These custom Pokemon Red and Blue SNES cartridges sure are sleek

It might not be practical, but it’s so dang cool

Every day on the internet is a chance to see talented people leverage their creativity in wonderful ways. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of utter garbage out there, too, but allow me to look on the bright side, if only for a few moments. This project — a pair of custom Pokemon SNES cartridges, one for Red, and one for Blue — turned out brilliantly.

Hats off to the creator, Matthewmods, who also does fancy Game Boy mods. I’ve thought about entering that particular hobby for years, yet I’m admittedly much more comfortable watching others make the most of their handhelds from the stress-free sidelines.

As shared on Reddit, these cartridges are functional and authentic, which means they were a pain to assemble and aren’t exactly cost effective. According to Matthewmods, the Pokemon SNES carts “use the internals of a Super Game Boy cart, with a clock speed fix chip and a link port added so that you can actually trade Pokemon via link cable, and authentic Pokemon boards with new batteries installed.” The labels are custom.

If these cartridges were mass-produced (and didn’t need to absorb all of that finicky original hardware), I’d be all over them. What a cool project and great result.