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WorkBoy: Lost Game Boy Add-on FOUND After 28 Years - Game History Secrets
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- Опубликовано: 25 дек 2020
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Today on Game History Secrets, Liam talks about his journey to find the lost Nintendo Game Boy add-on, the WorkBoy. This peripheral has been lost for 28 years, but through determination and some amazing luck, the WorkBoy lives again for us all to see.
Liam Robertson is a video game researcher and archiver. In his spare time, Liam creates videos and articles for various outlets, and will also be contributing to the Did You Know Gaming channel.
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#WorkBoy #GameBoy #Nintendo
You've just solved a 29 year old mystery for me, age 11 I badgered my mum and dad every weekend to go to toys r us in Hull and ask if they had one. On the rare occasion my parents gave in no one in the shops had any idea what I was talking about even when I showed them the article. Thanks mate, it's amazing to know the story now that I've just turned 40
How cool. Did you actually turn up in a management function, entrepreneur, or teenage drug dealer (referencing 3:28 ) ?
@@MJFallout 😂 neither, I always felt like it was the reason my drug business failed
Have you shown your parents this video? I am sure they would be intrigued!
@@fredflintstone5356 I'm seeing them soon and I'll definitely show them, I hope they remember but I can't say for sure. I'll let you know
lol 😂 i watching this and i am from Hull. Hulls toys R us was a magical place as a kid.
A 30 year old single known prototype that can only interact with a 30 year old ROM that just so happened to have been recently leaked from Nintendo's official servers finally reunited and showcased for the world
What a crazy story and set of finds
No such thing as coincidences. it's the code breaking down into a singularity, soon everything will be perfect.
@@parishna4882 Hare Krisna
What is the summation of all...
Joy of JOYS.....
This Is Fractal Time Maze...
Obviously.
This video blew my mind.
Workboy waking up after all that shit:
“The year is 2055”
i can only imagine the hype, if it instead say year 2077
We have covid, the workboy has the Y2K bug.
@@parishna4882 dude....do you understand what Y2K bug was? Based on this video, WORKBOY is legit Y2K compliant.
@@TheSurogate I worked during the Y2K bug, and had to maintain an entire college of tafe here, which is government funded and had multiple departments, across many areas here. To ask I know what it was, is pointless.. to say I saw the few things we missed, and dates were out of whack, is not.
It was a JOKE by the way.... What wasn't a joke was every gd employee screaming at us for upgrading their hardware and software. You think the Y2K bug was nothing? I still have scars from computing lecturers....
@@parishna4882 so.....it had to be a JOKE....⬆️🦲
I love this, but i also want to give credit to the original makers. "You're some random guy who called me up about this thing i was trying to build over 20 years ago, and i'm just going to send you the ONLY ONE IN EXISTANCE just in the hope you might be able to get something out of it"
Kudos to them, I'm honestly so glad to see this little bit of history brought to light and explained.
Well that random person Most likely showed he had a RUclips audience of more than 2+ million.
Most likely he loaned it to him for the sake of the video then he would send it back to him
@@Spazilton1 I did not do any of that. I just found the right way to get a hold of him and asked him about it.
Frank is an interesting guy - he passed on his keepsake of a long gone era to the first person that genuinely sounded like he would treasure it. Great way to leave a legacy and making a lot of people happy by giving closure.
Yeah, I was amazed by that too, what a nice gesture.
He's said that he has to return the prototype on twitter. Nevertheless what a guy to send the device for the video to someone you don't even know.
Insane generosity to even loan it, as it could be sold for thousands.
That surprised me too. That unit is probably worth a lot of money, and he just sent it off so that some guy could tinker with it. Very trusting.
@@agentafter Really shows you that good people still exist who want to share history.
Holy shit, it actually exists!
