Before phones could download games, the Game Boy dominated handheld gaming for well over a decade.
Its success laid the foundation for Nintendo’s dominance in the handheld market by combining simplicity with groundbreaking games.
This clever design philosophy established the blueprint for future handheld consoles, including the Nintendo Switch.
The iconic tech gadgets that shaped our world.
From groundbreaking gaming consoles to revolutionary mobile devices and music players, discover the legends of technology.
These usedcalculator-like displayswith pre-drawn shapes rather than pixels.
This philosophy emphasized using simple, proven technology in innovative ways to keep costs low and reliability high.
This sparked the vision of a portable gaming system that could entertain people on the go.
The team agreed on one crucial feature: the display had to be monochrome.
An RGB display with three sub-pixels per pixel would have drastically reduced battery life.
The blue pixels appeared black against the screen’s reflective yellow-green background.
To this day, DJs around the world use modified Game Boys to create music.
The Game Boy featured a mono speaker but could output stereo sound through its headphone jack.
To this day, DJs around the world use modified Game Boys to create music.
The Game Boy aimed to change gaming the way the Walkman changed listening to music.
That game was the first to showcase Wario, Mario’s arch-nemesis.
Another popular character that debuted on the Game Boy was Kirby.
Retro Gaming Nostalgia: A colorful glimpse into the Super Mario Land Game Boy manual.
Click for a video gameplay walkthrough of the 1989 title.
The inclusion of the game was a stroke of genius.
It even became the first video game played in space in 1993, thanks to cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov.
First Lady Hillary Clinton would play on her daughter Chelsea’s Game Boy before getting her own rig.
Nintendo’s marketing for the Game Boy targeted not just kids but also teenagers and adults.
This clever strategy broke down stereotypes that gaming was only for children and made the console a cultural phenomenon.
It cost $250, had a three-hour battery life and only sold 1.5 million units.
The handheld rig survived a tent fire and was left charred and melted.
Amazingly, the Game Boy still worked and continued to function despite its disfigured exterior.
By the mid-1990s, the Game Boy had transcended gaming to become a cultural icon.
Its distinctive shape and simplicity also inspired artists and designers, becoming a symbol of 1990s pop culture.
With no real competition, Nintendo didn’t need to release a complete successor to its console.
Games created with the Super Game Boy in mind could also use different 4-color palettes for different objects.
The screen had the same 2.5-inch size, but used a film-compensated STN panel to display true grey.
In the U.S., it sold well by default.
In Japan, it was for a different reason.
That same year, Pocket Monsters Red and Green launched in Japan, followed by the enhanced Blue version.
The Game Boy’s popularity spawned numerous accessories, from magnifying glasses with built-in lights to stereo speaker attachments.
The Game Boy could take selfies, and print them too.
By then, Japan had already got the Yellow version, based on the anime series following the games.
Combined, all versions sold 46 million copies.
Nine years after its original launch, the Game Boy Color debuted in 1998.
It had a marginally smaller 2.3-inch screen and the same battery life as the Pocket with two AA batteries.
The original Game Boy series was discontinued two years later, having sold nearly 119 million units.
The Game Boy Advance was eventually replaced by the Nintendo DS in 2004.
