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= Game_Boy =
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Introduction
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The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the
Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America
later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the
success of the Game & Watch single-game handhelds, Nintendo
developed the Game Boy to be a portable console, with interchangeable
cartridges. The concept proved highly successful, and the Game Boy
line became a cultural icon of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Game Boy was designed by the Nintendo Research & Development 1
team, led by Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada. The device features a
dot-matrix display, a D-pad, four game buttons, a single speaker, and
uses Game Pak cartridges. Its two-toned gray design included black,
blue, and magenta accents, with softly rounded corners and a
distinctive curved bottom-right edge. At launch in Japan it was sold
as a standalone console, but in North America and Europe it came
bundled with the wildly popular 'Tetris' which fueled sales.
Despite mixed reviews criticizing its monochrome display compared to
full-color competitors like the Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and NEC
TurboExpress, the Game Boy's affordability, battery life, and
extensive game library propelled it to market dominance. An estimated
118.69 million units of the Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy
Color (released in 1998), have been sold worldwide, making them the
fourth-best-selling system ever. The Game Boy received several
redesigns during its lifespan, including the smaller Game Boy Pocket
(1996) and the backlit Game Boy Light (1998).
Background
============
The Game Boy was designed by Nintendo Research & Development 1
(R&D1), the team behind the 'Mario Bros.' and 'Donkey Kong' arcade
games and the successful Game & Watch series of handhelds, which
had helped stabilize Nintendo financially. By 1983, while Game &
Watch remained popular internationally, sales in Japan had begun to
decline, pressuring R&D1 to innovate. At the same time, they faced
competition from Nintendo Research & Development 2 (R&D2), an
in-house rival created by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. That
same year, R&D2 had launched the Family Computer, intensifying the
pressure on R&D1. Looking to improve 'Game & Watch', R&D1
researched new screens from supplier Sharp, including dot-matrix
displays that could support multiple games--unlike Game & Watch,
which used pre-printed segmented LCDs, limiting each device to a
single game.
Start of development
======================
On June 10, 1987, division director Gunpei Yokoi informed R&D1
that Yamauchi wanted a successor to Game & Watch priced under .
From the very first meeting, the team knew they wanted to use a
dot-matrix display and codenamed the project 'Dot Matrix Game' (DMG),
a name later reflected in the Game Boy’s official model number:
DMG-01.
Within R&D1, Yokoi championed a design philosophy which eschewed
cutting-edge technology in favor of finding innovative uses of mature
technologies, which tended to be more affordable and reliable. This
led to early clashes between Yokoi and his assistant director Satoru
Okada. Yokoi envisioned a simple toy, akin to an advanced Game &
Watch, while Okada pushed for a more powerful system with
interchangeable cartridges--essentially a portable NES. Some within
R&D1 believed Yokoi resisted the idea simply to avoid links to the
NES, developed by their rivals at R&D2. Eventually, in a heated
meeting, Yokoi relented, approving Okada’s vision and gave him full
responsibility for the project.
Choosing the hardware
=======================
Initially, R&D1 considered using a Ricoh CPU, similar to the NES,
for potential compatibility. However, R&D2--then building the
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)--blocked this, claiming it
would strain Ricoh’s resources. R&D1 suspected this was simply an
attempt to hinder their project. Ultimately, they opted for a Sharp
CPU. A key side effect of this choice was the CPU’s built-in
communication feature. In the early 1980s, Okada had worked on an
earlier Nintendo project called 'Computer Mah-jong Yakuman' that
featured multiplayer gaming over a cable connection between two
devices. He saw an opportunity to implement a similar feature. Despite
skepticism from his team that the feature would be too difficult to
use, he personally developed the Game Link Cable technology, which
later enabled 'Pokémon''s "battle" and "trade" game mechanics. The
Game Boy also retained a key innovation from 'Game & Watch': the
D-pad. Yokoi had designed it as a compact alternative to joysticks,
making it ideal for handheld devices. Its use on the NES controller
also helped ease the transition for players.
