S’porean Who Created ‘Watermelon Gameboy’ Featured On NextShark; Also, The Original Has Rotted Away

By
Luna Tee
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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, he 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.

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A little more than a week ago, Tan published his fourth video.

As of this writing, the video has garnered 28k views. He also made the front page of Reddit, ranking at number eight, with posts that have nearly 48k upvotes collectively.

Most recently, he was featured on NextShark, a leading Asian American and Asian news platform.

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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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And it’s all because of a watermelon.

Melonboy

It started off as a joke between friends and family. Tan had a vision of someone playing with a watermelon out in public. “The humour of that thought alone convinced me to turn this thought into a reality,” he told Mothership.

Hence began his quest to transform a watermelon into an actual plaything.

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Tan ran a Gameboy emulator through a Raspberry Pi 3 computing board and loaded it with a Pokemon Emerald Read-Only-Memory (ROM).

He fitted these components, along with some classic red buttons, a 1.8-inch screen, loudspeakers and a mess of wires inside a hollowed-out watermelon tethered to a powerbank.

Tan calls it a ‘memetastic abomination‘, but its actual name is ‘Melonboy’.

Good, Educational Fun

Utilizing his background in Information System, Tan was able to handle the programming aspect of the operation.

In spite of that, he had to learn electrical engineering from scratch. Tan viewed it as an arduous yet enjoyable challenge, which he gladly took on.

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Tan spent a month on the project, but only because of a faulty Raspberry Pi 3 that had to be repurchased.

When the replacement arrived, he properly assembled the console in less than a week.

Upon completion, he promptly took Melonboy out for a spin around town. At one point, a passenger mistakenly reported it as a watermelon bomb at the subway.

Once it is clarified, the SMRT staffs delighted in taking photos of the new Internet celebrity.

The Melonboy Legacy

The original Melonboy rotted in four days and a new one had to be made to continue its legacy.

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But now that Tan has established the possibility of “the freshest, most environmentally friendly and fragrant” console, there’s no reason to stop.

There are calls for a Gameboy set in rockmelon, avocado, coconut, and the most popular suggestion of all – durian.

Personally, I’m just wondering if he’d ever find himself in the sticky situation of fitting one into a raspberry pie 😉

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Luna Tee
Email: [email protected]