---
title: "Battery-Free Game Boy Powered by Force of Mashing Buttons"
description: "A team of scientists build a recreation of the Nintendo Game Boy that works without any batteries to demonstrate new ways to build clean gadgets."
date: "2020-09-04"
modified: "2020-09-04"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/battery-free-game-boy-powered-force-mashing-buttons"
categories:
  - "Energy"
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "batteries"
  - "energy"
  - "the digest"
  - "video games"
---

# Battery-Free Game Boy Powered by Force of Mashing Buttons

![A team of scientists build a recreation of the Nintendo Game Boy that works without any batteries to demonstrate new ways to build clean gadgets.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/battery-free-game-boy-powered-force-mashing-buttons.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Przemyslaw Pawelczak\</em\>*

## Button Masher

A team of computer scientists have spent their year working on the world's first battery-free Game Boy.

The device, *[CNET ](<https://www.cnet.com/features/the-first-battery-free-game-boy-wants-to-power-a-gaming-revolution/>)*[reports](<https://www.cnet.com/features/the-first-battery-free-game-boy-wants-to-power-a-gaming-revolution/>), is a faithful recreation of the 1989 Nintendo Game Boy, with one key difference: Instead of AA batteries, the handheld gaming system is powered entirely by tiny solar panels and the force of a heated gamer mashing the buttons. Just like the Game Boy was a breakthrough in mobile gaming, the scientists hope that they too can spark a revolution in [battery-free technology](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/battery-free-bluetooth-chip>).

## Gamer Fuel

Playing the device — called the Engage — isn't quite up to the standard of an authentic Game Boy, even though it can play the classic console's entire library of games. That's because its very limited power necessitates a tiny screen, no speakers, and just a few seconds of life without constant button-mashing.

"We're really making a huge leap towards useful and usable systems that are built upon this foundation of intermittent computing," Delft University of Technology computer scientist Przemyslaw Pawelczak told *CNET*.

## Save States Enabled

Those limitations are by design, *CNET* reports, and the team found a way to make the console autosave your progress at the exact moment before it dies. Press a few buttons and the game springs back to life at the exact moment you left it. That's great for games like Tetris, but more of a disruption for games like [the Pokémon series](<https://futurism.com/pokemon-blockchain-microtransactions-twitch>) that don't require button mashing.

What remains to be seen, however, is how the [notoriously-litigious Nintendo](<https://www.businessinsider.com/nintendo-shuts-down-fan-made-games-2016-9>) will react after the team presents the Engage at a research conference next week.

**READ MORE:** [The first battery-free Game Boy wants to power a gaming revolution](<https://www.cnet.com/features/the-first-battery-free-game-boy-wants-to-power-a-gaming-revolution/>) \[*CNET*\]

**More on gaming:** *[Putting Pokémon On The Blockchain Takes Microtransactions To Their Inevitable, Insufferable End](<https://futurism.com/pokemon-blockchain-microtransactions-twitch>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)