YouTube modder made the legendary portable GameCube render a reality

It’s no longer just a render. YouTuber GingerOfOz created a portable GameCube that follows the original render that made us all wish it was a real thing back in 2008.

Seen in this video from YouTube’s early years, the portable GameCube render looked like a combination between the classic blocky Nintendo console and the GameBoy Advance SP. Even though the video and the render are both more than a decade old, GingerOfOz decided to build a fully functional one as a fun project. The YouTuber said in his video detailing the process that he was trying to recreate the render to the best of his ability, rather than making an improved, more polished product.

Labor of love — As noted in the video, GingerOfOz’s DIY build is more of a portable Wii if you’re lookng at the interiors. It uses a heavily trimmed-down Wii motherboard since it’s a lot more efficient and customizable than the GameCube mobo. The Wii is completely backwards compatible with GameCube games, so you wouldn’t even know the difference anyways. Of course, there’s no built-in GameCube intro or those menu cubes for that extra hit of nostalgia, but GingerOfOz said he programmed these in anyways.

Most of the parts were custom-printed or designed, including the case parts and circuit boards, and required a lot of assembly know-how. In some departures from the original render, the modder custom-fitted smaller GameCube buttons into the case and added start buttons and triggers on the shoulders.

Even though the original render features a disk drive, GingerOfOz’ recreation doesn’t include this because Nintendo’s disk drives are too massive to make portable. The closest he was able to do was including a slot that fits a GameCube disk, but isn’t actually functional.

The finished product is everything we could’ve ever hope for, but GingerOfOz said there’s two noticeable issues with his build. He said that the battery life only lasts about an hour and a half long and that the glossy black paint job he chose to match the render makes for a lot of fingerprint smears and visible scratches.

Not for sale — No matter how cool this thing is, GingerOfOz said in a Reddit comment that he isn’t currently doing commissions. But not to leave us totally disappointed, he did some investigative work to find out more about the original render and was able to find the artist behind it all.

In the video, he showed that he was able to uncover the original artist, someone named Demond, who made the render for fun while practicing product rendering in college. Unfortunately, the original files for the portable GameCube are stuck on a dead hard drive, so GingerofOz’ recreation may be the closest thing we’ll ever see.