By Lori Soard on December 22, 2011 in
In the summer of 1989, a phenomenon took place that left parents scratching their heads as youths clamored for a new gadget they couldn't seem to get enough of - the Nintendo Game Boy. Video games, now portable in mass, left living rooms and basements and entered the back seats of cars, airplanes, waiting rooms and anywhere else a young gamer could carry their new gizmo.
The superhero of the gaming industry
Gaming site 1up.com reports that the early 1980s saw the once lucrative video gaming industry take a downward decline and eventually it came to a near halt. Analysts believed it might be the end of an era, until Nintendo introduced their Game Boy product. The company's official timeline shows that Nintendo started in 1889 with the production of Japanese playing cards. It progressed with coin operated games, moved to the simple family game system NES, which featured popular Mario games, and then completely revived the gaming industry when employee Gunpei Yokoi created the Game Boy. Although hand-held games have been around since the 1970s, and Nintendo had some previous success with the Game and Watch hand-held game line, Nintendo's 1989 Game Boy took hand-held gaming mainstream. The one million game systems sent in the first shipment to the United States only met about half of the market demand and sold out within mere weeks. According to Nintendo, the Game Boy sold nearly 150 million units, making it the most popular video game system to date.
The early success of the Game Boy may have been in its simple design; it featured four buttons to be used during game play: "A", "B", "Select" and "Start". In addition, a pad with up, down and side arrows was used for directional play. On the top of the system was the on-off switch along with a slot for Game Boy game cartridges. Game Boy was originally bundled with an addictive Russian puzzle game called Tetris. There were over 800 different games cartridges that could be played on the original Game Boy. Favorites from the debut year included: Baseball, Double Dragon, Final Fantasy, Super Mario Land, Tennis and Yakuman.
The jack on the bottom edge allowed users to plug in headphones, so the noise from the system did not disturb others. Along the left-hand side of the system was a port to plug in either a rechargeable battery pack or to use as an AC adaptor. On the right-hand side of the system was a port for a link cable. This cable made it possible to link two gaming systems and allow the players to battle in a game, or to exchange elements in a game, such as trading Pokémon characters in later game releases.
The Game Boy puts on its big boy pants
Over the years, Game Boy continued to evolve. The research and development team at Nintendo worked behind the scenes on new games and new features for the Game Boy. By 1994, Nintendo upgraded the basic Game Boy with cases in new colors and called it the Super Game Boy. This version could also be plugged into a television and played on screen for a larger display. The system still featured a black and white screen and the same layout and size as the original Game Boy, but the cases came in colors such as red, green, yellow, blue, black, white and clear.
In 1996, the Game Boy Pocket hit the scene. Nintendo indicates that this version of the Game Boy was popular in school backpacks. By 1998, Game Boy Color was introduced, innovating the hand-held gaming out of the era of black and white hand-helds.
The creator of the original Game Boy died after being hit by a car in 1997. He had already resigned from Nintendo by that time, but still served as a consultant. Using a team of researchers, Nintendo carried on the development of the system, releasing additional changes over the years. In 2001, they released the Game Boy Advance, which featured better graphics through 32-bit games and a larger screen. In 2003, the Game Boy Advance SP wrapped up the Game Boy line of systems with a folding design and front-lit screen.
Game Boy passes the torch to DS
The Game Boy Advance SP was the last version of Game Boy systems. In 2004, Nintendo introduced a new generation of hand-helds: the Nintendo DS. Thus, the era of this iconic toy closed, but there is no doubt that this system paved the way for all the technology featured in our report on the best hand-held gaming systems. Game Boy was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2009. It is a snapshot of technological history that inspires game system designers to this day.