This is like finding bigfoot, having a beer with him, and then asking bigfoot to ring up his old buddy, the loch Ness monster, and asking Nessie if he just happened to have the holy grail in his studio apartment in the lost city of atlantis
Exactly
@@Minspi_26 I thought this was just a collective fever dream all gameboy enthusiast dreamed about
I've actually done this... You're late to the party, Bigfoot said that he only chooses one person every millennia... Also Nessie says the holy grail isn't quite what it's meant to be, there's hundreds of them and they really don't do anything besides make a great beer vessel... Surprisingly Bigfoot gave me another and I never could've guessed that was the holy grail until Nessie told me, not wanting to ruin the big secret I said that I didn't want either of them so even if it's true what evidence do I have? So please, don't take what I've said as truth, let humanity have something they won't ever know for several generations, because I have used Humanities only chance to keep it secret
Wow
454 likes
nice
WOW incredible! Brought a tear to my eye that the developer would trust you with the work boy keyboard, likely the last one surviving. He must be more than just a rich retiree, seems he cares about the historical factor of this type of thing. “Video game historian” is going to very quickly become an actual vein of study
He's had it for 30 years and didn't even remember he had it at first... so giving it to someone vested enough to contact so many people out of pure nostalgia, would have been well worth it, imo!
Most likely he loaned it to him for the sake of the video then he would send it back to him
As a kid with a disability who could have benefited from a laptop, but couldn’t afford one, I was fascinated about the Work Boy since the 90s. Great to finally see it.
FRANK. The MVP. Bless his heart for being so kind to just straight up SEND what is possibly the only workboy left in existence out for fan inspection 😭❤
FRONK
Frikkin legend.
That's the golden way right there, sacrificing material possesion and wealth for the benefit of ALL! (Well, all Game Boy nerds :P)
This is insane. How good it was, how the pieces came together, the fucking gigaleak actually reviving a device whose creator sent the last copy of it, what a ride! On par with the rest of 2020 itself
Have you heard about McDonalds DS? Really similar story with
@Censorship's For Pussies ruclips.net/video/-e6xOBCAVvA/видео.html I believe they're referring to this
@Censorship's For Pussies it's not SJW overlords. It's basic economics. The public at large is fed up with anything overly violent, racist, sexist or bigoted and people who try to justify or apologize about the bigots.
And If the public is fed up, the companies advertising don't want anything to do with those messages.
Truth is we are all people. Just human. Appearance, lifestyles, sexuality and gender does not change that.
And the internet has brought that truth to light in a bigger way then ever before.
To the point where not realizing that denying that, and being open to any sort of bigotry you have to deny reality in a cult like manner hiding away in your own dark moist echo chamber of bigotry.
And frankly that's just sad. Pitiful.
@Censorship's For Pussies because your breaking the terms of service. Not because your being censored. Nobody is obliged to give you a soapbox, nobody is obliged to care about you or what you have to say.
You have to earn that.
Anything else is compelled speech, forcing someone to publish what they don't want. And that's exactly what the USSR did. That is censorship, to force a company to platform you.
You want free speech you have it.
You want free presses you have it.
And that means nobody gets to tell you what you publish or allow on your own servers. That also means if you want to get published you better open your own servers and launch your own video hosting website, or stop crying about it.
24:20 I was a young IT engineer when that fire happened. The local IT warehouse had ARMED GUARDS to prevent theft of ram until the prices got better.
That's fascinating. I remember the price explosion of hard drives after that flooding in Thailand, after which I think Backblaze bought up external hard drives to take apart for the drives themselves.
Still, RAM is inherently more expensive, and it's hard to imagine now how much that must have affected sales at the time.
@@FirstWizardZorander I remember that we could get certain Chinese manufactured drives that didn't have the same warranty and business customers would purchase them to tide them over with the intent to replace as soon as the crisis ended
@@safetinspector2 *Plot twist:* I just looked up Sumitomo Chemical Company in Japan, and their company history gives their entry into IT-related chemical products as taking place in the year 2001, eight years after the explosion.
*Only possible conclusion:*
Both this, and the massively fortuitous recovery of one-of-a-kind WorkBoy software and hardware, both, after 28 years, leads me to the only possible conclusion:
_We're looking at the convergence of alternate realities here, folks_
@@FirstWizardZorander nice user avatar, good sir wizard.
@@JakeKlineMusic the work boy was the instrument that bent the reality
The most mindblowing part of this story is to me, basicly a freaking GameBoy accessory is the fundation of Nokia´s communicators, who would have thought.
I feel like Indiana Jones saying this but, "It belongs in a museum!"
It should be studied by top men.
Should be connected to the working charred Gameboy that survived the explosion.
