Friday, April 3, 2009

nintendo game boy turns 20

The original Nintendo Game Boy launched in April, 1989, making it 20 years old this month! The Game Boy did for games what his older friend Walkman did for music by making it portable; my generation truly grew up mashing buttons on the handheld devices. Tetris, Final Fantasy, plus Zelda, Mario, Pokemon... All our favorite Nintendo heroes going with us wherever we wanted them to. Cheers, little Game Boy!
The 8-bit Game Boy family ruled portable gaming from 1989 until its 32-bit successor, the Game Boy Advance, came along in 2001. The system wasn't actually discontinued until 2003, a 14-year reign unmatched by any platform besides the Atari VCS and SNK's Neo-Geo. The difference, of course, is that the Game Boy sold healthily until the very end, where those longer-lived contenders were well into "obscure niche" territory by the time they wheezed to an obsolescent finale. The only system that's ever outsold the Game Boy family (by which I mean Game Boy, GB Pocket, GB Light, and GB Color) is PlayStation 2...although the DS is closing in rapidly.

1 comment:

Matt said...

Wow! 20 years! (awesome, interesting post by the way!)

I loved playing my gameboy. I used to play a lot of Mario games, Wario games, Tetris and Pokémon.

Hmm, I might try and find it this weekend and have another blast on it.