

Released in Japan in 1998, this iteration is slightly bigger than the Pocket and as the name suggests it comes with a backlight. One of the most sought after models of the original Game Boy is the Game Boy Light. Apparently the presence or lack of sound and picture wasn’t enough for some people. Early models had no LED to indicate if the unit was powered on or not, but after complaints, one was added. The screen was now pure black and white compared to the green tinted display of the original model, and thanks to LCD technology improving it has a much better refresh rate, meaning less ghosting. It also had a smaller link port, meaning that new cables or an adapter were needed to trade the new fangled “pocket monsters” that were starting to arrive on the scene. Smaller and lighter, this version took only two AAA batteries, but still managed to squeeze about 10 hours of gameplay from them. The next major revision came with the Game Boy Pocket in 1996.
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The range followed after a number of limited edition variants such as a UK-only model coming in red with the Manchester United logo, and a Japanese-only Toyota branded model that was given as a free gift with car purchases.

There was a European-only Blue version which is quite sought after now. This minor redesign came in black, green, red, and transparent casing, with a white version being exclusive to Japan and Toys R Us in the UK. This would start Nintendo’s trend of releasing their later consoles in assorted colours so that players could pick their favourite.

There wasn’t anything particularly different about this model inside the shell, but it came in various different colours. These models weren’t officially called that, and still carried the DMG-01 designation, but the advertising campaign that accompanied their launch used this phrase, so the name stuck. More powerful devices which came later such as the Lynx and Turboexpress just couldn’t keep up with the lifespan of the device, limiting their portability.įor six years, the original design reigned supreme, and then 1995 came and along with it the the “Play it Loud!” series. Whilst this use of lower powered components meant the Game Boy wasn’t as powerful as other competing devices released after, it did mean that it could run for around 15 hours on a set of four AA batteries. STN is a technology that was cheaper and more established than the higher quality TFT, although it did mean that the response rate was poor, causing ghosting on many games. As well as the outdated for the time processor, the screen was a 160x140 resolution STN display. Creator Gunpei Yokoi was fond of the phrase “Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology” to describe this method. It wasn’t using any particularly new technology: instead existing technology was being used in an innovative way.
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This made it an attractive proposition for gaming companies at the time as they were able to modify their existing code rather than re-writing games from the ground up for the new system. You’ll generally hear collectors referring to it by that model number to differentiate between it and later revisions.Ĭoming with a custom Sharp GPU based on the intel 8080 and zilog z80 (both popular microprocessors in computers of the 80s), the Game Boy supported much of the code that developers had already written.
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Internally, Nintendo had referred to the machine as “Dot Matrix Game” and so the initial model carried that internal name over with its serial number. The very first Game Boy was released on the 21st of April 1989 in Japan, with a European release following the next year. Let’s take a look at the great eight in celebration of three decades of Nintendo’s great game-changer. With different designs and colours there are literally hundreds of variations on the machine, but each of them falls into one of eight designations. The system was expanded on, repackaged and re-released in various guises over the years, with some models becoming quite collectible. In the 30 years since launch, there have been a number of Game Boy models. Articles // 21st Apr 2019 - 3 years ago // By Gary “Dominoid” Sheppard The Chronology of Game Boy Models
