Nintendo's first portable console brought throughout its life a large number of accessories to each one more curious. A magnifying glass to make the screen bigger, a flashlight to play in the dark, a camera and even a printer to print them. But among so many gadgets, there was one that invited to turn the console into a workstation.
WorkBoy, the keyboard for GameBoy
In 1992, Nintendo registered the trademark workboy with the idea of ​​giving life to an accessory for his work-oriented GameBoy. The product would come from Fabtek Inc, which would be in charge of manufacturing the device after showing it to and convincing the Japanese company.
The result was exactly what you see, a compact keyboard that came accompanied by some tools such as a calculator, word processor and even a translator. The idea might sound quite interesting, since it somehow turned the small console into a portable device that allowed us to work from anywhere.
ahead of its time
But the idea did not work. That is at least what can be intuited after seeing how the device disappeared without a trace and for no apparent reason. Since it is not known exactly if this keyboard sold little or if Nintendo simply decided to look the other way more fun and not to that boring corner of the business world. If so, there is no doubt that they were right.
What happened to the WorkBoy?
The WorkBoy disappeared, and didn't leave much information behind. It is known that the device came to cost between 80 and 90 dollars, and that the included software allowed us to enjoy something like an electronic diary with which to have a phone book, calculator, world clock, word processor, alarm clock and other functions.
The device disappeared, but on the YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming? they insisted on getting to the origin of the enigma, and after much research, Liam Robertson managed to locate the former founder of Fabtek Inc, Frank Ballouz. In the published video, you will be able to see an interesting investigation in this regard, as well as an interview with Ballouz in which the former manager shows what is probably one of the few WorkBoy units that exist in the world.
The best of this story, Ballouz decided to send Robertson his WorkBoy so that he could do the pertinent tests, discovering that in order to make the keyboard work, a special cartridge was necessary that he did not have in his possession.
The Nintendo Data Leak as the final piece of the puzzle
Worse, this story could not end like this, and just a few weeks after receiving the WorkBoy, a new leak of Nintendo's private data was published on the internet, which seemed to include original files from Source and Fabtek, where the files of the WorkBoy were finally located. software that came with the keyboard.
With some help from the community, they managed to get the software working, though unfortunately only the calculator app seemed to work properly, as the rest crashed the app instantly, at least…in the emulator. And it is that after recording the ROM on a cartridge, the WorkBoy managed to work instantly, coming back to life after 28 years of lethargy.
You have all the details of this exciting investigation in the video that we have placed above.