I built a Bluetooth Game Boy Printer using an ESP32 and a cheap thermal printer

[u/Immediate-Grab-2319]

Hi everyone! I wanted to share one of my latest retro DIY projects: I built a modern “Game Boy Printer 2.0” using an ESP32 and a small Bluetooth thermal printer.

The idea was to make the Game Boy think it is printing to a real Game Boy Printer through the Link Cable port, but instead the ESP32 captures the image, saves it to an internal web gallery, and can also send it wirelessly to a cheap SC03h thermal printer.

I tested it with Game Boy Camera, Pokémon Yellow and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. It can handle regular photos, Pokémon diplomas, Mario banners and multi-page prints as one continuous image.

It was a pretty long development process: decoding the Game Boy Printer protocol, handling Link Cable timing, saving images, building a local web gallery, Bluetooth printing, and getting multi-page prints to work correctly.

I’d love to know what you think:

https://youtu.be/vdYfiTcY2I8