The Gameboy player is an attachable peripheral directly developed by Nintendo for the Gamecube. With it situated at the bottom of the console where it would connect via a high speed port. Allowing players to play any; Gameboy,colour or advance game directly through their console on to the TV. With control functionality going to the gamepad, and menu select allowing for games to be swapped in and out. Most games and features would work perfectly fine minus some exceptions and rumble/vibration features such as Pokemon pinball.
Ignore the dogshit quality photo’s i’m still starting out, it’ll get better I Promise. 
Instead of going down the route of using an emulator to work, the player is booted up by a disc, which without renders it useless, not the best of designs. However this allowed for the internal components of the unit base basically being a Gameboy advance handheld system itself. A significant upgrade over it’s predecessors. Also being able to play all previous handheld generations of games boosted the Gamecubes library by hundreds of other games by proxy. Giving the option to play some games you may not have properly before or some you just didn’t want to play on the smaller screen.
This wasn’t Nintendo’s first attempt at this, the N64 had the wide boy, which was initially conceived as a way for gaming journalist and the like to be able to take better quality snapshots of Gameboy games. Having two variants released one for GBC and GBA games, making the aspect for nowadays a hard collecting endeavour as neither are particularly cheap and having to obtain two for one system is a tad annoying.
Even before this there was the Super Game boy, allowing Gameboy games to be played through the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. So this was really always coming in some form or another to the Gamecube. Which I can’t complain about as I now get the option to play some of the best Pokemon games in the series on my TV, way before the likes of Let’s Go or Sword and Shield.
Overall it comes with two big pluses even for the time it was a cool concept, and even now I think it’s impressive. The first being been able to play any of your childhood GB games on your TV and the second adding the inadvertent functionality of not losing charge as it’s powered through the Gamecube instead. A big flaw about it, especially some 18 years after its conception and release, its utterly useless without the boot up disc, which is also region blocked but oddly the unit itself isn’t. So getting paired with the wrong disc is just as much of an annoyance as not having it. The biggest drawback which for all I do really like this little bit of tech and rather not have to think is that even on release it was kinda never needed, just a gimmick to boost sales numbers at best.
A Solid 8/10, Certified highly Tasty. A cool expansion to an already underrated console, adding just a little bit more to the legacy of Nintendo and it’s push for handheld gaming.
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