Early in development, R&D1 evaluated dot-matrix displays from
Sharp but found them unsuitable due to severe ghosting. Seeking
alternatives, they approached Citizen, Epson, Hosiden, Matsushita, and
Seiko. Most declined, but Citizen, already producing LCDs for portable
TVs, was eager to collaborate. The team was impressed by Citizen’s
chip-on-glass technology, which integrated the screen controller into
the display, reducing cost and production time. They offered Nintendo
a monochrome screen for or a color version for . However, following
Yokoi’s philosophy, the team rejected color due to higher power
consumption and cost, opting for a simple grayscale screen without a
backlight. This decision proved wise, as competing color handhelds
would suffer from poor battery life, giving the Game Boy a significant
advantage.
However, Sharp was still an important partner, so Nintendo asked if
they could match Citizen on technology and price. Sharp responded with
vague answers on their screen technologies and quoted a price of to
per screen. In response, Citizen lowered its price to ¥1,000. With
Yamauchi’s approval, R&D1 finalized a deal with Citizen on
September 1, 1987. However, as Citizen’s representatives left
Nintendo’s offices, they saw Sharp’s team arriving for a meeting with
Yamauchi. Without explanation, Yamauchi canceled the Citizen deal and
awarded the contract to Sharp. To soften the blow, R&D1 fabricated
a story, telling Citizen they were interested in buying color screens
the next year, even drafting fake project documents. Citizen later
supplied color screens for Sega’s Game Gear, which had a design
closely resembled Nintendo's fake project. Citizen never admitted
sharing the design.
Near cancellation
===================
The R&D1 team soon discovered that Sharp was unprepared to make
the screens they needed, leading to months of delays. Early prototypes
with low-quality twisted nematic (TN) screens sparked internal
skepticism, with some employees mockingly referring to the project as
'DameGame' (with 'dame' (だめ) meaning "hopeless" in Japanese). In the
summer of 1988, R&D1 presented a prototype to Yamauchi, who
immediately canceled the project, citing the poor visibility of the
display. Team members argued that minor screen adjustments or a
slightly higher budget could resolve the issue, but Yamauchi refused,
leading them to suspect other teams had already convinced him the
device would be a commercial failure. Furthermore, with the NES still
thriving and the SNES on the horizon, a Game & Watch successor was
no longer seen as essential.
Most of R&D1, including Okada, was reassigned. However, Yokoi
remained committed to the project. Defying Yamauchi’s decision, he
continued refining the display. During discussions with a Sharp
director involved in Game & Watch, the team learned of a
super-twisted nematic (STN) display secretly in development. While it
had a green tint and slightly lower contrast, it dramatically improved
the viewing angle. Yokoi devised a plan. In a meeting with a Sharp
board member, he pressed them about new technologies, leading them to
reveal the STN display. R&D1 secured a prototype and installed it
in a Game Boy.
Three months after canceling the project, Yamauchi was shown the STN
prototype. Though still unimpressed by the screen, he approved the
console for sale, perhaps influenced by delays in SNES development,
which was now two years away from launch.
Using the STN display significantly increased production costs. To
mitigate expenses, the team reduced the screen's size, though it was
too late in development to shrink the console’s overall dimensions.
The target price of ¥10,000 was ultimately not met due to the cost of
the display, and the Game Boy would retail for . To enhance the
perceived value of the product, Yamauchi decided to include headphones
and four AA batteries in the box, which cost Nintendo very little but
made the Game Boy appear like a better deal.
Launch and success
====================
On January 17, 1989, Nintendo officially announced the Game Boy. It
launched in Japan on April 21, selling out its initial production run
of 300,000 units within the first two weeks. By August, sales had
reached 720,000 consoles and 1.9 million games across just four launch
titles. The Game Boy debuted in North America on July 31, 1989, at a
retail price of , and backed by a marketing campaign (equivalent to
$value=20 million in ) aimed at making it the must-have, hard-to-find
holiday toy. On its release day, 40,000 units were sold, and within
just a few weeks, sales reached one million.
Learning from one of the NES launch's shortcomings, Okada pushed to
offer third-party developers a development manual and development kit,
built by Intelligent Systems, to encourage software creation for the
Game Boy. Meanwhile, R&D1 developed 'Super Mario Land' as the
console's flagship title, but another game captured the attention of
Okada and Yokoi--'Tetris'. While a team within R&D1 was porting
the Soviet-made puzzle game to the NES, they recognized its potential
for a handheld platform. Although the Game Boy version of 'Tetris'
would not be ready for the console's Japanese debut, it was completed
in time for its North American launch in July 1989. Henk Rogers, who
had acquired the rights to 'Tetris', convinced Nintendo of America
president Minoru Arakawa to make it the pack-in game with the Game Boy
instead of 'Super Mario Land', arguing that while Mario primarily
appealed to young boys, 'Tetris' would appeal to everyone. As a
result, 'Tetris' was bundled with the Game Boy in every region except
Japan.
