Everything you need to know about the Game Boy: release date, price, etc.
Did you enjoy playing Game Boys as a child? In the 1990s and 2000s, you probably spent the majority of your daytime playing on your Game Boy. Whether at home, in the playground or during walks with friends, this console was always there. Yet there are some things you don’t know about your best games console. Discover here the essential to know about the Game Boy.
Game Boy release date
The Game Boy or The Game Boy is a portable video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. This fourth-generation console, which plays 8-bit video games, went on sale in Japan on April 21, 1989 , the official release date. In October of that same year, it went on sale in the United States, and then in 1990 it was offered on the European market.
Origin and History of the Game Boy
The Game Boy was designed in 1989 by Gunpei Yokoi and Nintendo Research & Development 1 . This game console was designed to have the same power as the NES, but was equipped with a monochrome screen to lower the selling price and reduce battery consumption. It was a risky choice at the time, but one that made perfect sense in Gunpei Yokoi’s mind.
Indeed, the latter started from a simple observation: the backlighting imposed on all the color screens of the time was too energy- intensive . His own portable television had emptied, in less than two hours, six LR6 batteries a few months earlier. He had therefore not been able to finish his baseball game broadcast live. Thus, the Game Boy was born with all its peculiarities.
In France, the Game Boy was released on September 28, 1990. Its package included the console, a connection cable for two-player games , stereo headphones, four batteries and the Tetris game . Additional games are sold separately and you had to go to the store to get them. At its launch, the Game Boy sold 1.4 million copies in France alone in its first year, which was a record at the time.
Evolution of the Game Boy
After the first Game Boy, several models have emerged to the delight of gamers. Thus, in July 1996, Nintendo launched its Game Boy Pocket in Japan . This console gained in autonomy and had gone to two LR03 batteries against four LR06 for the first Game Boy.
In 1998, another console was born, it was the Game Boy Light . This console brought to the Game Boy Pocket what it lacked the most: backlighting thus promoting good readability and the possibility of playing in the dark. It used two LR06 batteries for 12 hours of battery life when the backlight is on. Without this light, it could go up to 8 p.m.
In addition, during this same year, Nintendo was still launching the Game Boy Color . This Game Boy offered a color screen for a slightly larger form factor. The speed of the processor was then doubled and its amount of memory could reach 8 MHz and 32 KB.
Then came the Game Boy Advance in 2001 , then the Game Boy Advance SP in 2003 and finally the Game Boy Micro in 2005. The latter was too thin with good brightness. It offered a removable and customizable front.
Game Boy Current Value
The Game Boy remains a console in its own right today. In auctions, its price keeps climbing and even reaches double the original purchase price. For example, in 2016 on Catawiki, a Nintendo Game Boy Classic , complete with manual and cable, sold in its original box for 125 euros.