Nintendo and Lego have revealed their latest collaboration: The Lego Game Boy. And this latest collaboration pays tribute to the past in a special way.
A Short Introduction To The Game Boy
The Game Boy was introduced in 1989 and is remembered as the start of Nintendo’s successful run in the portable video game handheld console business. But that success seemed contradictory to how poor the technology in the device was.
Gamers didn’t quite understand why it had a monochrome display with a green background. That made it clearly inferior to its full color peers, like the Game Gear and the Atari Lynx.
What’s So Special About That Screen?
However, the handheld’s big secret to success was its dot matrix display. This very simple display turns lights on and off to show letters, numbers, or in the Game Boy, moving graphics. These displays were cheaper to make and easier to make graphics for.
But the big secret of these displays is you can look at them in broad daylight. This was simply an advantage of this technology that did not carry over when Nintendo started adding color to their handheld devices.
The dot matrix technology was so central to the original Game Boy that the console received the codename DMG-01. This stands for Dot Matrix Game, and it was the first of its kind.
Here’s Where Lego Gets Clever
Lego’s new Nintendo Game Boy comes with Lego cartridges of Super Mario Land and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Unfortunately, you can’t actually play these games. However, Lego came up with a clever trick you can do with them.
These cartridges come with lenticular Game Boy screens that display gameplay from both games. These screens recreate the look of the original dot matrix displays, but Lego went a step further.
By default, the Lego Game Boy also comes with a lenticular Nintendo start screen. And because these are lenticular screens, you can see the images in the screens move as you change your viewing angle up or down.
If you were curious, the original dot matrix displays didn’t have a lenticular effect, but the way images moved does look similar to how lenticular images appear to move as well.
Everything Else Is Also Great
It’s a genuinely clever way to recreate the feeling of the original Game Boy. Lego Game Boy has a fully tactile d-pad and buttons once you assemble those too, of course. The Lego store shows that it’s up for pre-order now, and will start shipping on October 1, 2015.
So you might get your hands on a Lego Game Boy even before you get a Switch 2. In the meantime, you can enjoy Lego and Nintendo’s tribute to the original Game Boy commercial below.
