I had a semi-broken Game Boy Color. So did up a Funny Playing GBC Laminated IPS Kit, with the pre-sized shell in this nice red. And grabbed a matching case (3DS cases for $4 on playasia, nice) and made a sock for it too (all my handhelds are in a sock in a case).
The results are as good as the hype. I use the pixel grid display option and it looks pretty much perfect. Really easy mod and great value too.
The only downside is… really nice screen, but I’m finding after revisiting it that Game Boy Color kind of sucks.
There’s some gems I’m finding are still great, Crazy Bikers (Motocross Maniacs 2) is still superb. Because it is designed well around the hardware.
But as a hardware spec it’s just not great. I remember back in the day I thought it was early SNES-ish, probably due to the rich colours available. But now can see it’s clearly more NES/Master System-ish, just with SNES level colour depth.
But since it’s a post-SNES system, devs tried to do SNES kind of things with it. So it feels a lot like those 16-bit to 8-bit ports from the early 90s, eg FC Genjin.
Anyway the screen is great though, will definitely get a GBA one next.