As the technology grew, people started to see a new way of finding their entertainment at the comfort of their house. With the rise of computing technology, Massive IBM computers back in 1960s to home computer, television, radio, gaming consoles and a steep turn the kids growing up at that time has experienced. Such a glamour it was!
Among all of the technology of the time, gaming industry was ever growing since then. From Atari gaming console to handheld gaming devices, the whole gaming frenzy wad already started from that generation, which our parents or uncles certainly knows about. What had been before the gaming consoles, we are going to read about today. With the coming of handheld gaming consoles, people started having a keen interest of what those little gaming boxes are and can do. Today, we will look at one of the gaming devices that started a new point of entry to the magical world of gaming and why it was so popular, even until these days.
The opportunities provided by Nintendo Game Boy
Nintendo Game Boy, yes, without further ado, is one of the examples of the technological progress. This little piece, while it did make people sceptical about its look, people who dove into it, the whole sceptics were broken upon turning on this console. With the all of the varieties of choices from the games that were available at the gamers’ disposal, Nintendo Game Boy opened up a whole new portal of world to the kids.
This was a handheld gaming device, with a generic keypad to navigate your way through, two A and B buttons for actions, two diagonally placed ‘select’ and ‘start’ buttons. On the bottom right, there was a speaker to play out those old-school sounds of gaming, which you could control via the side dial.
The screen was placed on the top, with a kind of greenish looking Dot Matrix display, which you could adjust to your need. The color scheme for this display was really distinct than any other predecessors, it was something of a shades of grey, bluish and touch of black. And, of course the most important part, the gaming cartridge which held the games. A gaming cartridge was basically a circuit board that used to hold the games just like a cd or our hard drives. The whole design was inspired or a mashup, so to speak, of the Nintendo home entertainment system and Game and Watch series devices.
The release of Nintendo Game Boy
Nintendo Game Boy is an 8-bit handheld gaming console which was developed and manufactured by top gaming industry giant, Nintendo. It was released in Japan in April 21st, 1989, September 1989 in North America, Europe on in September 28th and in Korea in November 1990.
A fun fact is, this piece of magic was developed and designed by the same team that was already on the market under the name Game and Watch series and other Nintendo Entertainment System games. Game and Watch series was a series of various handheld gaming consoles that had been released long before Nintendo Game Boy. This one was around 1980 to somewhere around 1990. Although it was there, it was nowhere near a game changer as Game Boy.
Nintendo Game Boy and its impact on the gaming industry
Game Boy was mostly sold in either stand-alone form or in a bundle, which came with games like Super Mario Land or Tetris. There were also game Genie which was basically a video game cheat cartridge, which could modify the game data. Although, with all these sleek looking features, Game Boy was still a kind of behind in the competition with the other gaming tech giants like Game Gear from Sega, Lynx from Atari or Turbo Express from NEC in terms of technology.
Still, Game Boy had an exceptionally long battery life while compared to others. Game Boy sold a massive unit of one million throughout the United States of America upon the first week of launch.
The best part was this was just the beginning of the Game Boy journey which was about to define a whole new culture of 1990s with its successors. What made this console more famous and stood out was the rise of the Pokemon trend. This Japanese franchise shook the world and almost every kids around the globe like no others. And guess what, yeah, kids all were crazy to get a piece of Pokemon games which were available for playing on Game Boy.
Although, since the launch was in 1989, Pokemon was not there yet. So, our boy Game Boy missed the opportunity to shake it up with Pokemons but the successors did rock the world with Pokemons. Nonetheless, Game Boy first series remained in play with its successors with the release of new games, among them some were compatible with this first series.
An amazing fact is how all the tech and developer nerds out there, modded this game and brought Pokemon and other games on this magnificent device as well!