Joining the retro console revival movement is the SGBC, a new console that can play Nintendo Game Boy cartridges natively using an FPGA core. Built by Thomas Sanfourche, a French electronics engineer studying in Taiwan, the SGBC aims to give players a way to preserve and play their games with the full Game Boy experience, including a link port for multiplayer and trading.

The SGBC uses a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), a reprogrammable chip that can be configured to replicate the hardware logic of another chip, in this case, the Game Boy’s hardware. It can replicate not just the CPU, but multiple other components of a Game Boy as well, but Sanfourche has yet to specify which of the original Game Boy’s ICs have been consolidated into the FPGA.

The SGBC doesn’t just replicate the Game Boy as a console; it has plenty of features that retro gamers would appreciate — the most interesting among them being the built-in cartridge ripping function. If you insert your favorite Game Boy cartridge into the SGBC’s slot, you can preserve it by copying the ROM onto the microSD card in the console, digitizing your collection. It also outputs in 1080p 16:9 without stretching, and uses integer scaling to keep the game's pixels aligned with the pixels on your monitor or TV through HDMI. The SGBC also features an SNES controller port and a Game Boy Link port for multiplayer and trading.

Thomas Sanfourche almost ditched the SGBC entirely; in an interview with French retro gaming YouTuber GyuGyu , he said he went to Taiwan to study electronics engineering after discovering his strong interest in electronics.

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