As an 80's kid growing up in the 90's, we had all the best gaming tech and titles. It was the beginning of what is now the strongest retro period in history for gaming.

Like everyone else at that age, I pleaded for a Game Boy® as soon as I saw it advertised in the catalogue (Argos for those in the UK). It would finally mean I could game on the go alongside the Sega® Mega Drive and Master System I already had at home. Between Super Mario Land and Tetris, I could also stay up in bed gaming with the help of the janky magnifying screen light (innovative for the time).

Those consoles, along with the eventual Playstation®, Game Boy® Pocket and Color I was super lucky to get, cemented the 90's as a major gaming era for me as it did a whole generation. Beyond the obvious entertainment though, I was always intrigued with the devices themselves and how complex they must have been. Between pressing the power button, blowing into the cartridge, wiping the disc on your t-shirt and connecting the Game Link cable with your friends console, I always wondered how the physical supported the digital.

Fast track through my teenage years and I become one of the earliest entrants into the product and digital interaction practice. An area of modern design that focusses on how we humans interact with products and digital mediums. Pair that with my ever present skill in breaking things out of rage and interest in understanding how anything is built, joining the teardown community seemed obvious.

To kick the productising side of this off, a close friend was keen to get a Game Boy® teardown frame to display their own console. Because they had their own console to use, they were reluctant to buy a full frame from an existing store, for reasons including the mental price of those frames at the time. Not to mention, the design of the frames had room for improvement. That's when I step in, the classic designer friend who just happened to have time on their hands while their industry took a dive post Covid. I jumped at the chance as it gave me something to focus on, reduced the price point with mates rates, and gave us the opportunity to create a frame with a better all round design with room for custom accents. The project took a few months, there was a lot of work involved in properly sizing and laying out the components, along with deciding which components should be displayed and how they needed to be dismantled for framing. The print designs are all completely custom and made from scratch, including the 8-bit characters because I knew I needed the flexibility of scaling which can only come from vectors. We already had the console on hand to mount and display, so once the print design was complete and a suitable frame was sourced, we spent a crafty afternoon pulling it all together and completing the first official ProductFrame display consisting of an original yellow Game Boy® and Super Mario Land cartridge.

That frame is now proudly displayed in their office alongside a newer addition we created for their Game Boy® Advance SP.

Since then, the frames have done way better than I expected on Etsy. In under a year we've churned out over 70 frames, all shipped to loving homes where they have been absolutely cherished as gifts and displays of childhood alike. From one simple little project for a friend, to a project of passion that seems to have its fans.

The classic Game Boy® was only the beginning. We've already received requests for print designs to showcase other beloved game titles such as Zelda, as well as controller displays for the N64. Right now in the workshop we even have Sega® controllers, Atari's and Playstations® being worked on. There are so many retro childhood displays flooding through my mind, I'm excited to teardown other icons of gaming culture (*always with an aim to use faulty units).