Collection essentials #145: Game Boy

 

Our next system is one you’ve more than likely heard of if you’re above a certain age, even if you’re not a gamer. It’s Nintendo’s wildly successful portable gaming device, Game Boy.

The Game Boy launched in 1989. It was not the first portable handheld game system to use interchangeable cartridges, as such a thing had been created a whole decade prior, the Microvision by Milton Bradley. But prior to Game Boy, no such system had ever achieved any real widespread popularity. 

The funny thing about the Game Boy is that it wasn’t really cutting-edge technology even for the time. The Game Boy screen was in monochrome, and had no backlight, meaning the player needed an outside light source to see the screen. In the very same year, the Atari Lynx would be released, and it boasted both color AND a backlight, which are undeniably nice things to have. But the Game Boy absolutely trounced the Lynx and all other competition. Why? The answer was Nintendo ingeniously finding the right balance of cost and convenience. As they had with the Famicom, they were careful not to give the Game Boy too many features to keep manufacturing costs low so the machine would be nice and affordable. And the problem with the Atari Lynx and other more advanced handheld systems at the time was that they ate batteries for lunch. You would get far more use out of a set of AA batteries with your Game Boy than you would with its competitors, meaning the cost of regular use was lower AND you didn’t have to worry about the hassle of buying and inserting new batteries all the time. And it certainly helped that Game Boy came bundled with a great adaptation of a certain super popular puzzle game invented in Russia (more on that later), which was a perfect fit for a simple handheld gaming device. 

Nintendo had a near-monopoly over the console gaming market in the 1980s with the NES. That would change in the ‘90s as other developers caught up to and even eventually surpassed them. But this also saw a period of absolute dominance by Nintendo in the rapidly-growing handheld gaming market. The Game Boy and its successors who bore the name were always extremely popular and no other company’s portable device ever came close for 15 years until the end of the “Game Boy” name. Even many people who only very casually dabbled in video games grabbed themselves a Game Boy for its affordability, ease of use and certain games like that one from Russia that were easy to play and addictive.

It was very common back then for developers to make Game Boy versions of popular console games when possible. Of course, compromises had to be made, due to no color, a smaller screen and the rather limited power of the hardware, but many gamers were glad to have some form of their favorite game to play on the go. Some popular gaming series saw entirely unique installments on the Game Boy with original content, often at a smaller scale than their console counterparts. Nowadays, there are many more options for portable gaming devices, and usually there is some way to play your favorite game on such a device nearly or fully without compromises. And so, it is true that the Game Boy’s library largely feels outdated. However, there certainly still are Game Boy games out there that do stand the test of time and are definitely worth a try even if you’re not running on nostalgia. I’ll be covering some of my picks in the coming days.

You’ll see in the photo that there are two Game Boy devices. The one on the left is the original system which released in 1989. It’s not recommended to play games on one of those anymore, because motion on the screen carries a blur effect that negatively impacts the experience, something that I’ve heard has gotten worse in these systems with age. The system on the right is a revision called the “Game Boy Pocket” that released in 1996, which boasted a more compact size, a fix to the motion blurring, and only requiring half as many AA batteries to run. You’re much better off playing one of these, although successors to the Game Boy are much nicer and are fully compatible with the cartridges for the original Game Boy, so even the Pocket is not recommended anymore for playing those games. I, of course, still want these systems for my collection.

My early childhood was in the ‘90s, and it is perhaps surprising that I never got my hands on a Game Boy of my own during this time despite its cheap price. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that I would get a Game Boy device, but it was the successor to the Game Boy which I will be covering much later on in this series. But once I did have that successor, I did acquire some of the games released for the original Game Boy since they were compatible, and I got to experience some games I had missed out on in the ‘90s. Game Boy was a huge deal, and some form of Game Boy is essential for any retro game enthusiast.