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.

Lately I went and got myself a real tough Mankey on my back. Thanks to the Talking Time forum and a recent push to chip away at my pile of shame I started my journey through Sinnoh in Pokémon Pearl afresh. Now I’m irrevocably hooked like I haven’t been since the Gold and Silver generation.

I’d picked up Pearl back when it was released late 2007. I even pre-ordered it so I have the promotional Palkia stylus (which I’ve never opened not from a collector’s instinct but because these special styli are a tad unwieldy). It just didn’t grab me at the time. I meandered through 3 gyms or so, never got to feel attached to my team, and set it aside. I have far too many games just like this sitting on shelves not being played.

So I started playing it again and I started from the very beginning, picking the adorable “Piplup”:http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Piplup_(Pokémon) as my starter, and I’m considerably more engaged. So engaged that nearly all of my crafting endeavors have fallen to the wayside. I’m not wholly pleased about that part.

Thing is, I’m having fun. Actual fun. So I can’t be too hard on myself so long as I make certain to ensure that necessary chores around the house are still being taken care of. It has come to my attention that I far too often don’t allow myself fun, being a concentrated ball of worry and anxiety. So a little obsession should be tolerated in the interest of joy.

The Wii News Channel dropped over the weekend and I’m impressed. It’s essentially a flashy RSS feed for the Associated Press with a few neat tricks that just might make it worthwhile even if I had a computer less than 10 feet away.

Like most feeds, you get your text and associated image. You can increase or decrease the size of the type with the “+” and “-” buttons on the Wii remote causing the words to fly back and forth as they scale to fit the available space. Clicking on an image brings it up full screen.

What’s really neat is the “Slide Show” function which slides the headlines across the screen accompanied by an exciting “breaking news” sort of tune. Pressing “A” brings up the full text of the story. You can also go into a “Globe” function that shows the stories with locations encoded on the same globe from the Forecast Channel. Nifty stuff, though it would have been nice to be able to tinker with the RSS source.

Embedded video below. This is my first attempt to record with the Neuros Recorder and I’m hoping the dropouts in the video are just due to not reading the manual, not setting and preferences, and/or hooking it up ad hoc to the rat’s nest that sits behind my teevee.

For those of you having trouble with the Wii Shop Channel’s billing address field (and judging from my analytics there are a number of you) try this page from Nintendo’s website. It may be an issue with your county name. Note that this is only for US customers only. And no, I have no earthly idea why Nintendo gives a shit about your county either.

I love my Wii. I love my Wii’s Virtual Console. I do not, however, love my Wii Shop’s credit card entry field. In fact, I have thus far found it entirely impossible to order Wii points using a credit card.

My problem lies in the pesky “County” field. I live in Richmond, Virginia. Those of you familiar with Virginia will know that we have a somewhat peculiar situation regarding our cities. While we have counties to be certain, our larger cities are counties in and of themselves. While I am bordered by Chesterfield and Henrico counties I do not live in either of them. I live within Richmond city limits and thus my county is actually Richmond.

The Wii shop channel does not accept this as a viable county. I have tried every variation of our fair city’s name I have yet seen on a bill or other piece of official correspondence without luck. So, I turned to Nintendo’s customer support and received this reply:

On the screen where you enter your billing information, there’s a reference to a web page where you can enter your zip code and see the county that’s associated with the zip code. This will allow you to order the Wii points through your Wii system.

(12/17/06) Thanks to an email I received from a reader with the email “Ticolyle” I now know what web page the NoA rep was trying to point me to. Here is Nintendo’s City Help page. According to it I should be entering “RICHMOND (IND C” as my county. That’s right, I was supposed to know that I needed a single open parenthesis, the letters “IND” for independent, and a lone trailing “C” at the end. This is very intuitive NOT!

I haven’t yet been able to find said web page reference, but I did a few reverse zip code searches. None of their suggestions resulted in success. For the record, I have tried the following with no luck:

• Richmond
• City of Richmond
• Richmond Independent City (or as much of it as I could fit)
• Richmond (City)
• Richmond City
• RichmondCity

I have tried all of these with and without capitalization and without fail been given the six digit code that stands for incorrect address. I really can’t think of any other alternatives.

Yes, I can get in my car, drive to a store, and pick up a points card. But sometimes I’m not wearing pants and I aim to keep it that way, to say nothing of the time I could have spent playing delectable classic games. Internets! Help me out here!

I’ll admit, I had my doubts. When I first saw what would be the Revolution, now Wii, controller I was hesitantly excited by the possibilities. I had predicted something using the tilt and motion sensors GBA games had been rocking for a few years now as well as a two part controller evidenced by the “Nunchuk.” I wasn’t entirely prepared for such a radical departure from controller conventions but at the same time relatively unsurprised that Nintendo would do such a thing. I could see the potential for awesomeness but also the potential for failure if it all doesn’t come together just right. Alternative input devices can fail not only being horrible but by being almost great but not quite.

In the intervening months a steady stream of praise has been building behind this brave little machine. Once doubters seem to have started to take a second glance. Big names in game development have expressed interest in the Wii. I am excited all over again.

A facet of the Wii I had never expected to interest me has begun to look very nice indeed — thanks largely to the UI(User Interface) Nintendo has chosen — is the set of tools they have named Wii Channels. Essentially a collection of Internet powered gadgets a la WebTV the Wii Channels include weather, news, photos, and a neat little avatar creator. I doubt I’ll be all that likely to power up my Wii for news or weather every morning when my PowerBook is only a few feet away, but these channels are not as lightweight as I had envisioned.

Take a look at the video Nintendo has posted for the Forecast Channel (embedded video link). While I rarely have the desperate need to know whether it’s raining in Hokkaido or sunny in Berlin I very much like that you can spin the globe wildly on its axis with a violent flick of the wrist much like a physical globe. I could easily see something like this enacted without acceleration and being a terrible bother all around.

For more visual flair watch the Photo Channel (embedded video link) as well. I actually might use this if I wanted to show someone a slideshow. It’d be just as convenient as any other method of displaying photos on my television and smaller volume SD(Secure Digital) cards aren’t too pricey.

All right Nintendo. You win. I’m totally psyched about the Wii launch. This might well be the first console I buy on the launch day (if I can find one). I just can’t see myself doing the camping-out-waiting-in-line thing to get much of anything though. Someone give me a preorder that actually means something!

So, the Nintendo Revolution is now the Nintendo Wii? Really? The Wii? Okay.

You know, I think I really like this. It’s definitely different than the rest of the console names. It takes some serious huevos to come out with a name like “Wii.” Nintendo really is committed to this whole new demographic idea. I’m not saying the “casual gamer” is going to find the name Wii more pleasing than, say, Revolution. Hell, I don’t find the name Wii to be all that pleasant. It’s an alien-looking word, at least in English, and its inclusion is fairly brazen. Nintendo wasn’t fucking around when they said they were changing more or less everything.

Oh, I’ll bet the fanboy chatter is at a near fever pitch on whatever dank forums in which they practice their dark arts. Nintendo certainly isn’t making it any easier on themselves. It’s going to be fun to see how this all shakes out.