@@andregon4366 I believe that one has Tetris stuck in it so they can't.
@@TonySki Damn.
@@TonySki that’s not true! I seen it in person! It’s in the Nintendo Store in NYC! It is said they change the game every so often!
"We had some shit games." Way to keep it real, Frank.
I honestly quite enjoyed his attitude in a lot of this, it was amusing.
"How do we know you won't do this again?"
"If someone else offers me a 40% raise, I probably will do this again."
the guy is a legend, we had some shit games BUT so did others . amen
He's the honorary origin of the phrase "let me be Frank'
Historical moment! Thanks for great example how "piracy" contributes to preserving our history.
The P.T. demo is another example of that
It always does.
He was probably so honored and happy to help with this interview. Imagine holding on to it for all those years for what it could have been, to have someone reach out in genuine interest so long later. That was probably one of his babies!
Holy shit! I'm 40, and was a gameboy fanatic, and remember reading about this as a kid. I thought it was brilliant, and every businessman would be using it. Thanks for this. I've not thought about it in decades! This is why I love all things retro gaming.
By the time the Gameboy came out, a decade of personal computers used the same cpu (z80), like all consoles, this was just a general computer lacking peripherals. Not too long later the PDA craze would come out which was essentially the same thing. History is a circle, now the Switch is using the very same thing you have in your smartphone: ARM, which is why people have run Linux and whatnot with it.
I remember reading about it as well. Awesome!
@I OFFER YOU THIS it's fucking SIIIIIIIIIICK. time speeds up. you'll be thirty before you know it, and then, 40. And i guess, for YOU, it'll be '00s shit that gives you that special feeling- that memory of being a kid, and knowing you had pizza on the way, and a dope ass video game to play, you feel me? That's the silver lining of aging, and that's the magic of retro gaming.
Imagine the wonders homebrewers could have programmed with this baby back in the day.
I know right? It sucks nobody ever made separate controllers of any sort besides this.
@Censorship's For Pussies But can it run Doom?
Imagine a time when something like this was created and the end game wasn't to harvest your personal finance data
insanity
*putting on tinfoil hat* " Are you sure ? "
I seen a $ so prolly not.....
dude, this story is amazing, he talk to two guy who founded a company, to revive something that didn't exist
Hey everyone. This is Liam here, the guy in the video. I hope you enjoy the vid and have a great holiday. Let me know if you have any questions about the video. Stay cool.
Update: the response to this video has been overwhelming! Thank you. I have made some follow-up videos showing more of the WorkBoy on my channel. Check them out if you fancy.
Aight
👍
happy holidays! c.um
Thx. Fcking fascinating, as I'm old enough to remember the original press hype.
No questions... But I just wanted to say I remember this vividly. Being a kid in the early 90s, I was really big into the Gameboy and all its accessories. I had that huge monstrosity with the fold out speakers, the powerboy, game genie, and a bunch of third party garbage add ons. I remember reading about the work boy and I wanted it desperately... But it soon fell out of my mind with the release of Link to the Past. After that I had a new obsession. So being 36 now I wonder what could have happened if I had never played Zelda. I'd potentially have the Workboy, but be without the fond magical memories of playing Zelda....and THAT'S not something I'd trade for all the rare Nintendo tech in the world
13:00 "But Frank had a simpler idea" I audibly responded "No shit..." in surprise that he would just ship it on to Liam (even if only on loan). What a guy!
Imagine for how much it could sell on a auction. I wonder if owner just trusted Liam or there have been some sort of agreement signed.
@@Pecetos Definitely a contract of some sort.
@@fuckbollock There is no contract between Frank and I.
I had the same reaction, but in spanish.
@@LiamRproductions still have it? I'll give you $30 for it.
JK! Congrats to all involved. What a great story.
Workboy: "it's been so long since last time I was awake... It's got to be what, like year 2055?!?!" Lol
Don't laugh. 2055 isn't much further from us than 1992. 29 years vs 34.
@@midwestweirdo666 Screw you, i'm gonna laugh and have a good time anyway.
@@tantejunko I think he meant it as a joke in itself dude. Have fun!
Maybe we could eventually find a working Stealth Boy
it's 2155 later in the video
I never imagined this would become such a touching story
Franks a nice man, no other person would just give a one of a kind item they helped make away, but he did it for the sake of game preservation.
