Portable NES & GB-to-NES Adaptor
Biederman Design Labs (BDL) was a small unit of engineers that designed cool things in the videogame world. Two creations that never made it outside their labs thanks to Nintendo (of course!), were a portable NES and an adaptor that let you play GameBoy games on the NES! Of course, nowadays these things aren't especially astonishing, but in 1991 they sure were...
BDL Prototypes
This page gives a short introduction to two peripherals made by BDL -- Biederman Design Labs -- back in 1991. They were developing this hardware in conjunction with Camerica. Of course, Nintendo went and threatened to sue them if they ever released these things, so they never were released to the general public. The following text and images are taken directly from EGM issue # 23, June 1991. The pictures suck because they were of such low quality even in the magazine. The spelling and grammar errors in the magazine have not been made (nor fixed) by me, so don't complain.
(Jeez, and these people got jobs in publishing!)It appears that one-time peripheral producer Camerica, last seen whipping Nintendo over the right to sell the company's Game Genie video game enhancer in Canada, has set its sights on an even larger slice of the video game pie. The company has officially announced plans to unleash over 20 carts for the the Nintendo 8-Bit, none of which will carry the gaming giant's "Seal of Approval". Among the first entrys [sic] will be a special multiple game title that will feature several different contests on the same cart!
This would appear to be a very aggressive push into the market by a company that only a year ago was famous for its remote joysticks. In addition to the softs, however, Camerica will also be making a move to produce more hardware compatible with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo game cartridges.
In a rumored [sic] confirmed by top company representatives, Camerica plans to market both the portable Nintendo Entertainment System and the GameBoy to Nintendo adapter that have been previously announced in this section of EGM from Biederman Design Labs. Both of the devices are state-of-the-art enhancements compared to the normal hardware selections that Nintendo offers, and the quality of the work, even in the prototypes, was extraordinarily good.
While it's safe to say that an abundance of cosmetic changes will be made to the pictures which we've shown before, Camerica is said to be very enthusiastic about the new devices, although formally they remain tight-lipped about the existance [sic] of a formal plan to bring the products to store shelves.
The portable Nintendo, formally called The Express, delivers solid gaming on the go using your existing library of NES-compatible cartridges. In the version we tested, joypad ports were built into the surface of the unit, although a different model, with the pad built-in, was also working.
The Express had all the makings of an instant hit until Nintendo yanked out the batteries on the company trying to market the device. Some additional engineering was to be attempted to avoid any copyright infringements, apparently enough to make Camerica give the go-ahead!
The GameBoy converter was equally well made, finally giving players the chance to display small screen games on the TV like magazines do with expensive items called WideBoys.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20020103072144/http://www.zyx.com/chrisc/