Hardware
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The Game Boy uses a custom system on a chip (SoC), to house most of
the components, named the 'DMG-CPU' by Nintendo and the 'LR35902' by
its manufacturer, the Sharp Corporation.
Within the DMG-CPU, the main processor is a 'Sharp SM83', a hybrid of
the Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 processors. It combines the seven 8-bit
registers of the 8080 (omitting the alternate registers of the Z80)
with the programming syntax and additional bit manipulation
instructions of the Z80. The SM83 also includes new instructions
optimized for operations specific to the Game Boy's hardware
arrangement. It operates at a clock rate of 4.194304 MHz.
The DMG-CPU also incorporates the Picture Processing Unit, essentially
a basic GPU, that renders visuals using an 8 KB bank of Video RAM
located on the motherboard. The display is a 2.5-inch (diagonal)
reflective super-twisted nematic (STN) monochrome liquid-crystal
display (LCD), measuring wide by high with a resolution of 160
pixels wide by 144 pixels high in a 10:9 aspect ratio. The screen
displays four shades of grey/green.
Additionally, the SoC includes a 256 byte "bootstrap" ROM which is
used to start up the device, 127 bytes of High RAM that can be
accessed faster (similar to a CPU cache), and the 'Audio Processing
Unit', a programmable sound generator with four channels: a pulse wave
generation channel with frequency and volume variation, a second pulse
wave generation channel with only volume variation, a wave channel
that can reproduce any waveform recorded in RAM, and a white noise
channel with volume variation. The motherboard also contains a 8 KB
"work RAM" chip providing storage for general operations.
The Game Boy's physical controls include a D-pad (directional pad),
four action buttons (labeled 'A', 'B', 'SELECT', 'START'), a sliding
power switch with a cartridge lock to prevent accidental removal,
along with volume and contrast dials on either side of the device.
The original Game Boy was powered internally by four AA batteries. For
extended use, an optional AC adapter or rechargeable battery pack can
be connected via a coaxial power connector on the left side. The right
side also has a Game Link Cable port for connecting to up to four Game
Boy devices for multiplayer games or data transfer. For sound output,
the Game Boy includes a single monaural speaker and a 3.5 mm headphone
jack that offered stereo sound.
Revisions
===========
The Game Boy remained a strong seller throughout the 1990s, driven by
popular releases like 'Pokémon', which kept demand high. However, its
continued success presented a challenge for Nintendo: while the
hardware was aging, the company was reluctant to replace it due to its
strong sales.
At a press conference in San Francisco on March 14, 1994, Peter Main,
Nintendo's vice president of marketing, answered queries about when
Nintendo was coming out with a color handheld system by stating that
sales of the Game Boy were strong enough that it had decided to hold
off on developing a successor handheld for the near future. Instead,
Nintendo would introduce several updates over the following years to
extend the system's relevance.
Play It Loud!
===============
The first update to the Game Boy's hardware design came on March 20,
1995, nearly six years after the console was first released, when
Nintendo introduced various colored cases as part of the "Play It
Loud!" campaign, known in Japan as This revision was purely
cosmetic, with consoles now available in red, yellow, green, blue,
black, white, and clear plastic cases, with screens featuring a darker
gray bezel than on the original model.
Game Boy Pocket
=================
A major revision to the Game Boy came in 1996 with the introduction of
the Game Boy Pocket, a slimmed-down unit that required just two
smaller AAA batteries, albeit at the expense of providing just 10
hours of gameplay. The other major change was that the screen was
changed to a much-improved film compensated super-twisted nematic
(FSTN) LCD with a larger viewable area. The screen's visibility and
pixel response-time had been improved, mostly eliminating ghosting.
