If you've ever wondered what a proper Xbox portable console might look like, then you'll probably get a kick of this.
Recently, on Twitter, the video game hardware enthusiast Redherring32 shared a video of a new portable console they had built, based on the original Xbox (thanks notebookcheck for the spot!).
"I built a portable Xbox," Redherring32 wrote on Twitter. "This isn't a PC handheld, it isn't emulation, this is a real motherboard from a real Xbox. It has a 9” 480p display, pure digital video/audio, 100W USB C charge and play, and I'm currently adding WiFi 6 for wireless Xbox Live functionality. Yes, really."
As Redherring32 states, at the heart of this handheld is a trimmed Xbox motherboard, which enables the device to be fully compatible with the console's full library. It won't play Crysis as one commenter jokingly asked, but it will have no issue playing Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and other Xbox-era games, which is good enough for us.
It took the hardware enthusiast four months to research how to properly trim the Xbox motherboard and required them to reverse engineer nearly the entire board. It is made possible by 12 different fully custom PCBs, which Redherring32 designed for the build — all of which help to transform it into a functional handheld.
Redherring32 will be making the entire project open source in the coming weeks on GitHub and has uploaded a trimming guide on bitbuilt.net for those who are interested in learning more.