You play Balatro on your Phone? This guy plays it on his Gameboy Advance!

I would bet you have played Balatro. But I would double down on the chance that you've never played it on a Gameboy Advance. Well you may not have but someone has, because a coder known as Elliptical on Youtube has uploaded a video of his recreation of Balatro running on Nintendo's 2001 era handheld!

In the video below, Elliptical shows off his custom Balatro game cart and fires it up on his GBA to take us on a little demo. The video also gives a good background on the effort required to make something like this happen, and how his initial solo project has blossomed into a team effort that has taken the 'port' farther than he would have alone. You can check it out for yourself below.

I love to see these passion projects in action, and I am always in awe at how people are able to take current game designs and rework them to fit on classic hardware. You can almost imagine an alternate history where Balatro could have taken the world by storm 20 years earlier.

If you are technically inclined you can hit up the github repo for the project and get involved. Or just grab your GBA (or emulator) and give it a spin, but don't forget to buy the original first!