When life gives you lemons... Play Game Boy? For $1 you can follow me on Floatplane for a photo of every video game item I get, when I get it. www.floatplane.com/channel/ga...
The Enrichment Center reminds you that although circumstances may appear bleak, you are not alone. All Aperture Science personality constructs will remain functional in apocalyptic, low power environments of as few as 1.1 volts.
absolutely mad that the gameboy was still running at 1 volt, it's like that quote from portal where the announcer mentions all equipment will remain functional at as few as 1.1 volts
@@purpleneonshonestly that’s pretty impressive, since the TTL logic high threshold is 2V and the transition is usually ~1.5. But the actual hard-limit logic low threshold is 0.8, so I guess a lot of chips can just-about discriminate between low and high with just a 0.3V difference.
In a world of portable power banks and personal vehicles (and even some public transport in big cities) providing easy access to power on-the-go, this is truly the way to get the authentic "rushing through the level because the batteries are about to die" original GB experience.
Schoolyard Game Boy, when everyone’s batteries are already dead. So one kid sits on the rest to get a little more juice out, while someone else keeps swapping them in to try and finish their level before it dies again. (In my school at least, we did rock paper scissors tournaments to determine who got to slurp up the battery dregs in that manner!)
@@GuyDude-hk8uy technically speaking, it may have made a slightly measurable difference. Diodes and photovoltaic cells are the same, just specialized differently. If you supply any PV with its forward voltage, it will emit light. If you supply any diode with its forward voltage, it will emit light (whether visible or not) LEDs aren't good at turning light into current, but they definitely produce a small current from light.
I did the same experiment, ended up building a digital clock that ran off various fruits, or even some drinks, and used it for years. The best "battery" was actually regular coca-cola.
I think the issue with the charge rate wasn't so much the lemons, but the zinc strips. The zinc ions were being stripped from the steel, so you basically consumed most of the coating. At that point your galvanic potential was lower because it was just steel to copper instead of zinc. If you had solid zinc strips they might have charged at a similar rate for longer. A fun V2 could be 316 stainless steel and zinc. A lot more galvanic potential. It should charge a lot quicker.
@@Games_for_JamesJames, your channel is less than a year old, but has almost 150k subscribers!! How does it feel, mate?!?! Also, when will you show off your Silver Play Button??
I'm suddenly realizing that the experiments of Mr. James Channel are what happen when you have the drive of a mad scientist, but without the fatal flaw of unfiltered ambition.
When life gives you lemons, Don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get Mad! I don't want your DAMN lemons; What am I supposed to do with these!? Demand to see life's manager; Make life rue the day it thought it could give James Channel lemons!
I suspect this is the case. Motion clarity was never very good. But, last time I tried on my own childhood Game Boy, it was pretty much unplayable with platformers that regularly moved the screen. There's a difference between "a screen so bad you prayed your parents would drive under a street lamp so you could see" and 38-year-old lethargic liquid in the LCD.
@@nickwallette6201I had mega attachment called the *Handy Boy,* which was a square magnifying glass, two small lightbulbs on each side, and two fold out stereo speakers. 😁🤘 _(folded closed, they protected the mag glass, like window shutters)_ It also had a controls attachment, where for the D-Pad it was similar to the Analog Stick on N64. Then the A and B were just larger and closer together. It was *super* clunky and I _never_ used it. (it cliped on separately) I don't remember if the speakers were powered by the GameBoy, or if it has a small amplifier... But it's been over 30 years. Based on pictures, it looks to have a power switch for the speakers, so it likely does, and used the GameBoy's own volume dial to do handle the unit's volume control. But yea, its added lighting was the REAL hero! Which obviously meant my GameBoy now required 6 batteries. lol
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLEI had something similar but smaller, so no speakers. No convoluted folding mechanism. Just the magnifier and the light. Two incandescent bulbs, “grain of wheat” sized (because I guess millimetres would be too abstract? Gotta call em rice, wheat, barley, etc. Sure, whatever). It drained the one AAA battery it took in an hour, sometimes two. My brother had a more expensive one with a single, and still very new, warm-white LED. It was brighter and lasted over 10x as long. I was so jealous 😂
@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 Parts of the lemon without traces of zinc look delish. Honestly i would definetly feed them to the neighbours kids whom i appreciate for waking me up everyday at 5 AM. 😀
Theres something incredibly satisfying about seeing how slowly the voltmeter was ticking up when the bank was charging, and then seeing it tick down at almost two hertz as you're playing
Interesting fact about the original game boy!! The screens actually become blurrier over time. I believe it's because of UV exposure but I could be mistaken.