Especially given it is probably worth $5,000-$10,000 or more to an insanely rich collector
I'm assuming he might want it back at some point, especially now that the video is made and uploaded. But even then, just lending it out for the sake of learning about a long lost videogame obscurity is already quite generous itself.
Probably sent for review only.
@@triggahappyyt5420 Yeah, and probably why he sent it in a GBA case. Less suspicious-looking.
The world's first potential smart device, 20 years ahead of its time.
Eh, there was already a large selection of palmtops & calculator-sized computers.
there where "smart devices" but they where insanely expensive, the one's with similar functions/keyboard were pocket translators.
not really. PDAs did everything this did and more and were released around the same time the workboy would have been.
I guess I should've said affordable
he's even calling the subprograms 'apps'
rankles me but can't deny it's apt.
Damn this little thing is so cool, imagine what could have been if it was released
The fact that world map has 8 bit renditions of national anthems is so charming, people would have loved this thing
No, as the videos say, too expensive and were better options in the market. Plus, the only people who would buy this to ACTUALLY use it and not just fool around with the anthems are adults that weren't into video games and probably wouldn't want a game boy in the first place.
that is so incredibly kind of him to send it to you!!
This wouldn't had happened without the biggest leak in gaming ever, I love this so much.
I can’t believe it exists
I will never agree that Nintendo deserved to suffer such a leak and in hacking the servers of any company ever.
However, I will agree that without it the WorkBoy might not have been completed.
I suppose we should always see the positive in the negative.
@@toumabyakuya3498 Nah bring the leaks. I'm curious and Nintendo won't talk about this stuff otherwise.
@@Breeze926 I am also curious, but leaks are never correct. Nintendo themselves should be the ones releasing this info via artbooks and the like.
@@toumabyakuya3498 As long as it's not personal employee information if they're never releasing it their fault. They don't get hacked for no reason.
I can’t even begin to imagine your excitement when you first confirmed an existing Work Boy, and then when you were offered to be sent the device. And then a few weeks later having the software leak? It was serendipity if there ever was one, amazing video my friends.
WOW!! I saw the ad for this in nintendo power back in the day and was so excited about it, I re-read all the features in the magazine over and over and then it never materialized. I always wondered what happened to it, thanks for the detective work!
"I need my game boy for work"
It's really cool though and it's like how the gameboy was used to make the first programmable sewing machine controller
The first programmable punch-cards in the 1800s were to control looms.
Amazing! I love finds like this.
∆∆∆∆this guy's channel rules 2!
This channel is ALWAYS blowing me away, such interesting stuff.
Hello there Mr John how do u you?
Riggs!!!!
Peepoo
As a GameBoy enthusiast myself, I would absolutely have bought one of these back in the day.
Heck, given that the software exists and is abandonware, I would support a kickstarter to make a reproduction keyboard that works with the existing software. I want this thing to have a second chance!
CONGRATULATIONS! I had my eye on this since I first saw it in Nintendo Power...even calling the 1-800 number every now and again to ask the status on this peripheral. I had to settle for the Infogenius Personal Organizer that would actually crash my Gameboy and reset the cartridge.
Thank you for solving a mystery I've been thinking about for almost three decades!
Imagine yourself back then as a kid and this thing released. "DAD STOP HOGGING MY GAMEBOY AND WHO IS JANE?"
No need, found myself in that situation with a Pokemon Red cartridge. :D
We don't talk about Jane.
Mom: Yes, honey... Who is Jane?!
*Dad sweating profusely begins*
Nick robinson be damned, you now have held one of the rarest gb accessories ever
You mistaking Nick and Liam Robinson.
This man, held THE most valuable gaming accessory ever made. That, if it went up to auction, I think could fetch millions, give that it's a piece of forgotten Nintendo history
No way.
Dual keyboard workboy when?
Yes way
Si wey
Waiting for the first ever TwerkBoy, get on it Elliot
Elliot watches on, drooling at the mouth
The keyboard needs to be reverse-engineered so it can be added to Mame.
This is why roms and emulation aren't evil! THIS IS WHY!
Who’s saying they’re evil?
@@wills242 Nintendo
Internet history right here
No, but its what you do with them that are. You use them in illegal ways, theres no denying that.
