pretty resistant to heat

The shell is finished and ready to be put back together. And the finished product.

See the pic of the repaired screen above.

It seems it's a pretty common problem and an easy fix.

Picked up this guy from a Japanese seller on ebay for fairly cheap, in mostly working condition. It's filthy, badly yellowed and has vertical lines out. Overall, should be an easy fix up. Almost 1/4 of the screen is out. Disassembled and cleaned. Certified hand cheese free. Placed the shell in a zip lock full of peroxide. I'll set it in the sun for today and a UV light overnight. In the meantime, I'll work on fixing the vertical lines by soldering the cold joints on the ribbon cable. I'll clean the pcb, contacts, switches and pots while it's out. Good as new. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have a nice non yellow shell to post...

It's very, very nice. Definitely worth grabbing

Intentionally picked up the worst looking GB i could find for restoring...

Lifeforce Halo 5 Titanfall 2

Modding the GBA isn't difficult and can be done without soldering, if you can live without the adjustable brightness. The back-lit screens that are available for it are inexpensive and look great. Here's the swap I just did on mine. I have to agree with Bluejay. If you're going to buy one system, get the GBA. There may be a few select GB games that aren't compatible, but you're gaining an entire library of great GBA games.

There's a little trimming necessary if you want to reuse the original shell.

Not quite as good as the original, but decent. Everything fit together fine and the plastic doesn't seem cheap. It did need some trimming/ cleaning on the smaller parts. Ordered off of aliexpress

Ordered a replacement screen and shell for my GBA SP and it came today. Pretty amazing improvement...

I don't think the trackball has any fire retarding chemicals in it like most plastics, which is what causes the yellowing. I would assume the discoloring is from 40 years of hand cheese staining it. I guess it couldn't hurt to try retrobrighting though. You could probably try soaking it in bleach water too

Gameboy prices have gotten kind of stupid in recent months, unfortunately. IMO, the best system to get is the GBA SP, model 101. It has the better back-lit screen and the GBA plays all previous models games. The 101 is pricey though If you're ok with soldering, you can pretty easily add a nice looking, back lit screen to a regular GBA for about 40 bucks.