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Gameboy: A History|25/03/03

We all have owned one at some point of our lives, maybe even two (three or four if you are an obsessed Nintendo fanboy), the lovable little cousin to the NES, the Nintendo Gameboy. This guy has come a long way since 1980 and has been selling strong since its debut. I think if anything deserves an article, it's Mr.Gameboy.

Allow me to present the history of everybody's favorite handheld object.

First, we have to go waaaaaay back to 1980, long before Gameboy was even concieved, to take a look at the Game & Watch series, a bunch of handheld videogames that used a LCD sceen and frankly, were pretty crappy, at least by my standards. Sure, videogames were a fairly new thing back then, so anything would have been amazing, but I highly doubt I'd sit inside and play a Game & Watch game instead of playing tag, staring at the sun, or other childhood activities. Changing the channels on TV over and over would produce about the same amount of "video game" as these. So let's jump ahead to the actual gameboy.

Alright, 1989 rolls around, four years after the release of the NES, so all of us 5-year-olds thought video games were kickin' rad by now and were pretty sufficient at kicking our dad's asses at Mario, we needed the take our games to school and show the other kids just HOW rad we were. Gameboy provided the means for us to do so. This thing was definitely the coolest thing ever at the time. We could slave to master Tetris all day, or for some reason love that cursedly terrible Super Mario Land, and with the game-linky-cable thingy, we could play Snoopy Tennis with our friends at school that also had the game (see: nobody). Link's Awakening rocks my pants to this day, and who can forget Metroid 2? Gameboy rocked... in principle anyways. It still had some downfalls (but they really didn't matter at the time).

Firstly, the thing was huge. I mean, it was still portable, but us kids needed to play these games in 6-8 hour fixes, and the Gameboy was just not small enough to keep from giving our 7-year-old hands severe wrist dysfunctions. There are non-portable consoles out these days the same size as this gameboy, but hey, technology wasn't that amazing at the time.

Secondly, the f-ing screen was made just so, so that 99.87847% of the ways light could possible shine on it, it would be impossible to see. This took away from the portability of it severely, because you could pretty much only play it under florescent lights or dim sunlight.

Before I move on, I must also mention that a lot of problems with the gameboy were solved through the plethura of useful and absolutely not-under-any-circumstances-useful gadgets that you could attach to GB.

Annnd, moving right along to '94. Not an overly big year for gameboy itself, but the Super Gameboy cartridge was released for SNES, and it was pretty cool, I guess. I mean, it gave you all the fun and excitement of your favorite gameboy games without the hassle of being to play them wherever the hell you wanted to. And hey, I guess people that didn't have gameboys could them have the satisfaction of playing much, much less advanced games on their SNES...

1995 is an even smaller year, but I guess it still has importance. You see, this is when Nintendo had the crazy notion that maybe two of the most eye-depressing shades of grey were NOT the most fun colors in the world, and hence released gameboy in better colors, like vomit, sewage water, and neon pink. What an innovation.

Oh wait a second! VIRTUAL BOY CAME OUT IN '95!!! I was one of the 24 (?) people to come to own this worst system ever invented. It was about as useful for entertaining as it was for causing heavy brain hemmoraging and cancer. With maybe 18 games to choose from, 16 of which were pure crap, the system did not last long. Galactic Pinball was pretty much the only game that held my attention for long periods of time. But then, every half-hour, Mario would pop-up on screen and tell me if I ever wanted to have children, I should stop playing before my organs started to implode. What was nintendo thinking?

Now, think back to about 18 seconds ago, when I complained about the size of Gameboy. The following year, my prayers were answered. Nintendo realized if they simply stopped getting rid of evidence by manufacturing it inside Gameboys, they would be able to greatly reduce the size of the thing, and thus Gameboy Pocket was birthed. I did not buy one, but two years later, I was sorta glad...

... because Gameboy color came out in '98! This system was amazing. I mean, instead of just plain ol green, we now had RED to look at too! Woohoo! If you were playing games that had solely to do with apples or forestfires, it was almost like you had a handheld Super Nintendo! No! This was not really a big deal, but it was still pretty small and the little bit of extra color was nice on the retinas. The bigger thing about this year was Pokemon, which set Gameboy for profit for the rest of eternity. I myself picked up a copy of Pokemon Blue and spent every waking hour of the following month or two catching all 150... or was it 151... or 152... Either way, Pokemon was absolutely awesome cool until kids took over the planet and ruined it. Stupid kids. Oh yeah, and the show was ass. And movies. And clothes. And toys. And bikes. And tea-cosies, hand grenades, telephones, marshmallows, and whatever else they could slap Pokemon on.

Fast forward to 2001, a huge year for Gameboy when it becomes the best system ever. The GBA, or Gameboy Advanced. This was one powerful piece of equipment. It was cool looking, great-sized, graphically awesome, and had the best games ever. It was essentially a hand-held super nintendo (the previous best system ever). What more could a gamer ask for?

HOW ABOUT A FREAKING LIGHT?!? After 12 years on the market, had Nintendo just not noticed people whining about the useless screen?!? The Gameboy Advance still had the same horrible problem that the original did way back when. People went so far as to hack apart the poor thing and cram lights inside the unit themselves. TAKE A HINT.

And they did. Last Friday, I purchased a copy of the new Gameboy Advanced SP (I still don't know what the stands for, but it sounds cool) and it is the best gaming system I could ever want. Take all the amazingness of the GBA, throw in a BUILT-IN LIGHT, and make it so small it fits in your pocket without any worries of ever scratching the screen. AMEN. Good job Nintendo.

That's all. Gameboy has come a long way, because it rocks. This article, on the other hand, sucks. I kept screwing up the images, so they suck too. Apoligies. Oh yeah, and I didn't proofread, and there's nothing you can do about it!