On July 31, 1989, the gaming landscape in North America was forever altered by the arrival of the Game Boy. It was like an NES you could fit in your pocket! This legendary device firmly established Nintendo's dominance as king of handheld gaming, trouncing the efforts of Sega, Atari, Bandai, and others. The Game Boy line was finally retired when the Nintendo DS was introduced and became a smash success, but its spirit lives on to this day.
The Game Boy was a weird halfway machine for many gamers. What if you didn't travel a lot? Why would you play a handheld in the house when a much more powerful console was sitting right below the TV? How come the games felt like substandard versions of their console brethren? Valid concerns for some, but for others, the Game Boy was as much a legitimate powerhouse as any stationary hardware. It gave birth to such long-standing franchises as Kirby and Pokemon, introduced Mario's doppelgänger Wario, and made Tetris a global addiction! It's legacy is admirable indeed.
If you haven't already, go back and watch Jeremy Parish's amazing Game Boy retrospective video that we posted at the start of the month. Also visit his Game Boy World site to learn more about the Game Boy than you ever though possible. And if you still have the indestructible gray brick sitting in your closet somewhere, maybe it's time to take it out and relive the old green-tinted days.
