I complain that there are not enough buttons on cars, but this is not what I mean. A YouTube tinkerer named John Sutley showed us how he got the original 1989 Game Boy in his car that acts as a speedometer. It’s a bonafide, “why not?” kind of a hacking project, and it’s incredibly poignant at a time when car screens are getting bigger and more distracting with each generation.

I didn’t have time to watch the 55-minute video because I had too much going on in my head, but it covered the process from infancy to slaughter. John spends most of the video walking through his process and explaining how he decided to connect the car to the Game Boy. His initial goal was to have the Game Boy read the car’s CAN bus system and display the mileage per hour on a 160×144-pixel dot-matrix display. John had to design custom circuit boards for this project to connect the CAN system and the Game Boy. The bridging process took months, but John came up with a form factor that would fit into the Game Boy’s cartridge slot and then run a cable that would connect to the car’s internal computer.

The final product is remarkably unpolished. It looked like a hackneyed device bursting at its seams with the circuit board completely exposed. It won’t replace the Android Auto/CarPlay external displays you can buy for your car but will ensure some “geek” cred.

While driving, John could barely get a video on the illuminated pea-green screen of the Game Boy. So he took the circuit-board monster he created from the original Game Boy and tested it on the late 90s model Game Boy Pocket. Its sharper black and white screen can display the mileage-per-hour better, giving John the confidence he needs after making the “world’s worst digital dash.”

“The whole idea of ​​using your Game Boy as a digital dash in your car is ridiculous,” John admits in his YouTube video. I’m glad he saw it for what it was. While the final product isn’t exactly practical to drive, the point is that it’s kind of hackery CAN will do.