It’s one of the cartridges that launched the Game Boy musician phenomenon. And you can still go back to vintage Nintendo hardware with this beautiful homebrew music-making platform. Just watch.
If you haven’t been to the nanoloop shop lately, you’re in for an aesthetic treat – and some serious teasers. Back in the late 1990s, Oliver Wittchow‘s nanoloop was one of the homebrew cartridges for Game Boy that first convinced musicians en masse to take up the Nintendo system as instrument. That was a far cry from the deep coding and hacking skills you might need to use the Nintendo architectures otherwise. But it still holds up today, especially as we become more aware of the importance of repurposing hardware instead of throwing it away, and doing more with simpler electronics.
evadrum got their hands on this beauty, the nanoloop two. (This is the same software as built into the Analogue Pocket.) It’s a great little walkthrough, and wow this design – the English is fine, glad to hear humans and not AI, please:
This will run on all GBA-compatible Nintendo handhelds, so GBA, GBA SP, DS and DS lite.
But there are other goodies on the nanoloop shop now, too, including USB – MIDI adapters and other flavors. That includes the soon-to-be-released mono for original Game Boy. (There’s also the original nanoloop one.)
Most intriguing, of course, is the mysterious dedicated hardware Oliver is working on.
It’s nice to see some things back in stock, though. We’re all coming back from Chipocalypse, the global semiconductor – supply chain – logistics meltdown. It’s almost like we’re just getting back into 2019, kinda sorta. Watch this space. Happy, er, new year? Who knows.