Surprise: The BrickBoy kit for the Lego Game Boy uses floating magnets instead of switches

"If you're one of the nearly 3,500 Kickstarter backers paying to give your Lego Game Boy an actual screen and buttons, I have a question: did you expect those buttons to have physical switches underneath? Because the BrickBoy - not to be confused with Natalie the Nerd's Build A Boy - is not currently going with physical clicks. Instead, it glues rare earth magnets inside Lego bricks, for what will hopefully be a magical experience."

"This came as a surprise to me, because the BrickBoy Kickstarter, ending in three days, barely mentions magnets at all. Every one of the startup's promo image shows domed switches underneath the buttons, and startup Substance Labs never really explained how the buttons worked until just yesterday - an hour into an AMA video that only has 248 views at the time I type these words."

Nearly 3,500 Kickstarter backers funded a BrickBoy project to add a screen and buttons to a Lego Game Boy. The project uses glued rare-earth magnets inside Lego bricks to register button presses instead of physical clicking switches. The Kickstarter campaign barely mentioned the use of magnets, while promo images depicted domed switches under the buttons. Substance Labs revealed the magnet approach late in an AMA video with low viewership. A colleague who previously covered the company also assumed rubber domes. The magnetic solution aims to avoid hollowing out the Lego shell and only requires removing a few extra bricks.

Read at The Verge