@@PopCultureFan_ Only certain use cases are illegal. If I own let's say Super Mario World on SNES and I decide to put the ROM on an Everdrive in order to minimize wear and tear on my original cart, I'm 100% within my right to do so.
Can’t wait for the speed running community to get their hands on this.
"Dude, is console verified. I just used 8 controllers almost nobody ever owned that were used in an online horse betting game to input raw data into the RAM via an exploit!".
@@xnamkcor Now I'm curious about that horse betting game because I think you're making a reference to something
Such a good deal, considering the cost of a full PC was still in the ~$3,000 range then. This was essentially a ultra-portable monochrome laptop with better battery life. Much appreciation for all the development hours that must have gone into this.
that's something that many younger folks, and even people my age (I'm 34) miss. A PC was extremely expensive then. a Portable (laptop was a pretty new term back then) even more so and what you got wasn't much better then this, and likely worse when you factor the 'hard drive/storage' was just a simple floppy disc on the cheap ones.
I have a small monochrome compaq from the late 80s/early 90s, and other then coming stock with a backlight (the backlight on this gameboy is a mod) it had NOTHING on this setup in terms of cost to usefulness. Monochrome, floppy drive only storage, and the rtc battery required completely tearing it apart to get to....
It was more of a palmtop really, but still affordable compared to most of them.
This is exactly what I was just thinking. Look at how many people bought the WII not even for playing games, but because at the time, for the price there were other things it could do for less.
This could have been similar. Think I also saw somewhere that they used gameboy advance as a lower cost option for making some kind medical equipment for hospitals. Can't remember exactly what it was, heart monitor or something.
It was a terrible deal.
And there was an obvious reason why the device never made it to market, it had no form of text editor..
It was not comparable to a fully featured PC in any way shape or form but there were a whole bunch of devices around at the same time ("digital organisers", "data claculators", "data banks"), that offered much more functionality for a similar price as the Work Boy. For less than the combined cost of a Game Boy and Work Boy you could get a "pocket computer", for just a little bit more you could get a basic computer (I mean a BASIC computer).
Read the contemporary literature about it and you will see the team behind it bragging about the upcoming word processing features of the Work Boy 2! Yeah, before this was even released they were highlighting its missing features and hyping its succesor that would have those features.. Unbelievable.
No! We're talking 1992 here, not the bronze age. PCs weren't some wonderous new technology, there was a glut of hardware about, all kinds of different devices at all kinds of price points. Also, I think you're massively over-estimating the abilities of the Work Boy, it didn't even have a text editor. There was nothing wrong with floppy discs either!
This is amazing. You literally brought to life a dead prototype product that was buried in someone's old work memories box. When the guy decided to keep the prototype, he couldn't have imagined decades later it would be reunited with it's software via a ROM leak and a dedicated gaming historian.
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it.
This is absolutely incredible. My jaw dropped when I realized you got your hands on the actual prototype - you have cemented your place in video game history my friend!! I hope you win an award for this one somehow, because you deserve it!!!!!! Thank you for your incredible investigative journalism for the posterity of video game history, without you taking this on, the workboy may never have seen the light of day. Hell I'm only half way through the video too! Incredible, incredible video.
I'm actually more surprised that this obscure add-on is the reason the Nokia Communicator even exists.
Or "Nakia" as Liam would tell it.
TIMESTAMPS [Long Version]
History of a Missing Peripheral 0:00-5:03
Mystery of the WorkBoy 0:45
WorkBoy at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2:33
WorkBoy Missing at Games Master Live 3:49
Production Myth (AVGN cameo) 4:17
Interviewing the WorkBoy Developers 5:03-13:00
Tracking Down the Developers 5:03
Developer Eddie Gill (Source) 6:04
Developer Frank Ballouz (Fabtek) 8:11
A wild WorkBoy appears!!! 11:53
Testing the WorkBoy (Failure) 13:00-18:50
Connectivity Problem 13:00
Beeping Sign of Life 14:11
Missing Cartridge Problem 14:46
Nintendo Gigaleak Security Breach 15:40
Testing the ROM without the Keyboard 17:38
Testing the WorkBoy (Success) 18:50-23:14
Clock 19:56, Calculator 20:04, Address Book 20:16
Temperature 20:34, Metric 20:45, Currency 20:56, Savings 21:15
Translator 21:30, World Map 22:01
Why WorkBoy Was Never Produced 23:14-27:08
Pricing Problem 23:14
Other Production Problems 24:02
Frank on What Could’ve Been 24:46
Eddie Inspired by WorkBoy 25:36
WorkBoy II for GBA 26:07
WorkBoy in the context of Productivity Software 26:43
Patreon Credits 27:08
Well that's nice for people who arent interested in the video, really... I wouldn't think anyone watching it would require timestamps, as the entire content is in and of itself, why they'd watch it.