Probably using a simpler game like Tetris would last some more as that contains a single chip, while Mario Land is a large enough game to require a mapper chip. Might not be a lot but hey, 5 minutes is 5 minutes! :D
i would love to see a comparison with the same amount of lemons would do with a game boy pocket! your channel always brings me such joy. it’s nice to see a retro game channel that isn’t just doing the same mods all the time!
I'm honestly impressed you were able to play for over 10 minutes, considering how power hungry most electronics were back then! I remember Sega Game Gear needing approximately 812 AA batteries!
In elementary school I did a science experiment for the fair. I found out that lemons are the second least efficient food item to produce power. The most efficient was the onion due to the chemical density and concentration. It produced over 3 volts!
Did I just watch you power a Nintendo Gameboy with lemons? 😲 I am impressed! I have been binging your videos! I like your video editing! I also like that you celebrate your accomplishments and that you make the video feel like I am sitting right there with you! Keep up the good work!
This is very nostalgic, for everyone in my school playing through faded screens, and sitting on batteries to warm them up a little and get 5 more minutes of gameplay. I never expected that meant we were sitting on 1.2-1.5V though! Haha. This is also a fantastic example of how capacitors are useful for voltage boosting circuits. Without getting too technical, or into super-fast switching. So well done! Though it does make me wonder if automated switching would improve the charge rate, along with an actual piece of pure zinc. Maybe not enough to play live, but at least to extend the play time by making it drain slower? I bet a cheap electrolysis kit, one with too many impurities for actual chemists, could do the trick.
I was there Friday to Tuesday visiting mates and family, and it had rained earlier on the day I arrived (so Friday daytime I think?) it would've been the first time it rained there in months, cuz that's Adelaide in the summer. Though this year's been a weird one and I moved to Melbourne years ago so who knows
The sound of the rain on the corregated iron roof actually gave the video a really cosy quality 😊
Oh shit I thought it was the Gameboy audio glitching out
Nothing more ‘stralian than rain on a tin roof.
Also sounds like as if your in a car while its raining, some times i just go outside to a car and chill
Maybe I just have hearing loss and tinnitus but I can't hear what your talking about at all. I've heard it before but can't hear it in the video
my mum would agree
This is alternative timeline where Cave Johnson decided to do this instead of making combustible lemons
I would trust James with running Aperture AND Black Mesa.
dude I only am recently finishing that game and heard that line lol
Lol
Also now we know how many batteries we need to power Aperture facility
@@YaSheNePrydumavwhen life gives you lemons, make lemon battrees
The speedrun world record for Super Mario Land is 12:21 so that's almost enough time to complete the game. Just need a couple more lemons.
VitaminC%
Lemon%
I was going to say this should be a speenrun category.
@@No_True_Scotsman nice now i want a Lemon% from the Channel the Backlogs
Or a bigger piece of zinc, rather than zinc plating. Then 14 lemons would absolutely suffice, or possibly even 7!
The Enrichment Center reminds you that although circumstances may appear bleak, you are not alone. All Aperture Science personality constructs will remain functional in apocalyptic, low power environments of as few as 1.1 volts.
absolutely mad that the gameboy was still running at 1 volt, it's like that quote from portal where the announcer mentions all equipment will remain functional at as few as 1.1 volts
Because that is how electronics usually work, Xbox One controller's voltage cutoff is right around 1.1V for example.
@@purpleneons yeah i know, it's pretty funny how it keeps showing up as a result. still really interesting to see it in action
@@purpleneonshonestly that’s pretty impressive, since the TTL logic high threshold is 2V and the transition is usually ~1.5. But the actual hard-limit logic low threshold is 0.8, so I guess a lot of chips can just-about discriminate between low and high with just a 0.3V difference.
You might think it's silly, but when Australia turns to Mad Max and you wanna play Gameboy, James is gonna have the last laugh
yea for about 10 minutes per week
A bicycle generator should probably be available somewhere...
