It’s hard to believe but there was a time when rumble was not a standard feature of controllers. The N64 made some of the first steps with it’s “rumble pak” in 1997, then a few years later in 1999, Nintendo tried to add rumble to it’s GameBoy lineup by including a rumble motor in certain game carts.

One of those games was Pokemon Pinball, which gives you a little feedback when you hit a bumper. When I got my cart out of storage the rumble was not working at all, which is to be expected in a 25 year old motor. My first step was to open the cart up and manually rotate the motor: often they get stuck in place and need some help to spin freely.

This did help but the rumble was still kind of weak, you could be confused for not realising it was there. I decided to try my luck ordering a new 3v rumble motor from AliExpress. They were all a few bucks each so I ordered one which looks like a mini vibrator and another which appears to be more closer in shape to the original component.

The mini vibrator arrived first so I decided to start with it. Nothing complicated about installing it, open up the shell, de-solder the original motor and connect the new one.

The new motor is a little larger than the original but to my surprise it fit inside the shell and the whole thing went back together without too much trouble.

That is it! A very easy mod which works just as expected. The new rumble motor is much more noticeable without being too strong, I think it’s a perfect feeling for this game.

There were a total of 16 US GameBoy games released in this cartridge form factor with a rumble motor built in. I have a few more Japanese Pokemon Pinball carts and Perfect Dark, I will give them a crack next.

Learn more about GameBoy rumble games in this video I just found online