It took me a little while to start gathering parts for this guide, but I got my DMG-01 in the mail this week, so we can finally get this started!

This first part isn’t too technical, so there won’t be much of a writeup to accompany it. Here are the tools I used (having a nice variety of Dremel bits helps a lot):

The process of drilling/dremeling/grinding everything is pretty time-consuming and tricky to do without messing up your case, so take your time!

And just to reiterate, if at all possible please get a BROKEN original Game Boy to use for this! You’ll be essentially gutting it anyway, so if you use one that has a fried CPU, bad screen, etc. it will probably be cheaper and won’t ruin a perfectly good DMG-01. 🙂

This is about what you should have when you are done:

Don’t worry if the cuts on the battery compartment are a little rough. Our battery door still works and will cover all that up anyway. 🙂

I hope this was helpful! I set up forums today on the site, so if you have any questions or want to show off your work on this or any other project, stop by!

In the next guide I’ll show you how to cut out the parts you need on the controller board, how to add the X/Y buttons to it, how to tap into and wire it up to a Teensy, and how to program that. At the end of that guide you’ll actually be able to plug in your Teensy to your computer and use the front half of the GBZ as a controller to test it!

Be sure to enter to win the one I’ll be making in these guides!

[rf_contest contest=’2000′]