How are you going to grow lemons in a wasteland though??
@@knifefght Oasis
It'll cost so much for such a short play... he'll make a killing, lol.
In a world of portable power banks and personal vehicles (and even some public transport in big cities) providing easy access to power on-the-go, this is truly the way to get the authentic "rushing through the level because the batteries are about to die" original GB experience.
Schoolyard Game Boy, when everyone’s batteries are already dead. So one kid sits on the rest to get a little more juice out, while someone else keeps swapping them in to try and finish their level before it dies again.
(In my school at least, we did rock paper scissors tournaments to determine who got to slurp up the battery dregs in that manner!)
@@kaitlyn__L My friend used to tell me that if you held the GB up to the sun, the batteries would last longer - and I believed it! Simpler times :)
@@GuyDude-hk8uy technically speaking, it may have made a slightly measurable difference. Diodes and photovoltaic cells are the same, just specialized differently. If you supply any PV with its forward voltage, it will emit light. If you supply any diode with its forward voltage, it will emit light (whether visible or not)
LEDs aren't good at turning light into current, but they definitely produce a small current from light.
Get a bunch of these with some link cables and you've got yourself a Lemon Party
Filthy just filthy
that's an old one
I did the same experiment, ended up building a digital clock that ran off various fruits, or even some drinks, and used it for years. The best "battery" was actually regular coca-cola.
Takeaway: Coca-Cola is basically battery acid that you can drink. Can. Maybe shouldn't, but can.
What happened to it?
@@devinwg6777 It was 30 years ago!
every battery acid is drinkable but only once @@nickwallette6201
@@devinwg6777World governments confiscated it, and silenced him.
Expect this comment thread to be deleted within the next 2 or 3 hours.... 😒
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I'M THE MAN THAT'S GONNA POWER YOUR GAME BOY! WITH THE LEMONS!"
“I’M GONNA GET MY ENGINEERS TO INVENT A COMBUSTIBLE BATTERY THAT BURNS YOUR GAMEBOY!”
When life gives you lemon you use them to power a gameboy ofcourse🍋🍋🍋💀💀
Better than what I've been doing with them anyway lol
Ah, so this is the Lemon Party I keep hearing about.
I think the issue with the charge rate wasn't so much the lemons, but the zinc strips. The zinc ions were being stripped from the steel, so you basically consumed most of the coating. At that point your galvanic potential was lower because it was just steel to copper instead of zinc. If you had solid zinc strips they might have charged at a similar rate for longer.
A fun V2 could be 316 stainless steel and zinc. A lot more galvanic potential. It should charge a lot quicker.
Yeah, pure zinc isn’t something I can just go out and buy though.
Stainless also releases a poisonous chemical,I don’t need that in my life lol
@@Games_for_JamesJames, your channel is less than a year old, but has almost 150k subscribers!! How does it feel, mate?!?!
Also, when will you show off your Silver Play Button??
@@Games_for_James zinc nails are working well and are availlable in most hardware stores. They are used for roofing.
When Life gives you Lemons, charge capacitors and play Super Mario Land for 10 minutes. Lemons well spent.
I'm suddenly realizing that the experiments of Mr. James Channel are what happen when you have the drive of a mad scientist, but without the fatal flaw of unfiltered ambition.
When life gives you lemons, Don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get Mad! I don't want your DAMN lemons; What am I supposed to do with these!? Demand to see life's manager; Make life rue the day it thought it could give James Channel lemons!
haha I remember this quote.
A classic as classical as the GameBoy Classic! 🤘
Damn, that's a great analogy for capacitors. Bucket you can fill with a trickle and dump all at once.
If Cave Johnson from the Portal series were real, this existing would either bring him back to life or kill him more haha.
I think the Gameboy is both blurrier than you remember but the LCD is also very old and probably way more sluggish than it was in 1989
I suspect this is the case. Motion clarity was never very good. But, last time I tried on my own childhood Game Boy, it was pretty much unplayable with platformers that regularly moved the screen. There's a difference between "a screen so bad you prayed your parents would drive under a street lamp so you could see" and 38-year-old lethargic liquid in the LCD.