but ok.
WOW! I’ve gotta say...this is one of the greatest gaming documentaries I’ve ever watched...and I’ve watched a lot of them! This is such an incredible story - amazing journalism - but even better is imagining how amazing must have felt for Frank and Eddie to see the hardware and software they labored over brought together for the first time in ~30 years! And the chances of a data dump containing the software that otherwise would never have surfaced??? What!?!?! Play the lottery man! This is an incredible piece of work! Bravo!!!
this is the kind of shit i want on the history channel im in tears this is so sad
Very impressive, the fact that you managed to get this truly unique piece of hardware so many years later, just wow, and thanks to Frank Ballouz for let the world take a look on this lost treasure.
Imagine finding one of a kind of something just for a RUclips video, that my man it's dedication, :)
But it's really not "just for a youtube video". This has helped to solve a part of missing game history that, without the effort, could have easily become unsolvable. Even if this channel is typically just neat facts about beloved video games, now and then we get to uncover old mysteries like this!
@@fsekalak hey amm I don't know how to put it, English it's not my first language, but waht I mean it's yes cool discovery and dedication to the hunt.
Wow, that's wild! Given the features of it and the time it came out, there's no way that wouldn't have moved units. Pretty cool stuff and amazing that you were able to get in touch with those guys AND the prototype.
17:10 the “coincendence” of the events of you obtaining this one of a kind prototype, and the source code of the cartridge being hacked and thrown on the internet within weeks of eachother is not a coincidence. There are no coincidences. That’s a crazy story and I sure did not expect to hear all this unfold in such a synchronistic, idiosyncratic way. What a great experience this must have been for you ?! Nice work and cheers from Philadelphia, that’s an awesome video to see for a geek/technician, who also lives for synchronicities like this! Thanks!
The game historian in me is absolutely in love with this. Getting a prototype from a previous developer and the rom getting leaked a few weeks later...too perfect and too beautiful.
One thing I noticed when you were playing the national anthems: It has Germany listed as East Germany. This is interesting because the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and East Germany stopped existing in 1990. Yet this device was supposed to come out in 1992 and still referenced East Germany. Just strikes me as very interesting.
very beta software. with no intention of being used after the device was canned. I can see it not being maintained.... which is why it's so surprising that it was actually archived. fortuitous outcome! Even if the wall still stood.
It also plays the west german anthem, making it even weirder...
What a great review!
I mean from getting the best sources to talk about it to actually getting a working WorkBoy!
I can't believe this doesn't have 1million views.
Thanks so much man-i grew up on this stuff and I don't know anyone who's into it. Watching this vid and vids like it warms my ticker and reminds me of the good old days.
Amazing video! Perfect timing with the ROM dump and getting your hands on the hardware. Although it came from the illegal dump it was good to see this operational
Can you imagine playing Infocom text adventures on a Game Boy with a keyboard back in the 90s?
Go north. Open door. Look. Take gum from pocket. Put on dressing gown. Go downstairs. Eat cornflakes. Go south....
I never got any further than that, tbh.
What an incredible story!
Ahaha what a story Mark.
Good day to all...this is Frank Ballouz...
Firstly to Liam, I thank you for the time, effort & energy you put into your incredible video I truly enjoyed it!! Sorry I didn't see it until today...August 26th, better late than never!!
To all others, I thank you for your comments...the good, the bad & the ugly...all very much appreciated!!
STAY SAFE 😷
That is brilliant. I wonder how many of the devs involved have watched this and are amazed you managed to put the pieces back together. This is a modern age egyptian style puzzle, where no one knew what it was till someone found all the pieces and made the artefact whole.
