Amaya Toman A huge number of symbols are associated with the nineties of the last century. One of them is the Game Boy - a portable game console from Nintendo, which launched its highly successful campaign in the overseas market at the end of July 1989. The arrival of the Game Boy was a harbinger of the explosion of popularity of handheld consoles, thanks to which players could enjoy their favorite games anywhere and anytime.
It could be interest you
The importance of the Game Boy was so great that this iconic console earned its place in the Washington National Museum alongside the first mobile phones, PDA devices and pagers. "The Game Boy wasn't the first handheld game system, but it was certainly the most popular," states Drew Robarge, a specialist from the American History Museum, adding that the Game Boy's popularity was largely due to its functionality. "The Game Boy used – like home consoles – interchangeable cartridges, so you could play different games," reminds
At the time when the first Game Boy saw the light of day, Russian Tetris was not a well-known game. But in 1989, Nintendo decided that Tetris would also be available for Game Boy owners. The falling dice, accompanied by the iconic melody and sounds, suddenly became a huge hit. However, titles such as Super Mario Land, Kirby's Dream Land or The Legend or Zelda also gained great popularity among Game Boy owners.
The Game Boy is credited to Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi, who allegedly came up with the idea after observing a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator. On the research and development of the future game console, Yokoi worked together with his colleague Satoru Okada, the invention was successfully patented in the United States in September 1985. The GameBoy was equipped with A, B, Select and Start buttons, a cross directional controller, a rotary volume control on the right side and the display contrast control on the left side. On the top of the console there was a slot for placing a game cartridge. Operation was ensured by four classic pencil batteries, but the GameBoy could also be connected to the network. The console was also equipped with a 3,5 mm headphone jack and a black-and-white LCD display without backlight measuring 47 x 43 mm and with a resolution of 160 x 144 pixels.
Gallery
Nintendo launched its GameBoy in Japan on April 21, 1989 - all 300 units were successfully sold out in a relatively short period of time. The console met with similar success in the summer of 1989 in the United States, when 40 units were sold in the first day of its release. Within a few weeks of its launch, a record one million Game Boys had been sold.
Sources: Smithsonianmag, BusinessInsider, The Guardian
