Sam's video game collection essentials

Nintendo’s Game Boy utterly dominated the handheld gaming scene for well over a decade, starting in 1989. Perhaps because of its success, and also perhaps for the sake of low prices, in the latter part of that time Game Boy devices were able to get away with being rather underpowered. The original Game Boy launched with roughly comparable specs to Nintendo’s primary home console at the time, the NES. But as home console technology rapidly improved, the power of Game Boy machines increased at a much slower rate. NES and Game Boy were both 8-bit machines, but 1998’s Game Boy Color (despite some improvements) was still only 8 bits while Nintendo’s current console had jumped all the way up to 64. The Game Boy Advance in 2001 was noticeably more powerful, but it was still more or less comparable to the power of a Super Nintendo, which was a machine that was only really a year older than the original Game Boy.  A big change was due for the handheld market. 2004 is the year when it would ...