Here’s an idea for those of us who live in cramped quarters: turn a Game Boy Advance into your entertainment center! Ha ha!

Granted, you’d probably rather use some sort of little MP3 player ROM loaded up on a flash cart instead. But for the purposes of my filmed demonstration, I am using garbage. When I was in college, I pooled 10 or 20 bucks and blew the pot on this little hunk of trash.

But it’s kind of a nice time capsule now, I guess, because I loaded music from my computer onto the cartridge once and only once, and here it all is! Now I can relive my most-played music mix from my junior year at Northwestern. (I’m also glad I spent so much time lovingly filming my silver, sidelit GBA SP, now that I have passed it along to Derek.)

The player does not sit flush in the SP’s cartridge slot—that, combined with the SP’s awful headphone jack adapter, makes this whole thing a cumbersome exercise. The shoulder buttons, which are much too easy to nudge accidentally, skip the player from track to track; you can also use the directional pad to highlight the music player’s on-screen “buttons” and “press” those.

In the end, this whole arrangement is terrible. I only wanted an excuse to film my GBA being awesome and upload the footage. Nerdy!