Additionally, the film compensation layer produced a true
black-and-white display, rather than the green hues of the original
Game Boy. The Pocket also has a smaller Game Link Cable port, which
requires an adapter to link with the original Game Boy. This smaller
port design would be used on all subsequent Game Boy models.
Internally, the Game Boy Pocket had a new SoC, the CPU MGB, which
moved the Video RAM from the motherboard to the SoC.
The Game Boy Pocket launched in Japan on July 20, 1996, and in North
America on September 2, 1996, for . The Game Boy Pocket helped to
revitalize hardware sales and its release was ultimately well-timed as
it coincided with the massively successful launch of 'Pokémon', which
further fueled Game Boy sales. Reviewers praised the device's compact
size and improved display, though some critics dismissed it as a minor
upgrade with the 'Los Angeles Times' remarking that Nintendo was,
"repacking the same old black-and-white stuff and selling it as new".
The device also faced criticism for its relatively short 10-hour
battery life and the absence of a power LED, which had been used in
previous models to indicate battery strength.
In early 1997, a revision was released featuring the return of the
power LED, a broader range of case colors (red, green, yellow, black,
gold metal, clear, and blue, in addition to the launch silver), and a
price drop to . By mid-1998, just before the launch of the Game Boy
Color, the price had dropped further to .
Game Boy Light
================
The Game Boy Light, released exclusively in Japan on April 14, 1998,
retained all of the Pocket’s improvements, including a more compact
design and clearer FSTN LCD screen, while introducing several
enhancements of its own. The most notable addition was an
electroluminescent backlight, enabling gameplay in low-light
conditions for the first time without external accessories. The
backlight emitted a blue-green glow, similar to the illumination used
in digital wristwatches at the time. To address the criticism of the
Pocket’s battery life, the Game Boy Light used two AA batteries with
greater capacity, offering approximately 12 hours of gameplay with the
backlight on and up to 20 hours with it off. These upgrades resulted
in a slightly larger and heavier form factor compared to the Game Boy
Pocket, though it remained significantly smaller and lighter than the
original Game Boy. The Game Boy Light was available in gold and silver
color variants and launched at a retail price of .
Technical specifications
==========================
! !Game Boy !Game Boy Pocket !Game Boy Light
!Height | | |
!Width | | |
!Depth | | |
!Weight | | |
!Display |2.5-inch reflective super-twisted nematic (STN)
liquid-crystal display (LCD) |2.5-inch reflective film compensated STN
(FSTN) LCD |2.5-inch FSTN LCD with electroluminescent backlight
!Screen size (playable) | | |
!Resolution colspan="3" |160 (w) × 144 (h) pixels (10:9 aspect ratio)
!Frame rate colspan="3" |59.727500569606 Hz
!Color support |2-bit, four shades of green: colspan="2" |2-bit,
four shades of grey:
!System on a chip (SoC) |Nintendo DMG-CPU (Sharp LR35902) colspan="2"
|Nintendo CPU MGB
!CPU colspan="3" |Sharp SM83 (custom Intel 8080/Zilog Z80 hybrid,
8-bit) @ 4.194304 MHz
|**On SoC:** 256 B ROM, 127 B High RAM, 128 B Audio RAM, 1.12KB
object attribute RAM
|**Internal:** 8 KB RAM, 8 KB Video RAM
|**On SoC:** 256 B ROM, 127 B High RAM, 8 KB Video RAM, 128 B Audio
RAM, 1.12KB object attribute RAM
|**Internal:** 8 KB RAM
rowspan="2" |Memory | colspan="2" |
| colspan="3" |**External:** (in the game cartridge) up to 1 MB ROM,
up to 128 KB RAM
|
|
|
!Power
!Battery life |Up to 30 hours |Up to 10 hours |
| colspan="3" |
!Sound
!I/O colspan="3" |
!Controls colspan="3" |
Games
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More than 1,000 games were released for the Game Boy, excluding
cancelled and unlicensed games. Additionally, more than 300 games
developed for the Game Boy Color were backward compatible with the
monochrome Game Boy models.
Games are stored on cartridges called the Game Boy Game Pak, using
read-only memory (ROM) chips. Initially, due to the limitations of the
8-bit architecture of the device, ROM size was limited to 32 KB.
