BOOKS
Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020.
When Nintendo of America launched an international marketing campaign around the slogan “Who Are You?” to promote the 2001 Game Boy Advance, they aimed to sell the handheld by way of players’ nostalgic connections to earlier hardware and mainstay intellectual properties. Now, two decades after its release, Nintendo’s GBA has not only declined to disappear but has actively generated communities that continue to hack, modify, emulate, make, break, remake, redesign, trade, use, love, and play with the platform.
Who Are You? explores the tensions between consumer desires and what the company wants users to do. As a contingent assemblage of objects and practices, the GBA’s many articulations each have something to say about its history, affordances, constraints, and potential for creative expression.
You can find more information on the MIT Press website. Whenever possible, I encourage anyone interested in obtaining a copy to support local your local book sellers.
BLOG POSTS
MOD GUIDE: SNES RGB Bypass Amplifier
MOD GUIDE: GBA Consolizer
MOD GUIDE: Solar Game Boy Pocket
MOD GUIDE: Game Boy Pocket IPS LCD
MOD GUIDE: Game Boy Pocket Backlit LCD
A Learning Computer at the Bad Game Arcade
Volatile Memory: How to Replace Your Game Boy Cartridge Batteries
Crafts in the Time of COVID: Coping, Community, and Animal Crossing
(Un)Controlled Vocabulary:
Reflections on Databasing the Research Collection
The Game Boy’s Second Life: A Conversation with Retro Modding’s Olivier
Press START: Reflections on the Making of the Arcade Table
PUBLICATIONS
Custodio, Alex. “Collect them All (Again): Digital Collection as Nostalgic Incentive in Fire Emblem Heroes.” In Collection Thinking: Within and Without Libraries, Archives and Museums, edited by Jason Camlot, Martha Langford, and Linda M. Morra. London: Routledge, 2022, 241-256.
Custodio, Alex. “Shapeshifting Allegiance in Radiant Dawn: Allegorical Alterity in Children’s Media.” Insight Journal, 1 (2018): 11-22.
Custodio, Alex. “Adapting Academia: On Pedagogy and Fandom.” Pause Button, 2 (2017).
INVITED PRESENTATIONS
Stone, Kara, A.R. Sinders, Przemysław Pawełczak, Alex Custodio. Ludic Solarities: Developing, Distributing, and Deconstructing Games in Tandem with the Sun. Roundtable conversation, moderated by Michael Iantorno. Situated Solar Relations. Solar Media Collective, Concordia University. May 11, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Similar Selves: Fractal Art, Recursion, and Human-Computer Co-Creation. Worlding the Machine: Intervention, Experiment, Co-creation. Hexagram. L’Université du Québec à Montréal. April 20-21, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Advancing a History of Handheld Screen Mods. Game History Symposium, Université de Montréal. December 9, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Platformes nostaljeux : réviser et réinventer le Game Boy Advance. Input, Poke & Save Speaker Series, dhCenter, University of Lausanne and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. September 30, 2021.
In Conversation with Alex Custodio: Author of Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform. Book Launch, moderated by Michael Iantorno. Concordia University. November 5, 2020.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Custodio, Alex. An Island of One’s Own: Belonging and Burnout in Animal Crossing Twitch Streaming. Be-Twitching Scholarship Live Streaming Conference. Serious Play. Online. April 27-28, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Toward an Archaeology of Mobile Videogames. Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Denver, Colorado. April 12-15, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Handheld Histories: Digital Archives of Portable Play. Colloque étudiant du Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur les humanités numériques. Université de Montréal. April 3-4, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Social and Aesthetic Protocols in the Maintenance of Retro Handhelds/ Protocoles sociaux et esthétiques impliqués dans l’entretien des jeux de poche retro. Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur les humanités numériques: Vitrine HN / DH Showcase, Concordia University. February 17, 2023.
Custodio, Alex. Intersecting Vows: Metaphor, Monstrosity, and Medievalism in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Canadian Game Studies Association Annual Conference, Online. June 1-3, 2022.
Wershler, Darren, Alex Custodio, and Michael Iantorno. The Materiality of Exclusion: Historical Videogame Console Box Art and the White Heteronormative Imaginary. Game History Symposium, Université de Montréal. September 29, 2021.
Custodio, Alex. Paid with Exposure: Hacking the Online Photo Economy in Animal Crossing Communities. Canadian Game Studies Association Annual Conference, Online. June 2021.
Custodio, Alex. Liquid Crystal Discourse: Community Relations and Game Boy Advance Screen Mods. Game History Symposium, Stationnement Grand Quai Montréal. November 17, 2019.
Custodio, Alex. The (After)Lives of the Game Boy Advance: Emulation, Embodiment, and Nostalgia. R-CADE Symposium, Rutgers–Camden, 2018.
Custodio, Alex. Shapeshifting Allegiance in Radiant Dawn: Allegorical Alterity in Children’s Media. Concordia English Graduate Colloquium, Montreal, QC. March 23-24, 2018.
Custodio, Alex. An Archive of One’s Own: Navigating Labour in the Fanfiction Archive. Transformers Conference, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal. June 2017.
Custodio, Alex. Scott Pilgrim vs. Multimedia: Navigating Canadian Identity in North American Storytelling. Comparative Canadian Literature Conference, Quebec City. March 2017.
Custodio, Alex. “She Started Out as Such an Ugly Duckling”: The Transmogrification of Female Royalty in Children’s Animated Films. Concordia English Graduate Colloquium, Montreal, QC. March 2017.
POETRY
“Mandelbrot.” Headlight Anthology, 22 (2019).
“An Aubade for December.” Soliloquies Anthology, 21, no. 2 (2017).
“I: Liminal.” Spectra Journal, 3, no. 1 (2016).
“Is that What the Kids Are Calling it These Days?” Spectra Journal, 3, no. 1 (2016).