S’porean YouTuber Creates Durian Game Console & Brought It Around To Let People Try

By
Zhi Hao
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24-year-old Cedrick Tan is an impressive young man with multiple tricks up his sleeves.

He double majors in Business Analytics and Marketing at the SMU School of Information Systems and in his free time helps out at his friend’s early-childhood enrichment centre.

He also tinkers with technological projects like sending messages to Telegram using Microsoft Excel and he records and uploads these experiments to his unassuming Youtube channel, Cedishappy.

And most importantly, he created the “Melonboy”, a DIY Game Boy console that’s housed within an actual watermelon.

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A 24-year-old Marketing and Business Analytics student in Singapore has gone viral for playing “Pokémon Emerald” on a watermelon that he turned into a DIY Game Boy console called a “Melonboy.” “It started off as a joke that I was telling friends and family — it just seemed like something really funny to bring about in public and the icing on the cake would be that its green,” Tan said. “When it came down to actually making the Melonboy, it happened to be really convenient seeing as the melon was very spacious on the inside allowing me to wire everything up with ease.” Tan made the Melonboy possible by running a Game Boy emulator through the Raspberry Pi 3 computing board after removing the flesh inside the fruit. He then loaded it up with the “Pokémon Emerald” Read-Only-Memory (ROM) and made it run using a power bank. For the finishing touches, Tan cut holes in the watermelon where he could place the buttons, a 1.8-inch (45.72-millimeter) screen, loudspeakers and other wires for the connection. Tan encountered a problem with a faulty Raspberry Pi 3. He had to wait for the replacement to be delivered, but it ended up taking him a month to finish the project. “As an Information systems student, I have no background on electrical engineering so learning that from scratch took some time,” he said. Although his project was harmless, Tan was reported by someone who thought he was carrying a melon bomb after he brought the Melonboy on a train. “I was greeted by a distressed lady staff who raced down the escalator,” Tan said. The woman then realized the watermelon was nothing more than a DIY game console. After that, she asked Tan to show his work to her colleagues in the train station office. “I complied and followed her to the control station. There, the SMRT staff were elated to see the MelonBoy, I showed them the insides and pictures were taken,” Tan said. The melon handheld gaming console did not last long, but he was able to make another one to show people. “Sadly the original has kicked the bucket, it rotted four days after I posted my YouTube video,” Tan said. @nextshark 👈👈👈 support by following 🙏🙏🙏 #watermelon #gameboy #pokemon

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Alright so maybe it’s not the most important thing he has done in his life.

But it sure is the most hype-worthy one, as far as the public’s concerned.

And following the melon-based emulator’s success, there were calls for a Gameboy set in rockmelon, avocado, coconut, and the most popular suggestion of all – durian. Though the last suggestion sounds like a real pain to work with, it seems that Tan has taken on the challenge head-on…

And performed really well while at it too.

After Watermelon, S’porean Created A Playable ‘DurianBoy’, A Gameboy Embedded In A Durian

According to AsiaOne, Cedrick Tan is back at it again…

And this time, he has taken it up a thorn.

Apparently, the Singaporean Youtuber, who first made headlines for his watermelon-based handheld gaming console, has turned his sights on creating a durian-based emulator this time round…

And from the looks of it, he has succeeded.

Called the “PokeBoy”, the ‘device’ was crafted from nothing but a Mao Shan Wang Durian, rpi0, PCBs and a bunch of wires.

It also works extremely well. Though it’s certainly a little painful to handle.

According to the Youtuber, the project proved to be a much harder task to accomplish than the ‘Melon Boy’, having taken roughly two weeks from start to finish.

As the durian was essentially much smaller than a watermelon, Tan had to downsize the components of the circuitry, which led to several technical issues.

Resolving these problems required a lot of time, and he professed that at one point in time, he even had to reconstruct the circuit from scratch.

Ouch.

That’s not the end of his troubles either.

In a YouTube video Tan uploaded on Saturday (Sept 26), he showcased the entire building process and expressed how he had faced issues on the Raspberry Pi circuit board.

He also got nauseous off the solder fumes, a notion which caused him to become out of sorts for the “entire day”.

But the reactions, it seems, were well worth the pain.

Carting the PokeBoy around in a plastic bag, Tan proceeded to acquire opinions from his classmates in SMU, as well as random youngsters in Funan Mall.

And it seems that the consensus was simple and straightforward:

Interesting, fun, funny and all-around painful.

Indeed, even a group of secondary school students, who’ve never played on a standard Game Boy before, could not help but find the improvised console interesting and fun.

And though the graphics could never match up to the smartphones that are so prevalent nowadays, I guess older things will always have this distinct, generational appeal to the newer generations.

Though of course, I’m sure the fact that it was housed in a durian helped. A lot.

Deleted Footage

Apparently, not all of the footage made it inside the video.

According to Tan, he had been asked to delete some of it as filming was disallowed at certain premises.

Which is regrettable, considering how some of the interesting bits were part of the deleted footage.

“This included a gentleman from the UK who was intrigued by the concept and shared with me how he was unable to appreciate its taste no matter how he tried,” recounted Tan in an interview with AsiaOne.

“He did, however, attempted a durian KitKat bar which he proudly showed me a picture of. There were other foreigners who came up for conversations too!”

In the end, Tan concedes that though such fruit-based projects are undeniably fun to work on, they come with their own icky downsides.

“For watermelons and durians, they rot ridiculously fast if I fail to leave them in the open air. Left in a bag overnight, they rot instantly, growing white fluffy fruit mould or having a grotesque interior,” he said.

And yet, it seems that he’s not stopping his ventures anytime soon.

“The next fruit-based Game Boy will probably be a jackfruit! Imagine carrying such a huge console around! It will be a good laugh!”

Well, we’re certainly looking forward to it, Tan. 🙂

Meanwhile, you can watch his Youtube video down below:

Aptly named. And even more aptly made.

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Zhi Hao
Email: [email protected]