Love this stuff !! :)
I'd say even if the Workboy costs double that of a full price Game Boy, it still would've been a great value and a popular product. The DRAM issue would've totally caused some problems.
Perhaps someone could study that WorkBoy and develop reproduction WorkBoys.
At the very least if we could get it emulated so that existing GameBoy emulators could be updated to emulate the WorkBoy hardware... That way the software could still be enjoyed.
The risk of destroying the only known unit by disassembling it is too great, imo.
Z3DT if you know what you're doing, not really. It's just a matter of doing careful reverse-engineering, reading signals, x-raying boards, carefully desoldering chips and dumping ROMs, etc. If guys like Ben Heck can do it, any other expert can.
You could possibly even reverse engineer it just by doing signal capture to observe how it communicates with the Gameboy. Might be harder, but it wouldn't require taking apart the Workboy itself.
I know, someone should get BenHeck to work on this. He has years of experience with modding and developing new software for retro games.
This is amazing! This thing was insanely ahead of it's time, essentially being a smartphone well before even basic phones were released with this functionality
Kudos to the creators for actually sending over the peripheral for testing, that's a really nice gesture to fans and archivists of these rare technologies.
Heh, looks like it was Y2K compliant too lol
Even year 38
This is crazy ahead of its time. It basically turns the Gameboy into a proto-smartphone! The guy who did this is a genius.
Normally these kind of stories are sort of lame, with a bunch of pictures from magazines that we've all already seen. You being able to actually track the thing down and do a legit video on it it's pretty awesome. You earned that thumbs up.
Ohh god you don't understand how impressed this is to me, and I think to the entire world of gaming.
This is by far one of my favorite videos.
Watching this video I forgot everything around me..
I'm almost crying... You deserve a special place in gaming heaven.
Wow. That's very high praise. Thank you.
Incredible story and video. Thank you for putting this together. I wish it came out as originally intended - it would have been a cheap personal computer for the early 90s!
People like you are why video games are so expensive nowadays. You don't need 10,000 N64 controllers or copies of Fire Emblem, you're just making it harder for people with reasonable needs to obtain them.
imagine if it ran basic...
@@somebonehead You okay, bud?
@@somebonehead did someone hurt you?
Imagine how things may have just turned out different, had it been. I mean, that's all it takes, one small change in something so new, to create a different reality 30 years later.
When the winner of the Mask II Nintendo Power contest was found, I though nothing would top that finding. Turns out I was wrong.
Wait, they were?! How did that happen?!.
www.destructoid.com/stories/meet-the-winner-of-nintendo-power-s-the-mask-ii-contest-287112.phtml
@@Wendy_O._Koopa Thanks!.
Outstanding work as always, Liam! Great to see this out in the wild.
Incredible work! You set up the mystery, developed the backstory, and flawlessly laid out the roadmap to your incredible find. I am not sure what you did/do besides RUclips, but you are an excellent investigative journalist. This is the very definition of quality RUclips content. Keep up the great work.
Thanks very much.
This leaves me wanting a laptop style dock for my switch
I would say same but im too poor to afford a switch lmao
lol it switches with the joycons so the screen can lay on the keyboard
The Switch already works with any USB keyboard, so it should be easy enough to create!
@@BigLord yes but you have to hack your switch for things like linux or windows.
you can tell it's a bit of 80's tech..."germany (east)"
I caught that too
"Deutschmark"
Haha yes, imagine having to buy the updated cartridge after the fall of the wall.
also, that was the national anthem of west / current germany (Deutschlandlied / Song of Germany) and not east germany (Auferstanden aus Ruinen / Risen from Ruins)
I love how so many of these stories are coming out right now! Nintendo's McDonald's training game, ancient flash games associated with Nintendo, another one that I honestly can't remember right now, and this that I didn't even know existed all in a few months. It just keeps coming! I would love to see one of these every month for until the end of time even though I know that will never happen.
DUDE!! THATS AMAZING!! You did something that brought to life a lost piece of history!! that was all your work and collaborating with the guys who made it. good job man!!
Thank you!
