Game Boy

The original Game Boy.

Game Boy is a portable handheld video game console created by Nintendo and released in Japan and the USA in 1989. I first saw one during recess in elementary school, an older boy had one and was playing Super Mario Land. The very first time I played a Game Boy was during my fifth grade cast party of the Nutcracker Suite I was in, when I played Nintendo's Tennis. Later, my brother stole a Game Boy from one of his friends and I played Tetris on it before he either sold it or gave it back. I never did get a Game Boy, but I always wanted one even though I knew it was inferior to my coveted NES.

Later in my life, after Game Boy emulators matured, I started familiarizing myself with the games for the system and found that, other than about a dozen games, the bulk of the library was garbage. So, now I'm glad that I never did get a Game Boy, as the cost of batteries and money wasted on lame games would have prevented me from getting more games for the NES (though, I did buy a lot of trash games on the NES too).

Status

I do not own, or have ever owned, a Game Boy.

Favorite Games

Of the games I've played on the system, I have particularly enjoyed:

• Bionic Commando
• Final Fantasy Adventure
• Kirby's Dream Land 2
• The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
• Metroid II: Return of Samus
• Super Mario Land
• Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

Review

Good

• The Game Boy is pretty comfortable in your hand.
• Using a grayscale LCD was a good choice for saving battery life.
• The system had stereo sound (through headphones) which was impressive at the time.
• Most of Nintendo's first-party games were superb, and a couple of third-party games were also good.
• The system was engineered very well, for everyone I know who held onto their Game Boy after all these years, they still work.

Bad

• The LCD, though a necessary trade-off for battery life, looks pretty bad, and has a slow refresh rate causing blurring.
• Most of the games released on the platform are pretty terrible, and most of the good games were just weaker ports from existing NES games.

Ugly

• Nothing

Links

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy - Wikipedia.
• mobygames.com/browse/games/gameboy - MobyGames.