I'd order brushed stainless steel buttons in a heartbeat

Copper might be cool. It'd be like Thretris' steampunk gameboy.

please post photos of that.

those too are a great idea.

I once made a small series of wooden Dpads and A/B buttons.
They looked cool as well..
Bit shifter even bought a set (namedropping ftw)

I'll see if I still have some photo's

I'd probably stick to plastic for my boys.  Wider color options.   I'd rather have you spend your time on cooler projects.  I'll probably still buy some though... haha

Cool. I'll be sending stuff to have it metal plated myself in a few weeks / months so I might throw in a dmg case as well

i could care less for any aesthetic gameboy modifying but this makes the buttons sound totally worth it.

ok...  i'll start making moves towards metal buttons...  enough vocal interest to at least manage one run i think.  since the button design already exists it shouldn't be too hard to adjust it for this type of project.  much easier than working from scratch.

@ ashimoke -- i had some samples done like this and found around the edges of the button holes and on the edge lip of the case it was very very easy to chip/peel this coating off.  so for users i just saw too many problems.  however, i'll look back into it (they were just samples after all, which tend to be just representative sometimes).  loomis sent some samples of some knock-off cases in silver and gold that looked pretty good, seemed to be something similar but thinner and bonded to the plastic (but not just metal-effect paint).  i'm sending those samples out to my plastics people to see what they think and to try to recreate this look.

Metal buttons, fast response!
What about cheaper, unfinished metal buttons?

Yes, that's what I mean - vacuum metal plating. What kind of "chipping issues"?

edit: I guess I know what you mean now. Wouldn't coating it in acrylic or something like that help? Or better quality plating? This technology IS actually used for stuff like this.

as in, the chrome effect that can be put onto plastics?

(if so...  i looked into this, there were some chipping issues)

You could get your DMG (and buttons) chrome plated for not too much $ if you wouldn't mind it still being plastic...

If you can put together an .stl model of the buttons you could always send them to shapeways and get them printed in stainless or silver. Not sure what the cost would be. You'd have to get them chromed yourself though. Shit, imagine an entirely chrome DMG. Sex.

Interested!