@@nickwallette6201I had mega attachment called the *Handy Boy,* which was a square magnifying glass, two small lightbulbs on each side, and two fold out stereo speakers. 😁🤘
_(folded closed, they protected the mag glass, like window shutters)_
It also had a controls attachment, where for the D-Pad it was similar to the Analog Stick on N64. Then the A and B were just larger and closer together.
It was *super* clunky and I _never_ used it. (it cliped on separately)
I don't remember if the speakers were powered by the GameBoy, or if it has a small amplifier... But it's been over 30 years. Based on pictures, it looks to have a power switch for the speakers, so it likely does, and used the GameBoy's own volume dial to do handle the unit's volume control.
But yea, its added lighting was the REAL hero! Which obviously meant my GameBoy now required 6 batteries. lol
Plus it's running below 2 volts with the contrast all the way up.
It could be just regular degradation of the screen components. These things are over 30 years old, after all.
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLEI had something similar but smaller, so no speakers. No convoluted folding mechanism. Just the magnifier and the light. Two incandescent bulbs, “grain of wheat” sized (because I guess millimetres would be too abstract? Gotta call em rice, wheat, barley, etc. Sure, whatever).
It drained the one AAA battery it took in an hour, sometimes two. My brother had a more expensive one with a single, and still very new, warm-white LED. It was brighter and lasted over 10x as long. I was so jealous 😂
"Thank goodness I still live in a world full of;
Telephones!
Handguns!
Lemon powered GameBoys! ...
...And many things - made of Zinc! "
Those old tech are made to last forever and are made to work forever. And seeing it run on almost nothing makes it better.
So for every day you charge it, you can joyously play your game boy for just about 1.4 minutes.
I hope you had a nice black tea with those lemons afterwards. Can't let them go to waste!
Lemon black tea and Gameboy sounds like a grand time.
lemon with a hint of copper & zinc 💀
@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 I already taste copper though, so no biggie.
@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 and quite possibly mold
@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 Parts of the lemon without traces of zinc look delish. Honestly i would definetly feed them to the neighbours kids whom i appreciate for waking me up everyday at 5 AM. 😀
“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade, make it power your gameboy”
-Cave Johnson (probably)
Ngl the portal screenshot made my heart happy
Make life rue the day it gave James lemons. Have your engineers invent a combustible lemon.
I came for the video game experiment, I stayed for the cat meow 😻
james do a potato powered virtual boy
Wow! Thats quite the lemon party! :)
Theres something incredibly satisfying about seeing how slowly the voltmeter was ticking up when the bank was charging, and then seeing it tick down at almost two hertz as you're playing
I'm happy you took the smart route and put all the other people who have attempted similar experiments, to absolute shame.
Speedrun category
LEMON%
Interesting fact about the original game boy!! The screens actually become blurrier over time. I believe it's because of UV exposure but I could be mistaken.
When life gives you lemmons you power a game boy
James truly is an engineer for the common man (psychos). Love the content big man.
Average James channel video(at least in my opinion):
Start: smart thing
Middle: smart thing
End: smart thing
Last second: cat
I'm pretty jealous that variable power supply that juicy resistance though
Probably using a simpler game like Tetris would last some more as that contains a single chip, while Mario Land is a large enough game to require a mapper chip.
Might not be a lot but hey, 5 minutes is 5 minutes! :D
i would love to see a comparison with the same amount of lemons would do with a game boy pocket! your channel always brings me such joy. it’s nice to see a retro game channel that isn’t just doing the same mods all the time!
I'm honestly impressed you were able to play for over 10 minutes, considering how power hungry most electronics were back then! I remember Sega Game Gear needing approximately 812 AA batteries!
Did you burn their house down? With the lemons?
portal reference :D
Wow! Looks like you're having a Lemon Party!
You could literally charge the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center with 14 lemons.
Hope you didn't steal those lemons, James.
In elementary school I did a science experiment for the fair. I found out that lemons are the second least efficient food item to produce power. The most efficient was the onion due to the chemical density and concentration. It produced over 3 volts!
You know, the first video I watched here made me go, "Huh?" At this point, I'm fully invested in the weird...
Capacitors also charge slower the more you charge them so it makes sense that after a week you basically stopped charging.
Now I know what to bring to my lemon party
This is probably something I would do to avoid using batteries.
