History of the Gameboy

Nintendo first released their portable gaming system back in 1989, with a feature title called Tetris. That sold over a million copies to date. This was the birth of the most influential hand held ever; to date it beat all of its competition ten to one to.

The first rendition of the gameboy was a box shaped handheld, with small black and white screen attached to it. It featured the trademark button set up that the Famicon or Normal Nintendo used. With a start, pause, a, b and control pad button set up. But with its 8-bit processor at the core of it, the games were left very simple, and with black and white color contrast to them they weren’t to visually appealing but none the less they were fun. Later Nintendo released the play it loud series of Gameboy’s, which featured the original gameboy decked out in cool colors instead of just the plain grey.

Nintendo’s next jump with the game boy was the gameboy pocket. The gameboy pocket was relatively smaller than then it predecessor. Not just smaller but I was a hell of allot lighter to. It featured a clear screen, more true to black and white then the original game boy was, it was clearer and much easier to see. Now like the original Gameboy’s play it loud series it featured multi colored system to suit your fancy

Now the past evolutions of the gameboy where really nothing to important just size and color happened. But now Nintendo finally came to the senses and released their full color portable system, named the gameboy color. The Gamboy color featured a full color LCD screen, and pretty much the same size as the pocket was, it was really and truly the first real evolution of the gameboy. The only down size to this was that the screen was not back lit which made it extremely hard to see in darker times of day.

Now we come to the present, 2001 was a phenomenal year for gameboy it has undergone many changes this year. Nintendo released it newly designed gameboy, called the gameboy advance, which featured a much bigger and wider screen that was still in color. But still Nintendo has refused to use a back lighting feature in the new gameboy which still renders it almost impossible to see at times, especially when you play dark and gloomy games like Castlevania circle of the moon. But not just the screen was changed the whole processor was, it jumped from a 8 bit system to 32 bit system. The first handheld that was just as powerful as a playstation. Not just the system was beefed up the whole shape of handheld had totally changed from its box/rectangle shape, it formed into a shape more like Segas ill fated Game gear, Nintendo also added two more buttons to the already kick ass control scheme which featured a L and R button at the top of the handheld.

Nintendo has brought the gameboy threw some pretty big changes, changing the whole way that we play portable games in a good way, and I for one am looking forward to the future of Nintendo’s little portable system the gameboy. It has a very bright future ahead of it.

Written By Trevor