The Retro Song Bird may resemble devices like Epilogue’s GB Operator with a slot on top for Game Boy cartridges, but it’s not designed for playing retro games. Instead, the featureless box is a media player designed to play all the music and sound effects files from Game Boy cartridges using a basic set of built-in playback controls to skip tracks and adjust the volume of its built-in speaker. It’s like a reinvented Sony Walkman that trades in cassette tapes for game carts from your childhood that you refused to get rid of.
Created by a talented builder known simply as BJ, Retro Song Bird includes additional features. While the built-in speaker plays tunes similar to how they sounded on the original Game Boy, there’s also a stereo line-out connection for connecting to better speakers or for recording and sampling. Each of the Game Boy’s four sound channels is available as independent USB audio streams, and Retro Song Bird can be used to backup ROMs and save game data, or export music files as WAV files to a PC.
Only a few prototypes of the Retro Song Bird have been created so far and they are not for sale, according to Retro Dodobut BJ plans to potentially crowdfund or sell the music player outright once its hardware and design are finalized.