Nice to see it done.
when life gives you lemons, connect them to your game boy and play mario land for about 10 minutes
James is REALLY charged up in this one
It's weird how fruits and vegetables i.e. lemons, potatoes, and pickles, have the ability to keep a GameCube on life support
I guess now you're playing with power. Lemon power.
We’ve all played that brightness gamble, trying to squeeze every last bit from the batteries.
Now I can say my gameboy has run out of juice and be quite literal in the sense.
When life gives you lemons, plug them into your game boy.
That's pretty cool. If you had 2 Game Boys and a link cable you could have a lemon party!
that first gameboy is probably one of the best human inventions ever
the sequel to the potato-powered calculator with DOOM on it
This guy reminds me of DankPods I wonder if they know each other
Genius. Thanks for another great lesson JAMES
I remember guy that used potatoes to run Doom on a calculator. Similar energy.
Love that game and what a wild experiment! always love the mad science with James! PS that basement gaming cave is too awesome.
There's a lemon behind that rock! 🍋
I very much enjoyed that Lemon% speedrun
6:37 Your cat always makes me chuckle. What a talker!
It looks like you've came up with a new speed running category. The lemon percent speed run, lol.
When life gives you lemons, use it to power a Gameboy.
This channel is like a way more complicated dankpods
Did I just watch you power a Nintendo Gameboy with lemons? 😲 I am impressed! I have been binging your videos! I like your video editing! I also like that you celebrate your accomplishments and that you make the video feel like I am sitting right there with you! Keep up the good work!
Bro still put a portal reference even tho its about potatoes.. u get a like for that
im gonna get my team of engineers to invent a game boy lemon
Wait, what? Since when is that experiment done with lemons, we've used potatoes!
James encompasses the level of cromulent jank I aspire to once I get my engineering degree too
Oh I dropped out of engineering.
@@Games_for_James not before learning the good stuff, apparently
Insert “Cave Johnson Portal Quote about lemons” here.
You can get more current out of a single lemon, by plugging in multiple cathodes and anodes.
When life gives you lemons have a …. LAN party!
This is very nostalgic, for everyone in my school playing through faded screens, and sitting on batteries to warm them up a little and get 5 more minutes of gameplay. I never expected that meant we were sitting on 1.2-1.5V though! Haha.
This is also a fantastic example of how capacitors are useful for voltage boosting circuits. Without getting too technical, or into super-fast switching. So well done!
Though it does make me wonder if automated switching would improve the charge rate, along with an actual piece of pure zinc. Maybe not enough to play live, but at least to extend the play time by making it drain slower? I bet a cheap electrolysis kit, one with too many impurities for actual chemists, could do the trick.
So when life gives you lemons, play Mario
If you live in Adelaide, this makes it pretty clear which day he recorded on. It doesn’t rain for more than two minutes at a time very often 😂
I was there Friday to Tuesday visiting mates and family, and it had rained earlier on the day I arrived (so Friday daytime I think?) it would've been the first time it rained there in months, cuz that's Adelaide in the summer.
Though this year's been a weird one and I moved to Melbourne years ago so who knows
I forget that you have cats and each time I get to the end of your videos I audibly go "kitty!"
6:22 “You can play gameboy for free”
Except the lemons cost money
Impressed by both the videos and the lemons. Learnt about makign fruit batteries too. Thank you for making my potential apocalypse plans more fun.
Well you know what they say
When life gives you lemons
You power your gameboy with them
I can't believe you didn't say, "He's dead Jim"
James I love this! Please make more cursed content😂
you are my favorite youtube channel and make the best videos thank you ❤:D
Thank you so much 😀
Thank you youtube algorithm, this channel is so amazing, I love everything about it!!🎉
You really should’ve squished around the lemons so the juice would go between the two terminals.
You don't need individual lemons for every pair of metals...
When life gives you lemons, power your GameBoy.
5:14 This takes "Mum last level" to the limit
I like your cat, and your game room makes me jealous lol
I was ready for everything exept lemons.
lemon boy and meee started to get along togetheeer
capacity ticking down like old school mario seconds
That’s some sour power but that the gameboy even ran off any power generated by the lemons for more than 30 secs is cool.
This was such a fun video James!
I was literally looking for Game Boy when this uploaded.
now your playing with power! PORTABLE LEMON POWER!
30 hours it was suposse to last. but this is cool!