Whoa he actually sent you the only existing prototype of the Work Boy!? Even Angry Video Game Nerd couldn’t get his hands on it
Absolutely nothing against AVGN, he is great, but I don't believe he typically goes to such lengths as what was essentially investigative journalism. Again, there's nothing wrong with that considering he is a comedy based retro gaming review channel. I just don't think he's a good metric for feasibility of tracking down a lost relic of Nintendo that's the last of its kind.
@@fsekalak Agreed. It's not his main content in his channel. It's not 'Gaming Historian' type of channel.
Seems like it would have been a hit with parents and even kids as the novelty of a keyboard and a cart with productivity apps is actually something kids did enjoy, I remember how all the kids at school would go nut's over the exchange students pocket translators (a very similar looking and functioning device) that cost over 500$ back in the 90's.
As a kid I actually had an organizer cart for the Gameboy. The Workboy would have blown that cart away, but it also would have cost a lot more
Amazing how the prototype rom dropped as he got the prototype keyboard. That is God smiling on you.
this is the luckiest hit of the decade , congrats unearthing this irreplaceable artifact of gaming history.and most important, thank you frank for your generosity. i am amazed how earnest and open the developers were talking about it. and how that hack ripped the original software from nintendos grip, they would have never given it away ,they would have made no attempt to unearth it from their servers or even acknowledged that they still have a copy. just amazing.
0:18 is no one going to mention the "STD: We Can Help You Win" lmao what a poorly named company...
STD and its Handy Boy. Didn't they also make "The Booster"?
Yes I also watched the AVGN episode.
This dude, got the pieces and put them together over ther few years. Wow, now that's patience and a good job for connecting with the people that had it . Now that's good jobs done and history there.
I would've loved to have that back in the day.
And Frank, you hero you, thanks for keeping that prototype all these years and then letting all of us have a look at it.
Excellent documentary, top notch research. Subbed.
This is the best content provider in RUclips so happy it took me forever to find you all because now I have so many videos to watch.
ALso, mandatory "THAT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!"
The fact all this came together you happen to find the one work boy and software soon after is amazing. It a great part of history and you should be so happy with your work.
Probably the best video I've seen on this channel. Gotta love the quirky world of old school gaming, even though it was before I were born.
this is incredible! how amazing is that developer let you use the Workboy for this historic video 💕
I bet it made all of those original devs so happy to see their hard work that was waaaay before it's time finally getting the proper love and respect it deserves!
Love this channel 💕 Keep it up guys!!!💕 You make such good videos I can binge for hours 💕
This has got to be the best video I've seen on here, you've outdone yourself Liam! That reveal after the video chat was AMAZING!
Damn, between this and the McDonald's DS cart, Nintendo historians have been on fire recently.
Mostly thanks to the Giga Leak.
@@toumabyakuya3498 I don't think eCDP was part of that leak
@@AyrisX86 I was talking about the GB addon.
@@toumabyakuya3498 oh I thought you were talking about both
that's incredible, you got the *SINGULAR non-vaulted copy* of the unreleased accessory that's been hunted for DECADES, *AND* the ROM to go with it, AND it worked without needing a special tricky cartridge (which could have been arranged to be made, for sure)....
...one for GBA would actually be super dope, because color, and way superior power, and memory, and size, and everything (there were entire movie cartridges for gba, among other things), you could definitely fit a rather well featured spreadsheet and word processor on that, along with translations into many more languages, and a ton of other stuff...
digging that thing up is a MAJOR win! way to go man!. you're now a note in the history books of all gameboy fans. it was also so incredibly nice of the owner to loan that to you!
Holy shit, I've only ever heard rumours about it, and considered it to be something like Mew under the truck.
I've been watching DYKG for almost a decade and this is the best episode that I have ever seen!! >:O
Insane! You really did some digging to bring us this video. This is awesome!
When I saw the AVGN video I had to find out immediately. The fact you got to have one in the flesh is a rare occurrence. You earned that moment.
"Nearly three decades ago" alright mate, there's no need for that.
the future is now, old man
I'm a child of this time. Seeing such work and investigation to this "great dinosaur find" is a real treat.
Well done. A piece of history certainly.
Well if people don’t subscribe just for the fact you epically managed to find and use an almost mythical video game peripheral, then they don’t know what good gaming content is
Mad props for all the work finding and figuring out how to troubleshoot this product. This is impressive.