Nintendo’s Greatest Brainchild - The Game Boy

The Game Boy was created by the late Gunpei Yokoi, a former Nintendo employee. Yokoi worked hard to design a handheld device that would be cheap, small, light and inexpensive in order to be a successful product amongst the general public. It was in fact so successful, since September of 2009, all generations of the Nintendo Game Boy combined have sold roughly over 200 million copies worldwide.

The Game Boy is Released in 1989

The original Game Boy, for sale in Japan on April 21st was chosen by Nintendo to be packaged with the game cartridge version of Tetris, said by GameSpy to be one of the twenty-five smartest moments in gaming. The handheld device had a black and green, reflective LCD screen, an eight-way directional pad, two active buttons, a Start and Select option, volume control, and an extension connector. Nintendo of Japan president, Hiroshi Yamauchi predicted it would sell twenty-five million copies within three years and to their pleasant surprise, the unit had already sold over thirty-two million by the three year mark.

The Growth of the Game Boy

Released in 1992 was the Play It Loud! This Game Boy, while its specifics were exactly the same as its predecessor, came in a variety of colors including, red, yellow, green, black, blue, white, and clear. This color option set the scene for later developments of the Game Boy, all of which are now offered in different colors. The next version of the Game Boy came out in 1994 and was called the Pocket Game Boy. This version only required two AAA batteries instead of the needed four AA batteries for the previous designs. The screen of the Pocket unit was also changed to a true black and white display, which was much nicer than the green monstrosity of the Game Boy. The Game Boy Light was released a year later in 1995, available only in Japan, which featured a backlight built-in for less than ideal playing conditions.

The Introduction of Color

The 1996 release of the Game Boy Color came with three times the memory of its predecessors, double the processor speed and the ability to play older game cartridges in a selected color palette. The Game Boy Advance in 2001 was the first version to change in its shape from all the former Game Boy units. The GBA, as it is commonly referred to as, had the addition of ‘L’ and ‘R’ buttons, had the release of several popular games who’s sizes were roughly half of the former cartridges, but was widely criticized for its no backlight, making gaming incredibly difficult without the use of a plug-in light.

2003 saw the release of the Game Boy Advanced SP, which worked to adjust the problems of the first Advance, having a flip screen, rechargeable batteries, built-in light, and unfortunately, the omission of the headphone jack, which I found particularly annoying. A second version of the SP was released in 2005, called the SP+ which adjusted the way the lighting functioned. Since then, the Nintendo Game Boy has been through the Micro, Nintendo DS, DS Lite, and the Nintendo DSi, the latest release from Nintendo featuring a camera addition and the ability to go onto an online store.

I still own all of my various Game Boy units and play them, even when I could use a backwards compatible version to play older games. There is something nostalgic and wonderful about pulling out my hefty, ancient, Play It Loud! green edition and popping in far too many batteries.