Twenty years ago today Nintendo released the gamer from the tethers of cords and cables. No longer the exclusive province of the living room, den, or bedroom, the Game Boy freed the avid Nintendo player to enjoy his (or her) favorites in the backseat of the family car, at the bus stop, or on the perimeter of the playground—far removed from the athletic contests of the more vigorous.
Or something like that.
Though it seemed like nothing of the sort back in 1989, this humble little handheld device would be the lynchpin of Nintendo’s continued success and set the tack for the direction it would take in the future. Its tenure would not be without missteps and doldrums but the Game Boy could arguably be the most important game system Nintendo ever released.
I don’t intend to speak for everyone. Nor do I intend to provide a comprehensive history of the Game Boy and its contemporaries. I only intend to provide my own personal experiences with this handheld system.
Most of the gaming sites—big and small—have already covered the Game Boy’s twentieth back in April. That’s when the Game Boy made its first tentative step into the world in Japan. We Americans didn’t get ours until July of 1989. Though I have no concrete recollection, I assume that I must have received my own Game Boy that fall as a birthday gift. The timing makes sense. My parents were not inclined to purchase expensive electronics for me in the middle of the summer and 2 months, plus the lead time from being a loyal Nintendo Power subscriber would have given me plenty of time to wheedle and plead.
At the time the competition to the Game Boy was not seen as any home console, but those irritating little LCD devices. I never saw a real Game & Watch which apparently were actually kind of fun. The ones I was familiar with were typically licensed trash that mostly involved moving something from side to side as obstacles “moved” toward the bottom of the screen. They were shrill, repetitive, and not much fun. Yet those were just the things parents at the time thought of when they thought of handheld games—if they thought of them at all. Considerably pleading was required.
So one autumn day as I celebrated my tenth birthday I opened a present to find the neon blue wireframe box I so desperately wanted. Carefully removing its contents from the styrofoam—yes, they used styrofoam back then—tray I beheld the Game Boy in all its blocky grayness. It really never was much to look at.
I tell you what did impress me though: the headphones. I’d never seen earbuds before. They were so sleek, so cool. Every Walkman I’d ever owned before came with a pair of clunky padded earmuffs bound together with wire. These were tiny.
I thought this was the coolest thing ever.
Even more impressive still to me was the little plastic case the game carts came in at the time. Over the years, these neat little dust covers have fallen to the wayside. When I first opened my Game Boy, I thought it was hot shit. It still looks pretty nifty to me today.
My plan for this retrospective is to devote a number of posts to particular high points in my history with the Game Boy. I want to spend more words than I care to tack on to this remembrance on each individual game, so I’ll be splitting them into single game posts.
Next time: In Soviet Russia, blocks stack you.
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