Nintendo Game Boy

Source: http://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress/index.php/2017/05/15/nintendo-game-boy/

The Game Boy is Nintendo's famous portable system that was introduced in 1989. It was really the first portable system that allowed for interchangeable cartridges. The price upon introduction was $89.95 and I think it was a bargain at that price. Apparently millions of others did as well.

Not only was the original Game Boy the first portable system with interchangeable games (well, technically the Microvision was first but it was far less capable), but it was the most successful, even until today. It sold over 110 million units when you factor in the minor upgraded versions (Game Boy Pocket/Light/Color). Having Tetris as the original pack-in game probably helped. The Game Boy sold essentially unchanged from 1989 until the Game Boy Pocket was introduced in 1996. This was basically a physical redesign that made it smaller, lighter, and more power efficient. It still played the exact same games.

The first real upgrade came with the Game Boy Color in 1998. Even this one was fully backwards compatible. It introduced a 15-bit color pallette, doubled the processors speed, doubled the video RAM and quadrupled system RAM. Although games could now be made in color, the screen was still a non-backlit LCD.

The first worthwhile upgrade came with the Game Boy Advance which arrived in 2001 and stayed on the market until 2010. It was technically a 32-bit system but overall it had roughly similar technical capabilities as the Super Nintendo. Even with this system, the screen was still a non-backlit LCD. This was finally rectified with the Game Boy Advance SP which changed the form factor and added backlighting though it still had the same underlying hardware and played the same games as the original Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Advance was the last Nintendo portable to bear the Game Boy name.

The original Game Boy had pretty impressive specs for a portable system upon its release (but then there was nothing to even compare it to at the time). It had a custom 8-bit processor running at 4 MHz that was similar to a Z80, 8-kb of system RAM and 8-kb of video RAM though games could expand the system RAM to 32-kb. The biggest drawback was the screen which could only display four shades of gray and suffered from severe motion blur.

There were several technically superior competitors in the first few years after the Game Boy was released, including the Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear and Turbo Express. All suffered from the same basic problems that kept them from really competing. They were more expensive, bulkier, had much lower battery life and had too few 3rd party games. Even though they had full color back-lit screens, they never really gained significant market share because of their other shortcomings.

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Thanks for stopping by and check out some of my other recent retrogaming posts below!

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