GBArcade

making, modding

The GBArcade is a bespoke video game platform modeled after the Game Boy Advance line of portable handhelds. Located at the convergence of media archaeology and maker culture, the arcade table project not only interrogates the theoretical paradigms scholars typically bring to the study of technology but also confers a sense of empowerment upon the maker through the design and fabrication of an operational object.

Materials: Raspberry Pi, IKEA Lack table, 17” monitor, micro SD card, arcade button kit, USB speakers, masking tape, black silicone, drill, soldering kit

The GBArcade is a hands-on project that bridges the gap between culturally-oriented and hardware-oriented studies of technology. Concordia’s Education Makers developed the arcade table project as a way to think through pedagogical practices and empower students through critical making. Drawing on the tools and techniques of maker culture, the project repurposes an IKEA Lack coffee table, transforming it into a functional video game emulation station that harnesses the affordances of the Raspberry Pi computer that hides within the table’s gutted frame.

In 2017, Education Markers partnered with the Media Archaeology course at the Concordia University International Graduate Summer School, which is where I completed this particular table. My design for the GBArcade emerged from my research into the Game Boy Advance and the many ways the platform has been modded, repaired, and reimagined since its release in 2001.

 
Video games technologies are necessarily embodied, requiring players’ active interaction with the platform in order access the internal workings of the game. As a result, technologies are constrained by and designed for the bodies intended to use them. The GBArcade sheds light on the idealised bodies that inform the design of a videogame platform.

I approached the design of the arcade table thinking about my father. He and I are both fans of Nintendo and Intelligent System’s Fire Emblem series, but he has only played the titles for the GameCube and Wii because they’re meant to be displayed on a television. GBA and DS screens are too small for him to play comfortably. Consequently, the majority of the series was inaccessible to him, even though I own the games and the original platforms. The arcade table I produced therefore presents itself as a large-scale GBA that reflects on the ways certain bodies are privileged in platform design. With a backlit monitor and large buttons, the project magnifies the inherent issue with portable platforms and invites new bodies to the table.

At the same time, when the experience of gaming requires the player to use their body in unfamiliar and even uncomfortable ways, it demands that the player reckon with the materiality of the platform. As the design of technology attempts to efface the interface as much as possible, this project returns us to the embodied experience of playing a video game: inputting direction commands on the GBArcade requires nearly the entire hand, not just a thumb; the buttons are far enough apart that prolonged gameplay is unsustainable; and having to stand and lean forward to play the game calls attention to the body in ways that video games typically don’t do.

Working on the GBArchive gave me to invaluable practical skills and equally called into question social assumptions about repair. Eliminating home economics and shop class from the high school curriculum means that many students no longer grow up knowing that consumer electronics are repairable. When something breaks, we throw it out and buy something new; everything is and must be disposable to consumers ignorant of how things work. Over the course of a week, I learned not only how to solder and how to use a dremel, drill and jigsaw, but also that I am able to do all these things.

The GBArcade—and maker culture more broadly—de-emphasises the threat of failure; there is no such thing as a perfect arcade table. Its success is determined by the questions it raises and the way it causes me to rethink the study and use of technological objects. Learning through the project and developing a new set of skills is what makes the project successful. As such, it invites exploration and mistakes. The convergence of media archaeology and maker culture allows for consideration of alternative pedagogical practices that are playful and constructive even as they remain didactic.

I completed the GBArcade table during the Media Archaeology course at Concordia University’s International Graduate Summer School. My reflections on the project can be found on the Residual Media Depot website.