Playing Game Boy games on an E-ink display isn't a new-fangled concept, but the Ink-Boy makes a strong case for paper screen handhelds. In fact, by turning an ESP32 microcontroller into a micro portable that'll run Ninty's classics at 30fps and has fully dockable NES controls, the modder in question has paved the way for some wild portables.

In a video explaining how the Ink-Boy came to be, the retro handheld's creator, Bo Made It, delves into their custom display driver. If you've spent more than two seconds with something like a Kindle, you'll already know that the display tech normally loads effectively at the same speed as a page turn. Rather than making do with a woeful three frames a second in classics like Super Mario Land, this tiny portable uses clever tricks to push visuals out at 30fps.

The modder does a pretty nice job explaining how to get an E-ink screen from looking like "a slide show" to something playable. The short of it, though, is that the creator used an existing paper screen portable, the Paperboy S3, as inspiration and designed a display driver that shortens the waveform sequence used to set pixels to black, then sets the screen to drive only the pixels that are required in every frame.

That workaround helps the Ink-Boy dramatically reduce E-Ink symptoms like ghosting and messy visuals, producing more fluid motion that looks closer to an OG DMG Game Boy screen (without the icky green). Of course, since Ninty's old brick uses 2-bit visuals, allowing for four different monochrome shades on screen, it means the paper panel needs a workaround since it defaults to two.

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