Self-Taught Modder Creates a Fully Transparent Game Boy Color Circuit Board — Stunning PCB Pairs Perfectly with See-Through Shell

I stumbled upon this mind-bending project where someone decided the regular Game Boy Color wasn’t cutting it. Enter Natalie, aka @natalie_thenerd on X (Twitter for the dinosaurs still using it). She’s gone and built a Game Boy motherboard, but here’s the kicker: the PCB is see-through. Completely clear. Like, you can dance your eyeballs over the copper circuits and everything. Why do that? No clue. Maybe it just looked cool. I mean, I couldn’t stop staring, like when you see a cat with mismatched eyes. Mesmerizing and weird, right?

Natalie’s on another level, though, scheming up those schematics herself. But she farmed out the actual PCB crafting to someone else. Guess handling acrylic-like material that melts away at just 200 degrees Celsius would scare anyone into outsourcing. I wouldn’t trust myself around it either—I’d probably end up with a puddle instead of a circuit board.

Now dig this: everything from the chips to the screen’s semi-transparent. Even the cartridge reader comes from a Chinese Game Boy clone and fits the whole clear theme perfectly. Honestly, when I read that, I just thought of jellyfish for some reason. No idea why—I told you my mind wanders.

But I gotta say, don’t go thinking you can get one of these bad boys. Natalie’s creation is a one-off, a solo act that’s more likely to shatter if you sneeze near it. I read that someone tossed around the idea of substituting the copper with silver or maybe jazzing things up with backlighting. I mean, who doesn’t want their Game Boy to glow like a tiny handheld UFO, right?

And then it got me thinking—or rather, got a bunch of folks thinking—about using this see-through wizardry on other gadgets. Like the Nothing Phone 2. Which, fun fact, is part of this see-through tech style trend (I guess everything retro is cool again?). But until those clear PCBs can handle our everyday chaos and don’t cost an arm and a leg, we’re not seeing them on store shelves anytime soon.

Kudos, Natalie, you wizard of tech. Hats off to your clear-as-day Game Boy wizardry. This is exactly why I have a soft spot for modders and their crazy, wonderful creations. You never know what they’re gonna invent next.