However, Nintendo overcame this limitation with a Memory Bank
Controller (MBC) inside the cartridge. This chip sits between the
processor and the ROM chips. The CPU can only access 32 KB at a time,
but the MBC can switch between several banks of 32 KB ROM. Using this
technology, Nintendo created Game Boy games that used up to 1 megabyte
of ROM. Game Paks could also provide additional functionality to the
Game Boy system. Some cartridges included up to 128 KB of RAM to
increase performance, which could also be battery-backed to save
progress when the handheld was off, real-time clock chips could keep
track of time even when the device was off and Rumble Pak cartridges
added vibration feedback to enhance gameplay.
The top-selling franchise for the Game Boy were 'Pokémon Red', 'Blue',
and 'Yellow', the first installments of the 'Pokémon' video game
series, which sold more than 46 million copies. The best-selling
single game was 'Tetris', with more than 35 million copies shipped, it
was a pack-in game included with the purchase of many original Game
Boy devices.
Beyond the platform's official titles, , an active online community
continues to create new games for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color
through tools like GB Studio, a free and user-friendly game-building
engine that simplifies the process compared to manual coding.
Launch titles
===============
When the Game Boy launched in Japan in April 1989, it featured four
launch titles: 'Alleyway' (a 'Breakout' clone), 'Baseball' (a port of
the NES game), 'Super Mario Land' (an adaptation of the 'Mario'
franchise for the handheld format) and 'Yakuman' (a Japanese mahjong
game). When the console debuted in North America, two additional
launch titles were added: 'Tetris' and 'Tennis' (another NES port),
while 'Yakuman' never saw a wide international release.
Critical reception
====================
Though it was less technically advanced than the Sega Game Gear, Atari
Lynx, NEC TurboExpress and other competitors, notably by not
supporting color, the Game Boy's lower price along with longer battery
life made it a success.
The console received mixed reviews from critics. In a 1997 year-end
review, a team of four 'Electronic Gaming Monthly' editors gave the
Game Boy scores of 7.5, 7.0, 8.0, and 2.0. The reviewer who
contributed the 2.0 panned the system due to its monochrome display
and motion blur, while his three co-reviewers praised its long battery
life and strong games library, as well as the sleek,
conveniently-sized design of the new Game Boy Pocket model.
Sales
=======
The Game Boy launched in Japan on April 21, 1989, with an initial
shipment of 300,000 units, which sold out within two weeks. In the
United States, 40,000 units were sold on its release day, July 31,
1989, and sales reached one million within weeks. By 1995, Nintendo of
America reported that 46% of Game Boy players were female, a higher
proportion than for the Nintendo Entertainment System (29%) and Super
Nintendo Entertainment System (14%).
Before the introduction of the Game Boy Color in late 1998, over 64.42
million units of the various monochrome Game Boy models had been sold
worldwide. Nintendo subsequently reported only combined sales figures
for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. By the time of the system's
discontinuation in 2003, the monochrome Game Boy models and the Game
Boy Color had sold a combined total of 118.69 million units globally:
32.47 million in Japan, 44.06 million in the Americas, and 42.16
million in other regions.
At the time of its discontinuation, the Game Boy line was the
best-selling game console of all time. It was later surpassed by the
Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo Switch, making it the
fourth-best-selling console as of .
Cultural legacy
=================
Beyond its commercial success, the Game Boy has had a lasting cultural
impact. It helped popularize handheld gaming through an affordable,
durable design that brought video games into daily life. The system is
frequently cited in retrospectives as a gateway to gaming for a
generation of players.
'Smithsonian Magazine' describes the Game Boy as a permanent fixture
of American cultural history, citing its economic significance and
enduring appeal. Reflections in 'The Guardian' characterize it as "a
portal to other magical worlds", with players recalling formative
gaming experiences.
An original 1989 Game Boy is on display at the Smithsonian's National
Museum of American History as part of the "American Enterprise"
exhibition, alongside early mobile devices. It is also featured in the
Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, Japan. In 2009, the Game Boy was inducted
into the U.S. National Toy Hall of Fame.
The Game Boy became a staple within the chiptune scene as hardware for
composing music through music trackers such as Little Sound DJ and
Nanoloop.
External links
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* [
https://web.archive.org/web/20110128120244/http://www.gameboy.com/
Official website] archived at the Wayback Machine
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy
