"Nintendo's first step to owning the protable market"

The Original GameBoy may not look like much when compared to the GameBoy Advance or even the GameBoy Color but this little system was the start of what would be the best line of hand held's ever to grace the video game industry.

HISTORY OF THE GAMEBOY:

The GameBoy was originally released in 1989 just as portable video games were beginning to take off. Nintendo's idea of creating a portable system that you could play on the go proved to be one of their best ever. The GameBoy was an 8-bit system (like the original Nintendo Entertainment System) but was not really up to par when compared to the 8-bit console system's of the time. The GameBoy has a screen that is the same size as the GameBoy Color or fifty percent smaller than the GameBoy Advance. It runs on four double A batteries, which last about ten hours. It has no built in back light for playing in the dark but you can purchase a worm light for about ten dollars extra. However it does have a tint adjuster on the side. The GameBoy did well in the market at first. Excellent games such as Super Mario Land, Metroid II: Return Of Samus, Mega Man, Final Fantasy Adventure (aka: Secret Of Mana 1), and of course the hugely popular (and if I'm not mistaken first GameBoy Game to sell over a million copies) Tetris helped it gain the public’s eye. Other companies tried to take advantage of the initial success of the GameBoy by releasing their own portable system's in hopes of competing with it. Sega released the Game Gear and Atari released the Lynx. The Lynx failed very badly, but the Game Gear was not so easily defeated. The Game Gear was considerably more powerful than the GameBoy in almost every category and for several year's gave Nintendo a serious run for their money. But in the end only one system would come out a winner in the battle for the portable market and it was none other than the GameBoy. However this success would not last forever. By the middle of the 90's the GameBoy was losing it's appeal because of it's old and outdated hardware and because developers were no longer giving people much to look forward to in terms of new games. In fact many predicted that it would be dead in a year. But luckily Nintendo answered it's remaining fan's by releasing a second model of the GameBoy in 1995 called the GameBoy Pocket, which as the name suggest was able to fit conveniently in your pocket. They also re-released many of the best games from the early years. Unfortunately many people were not that impressed because developers were still not that interested in supporting it with new software any more. So in late 1998 Nintendo took things a step further and released the GameBoy Color. This renewed interest in the GameBoy brought it back from the brink of extinction.

GRAPHICS:

Well the graphics are not likely to leave you in awe, but for a portable system released in the late 80's you can't complain that much. The Graphics are not as good as the NES but rather most closely comparable to the Atari 5200 or 7800 (but perhaps a bit more detailed). The biggest complaint that I and probably everyone else who has ever played a GameBoy has is why there is no color. Yes that's right GameBoy is only capable of showing various shades of Black, White, and Grey. This is really surprising since the Game Gear, which was released one year after the GameBoy, could pull off colour's and graphics better than the NES.

SOUND:

The sound quality of the GameBoy is very poor, but in all fairness this is a common problem that plagues nearly all hand held's not just the GameBoy. Still the sound probably could have been a little better despite the time period and small speakers on the system. Some games have fairly good music though, The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening had very good music and sound quality.

CONTROLS:

The GameBoy is a hand held system so all the buttons are on the system itself. The controls are just like the NES (a directional pad, a start and select button, and two action buttons labeled A and B) and the layout is very similar. The controls are not that complex as you can imagine but this can lead to problems in certain games (Fighting in particular) that generally need a large number of buttons.

SYSTEM DESIGN:

The system is very compact thanks to the small size, but it is not quiet small enough. What I mean by this is it is not pocket sized which would have made it even more appealing. Of course the GameBoy Pocket is much more compact and is the better of the two models.

GAMES:

The GameBoy beat it's competition because it had the best support from developers but the most important part of any system is somewhat of a mixed bag on GameBoy. Although it is not nearly as plagued by bad games as the GameBoy Color, it still doesn't have the most impressive library out there. Some genres are well looked after such as Action while others are very poor such as Fighting. Some real classics such as the Donkey Kong Land games, Metroid, Kirby's Dream Land, Final Fantasy Adventure, Mega Man, Castlevania, Tetris, Mario Land, Legend of Zelda, Bomberman, Donkey Kong '94, Final Fantasy Legend, and Dr. Mario stand out very well but you probably won't find a whole lot more that will appeal to you.

FEATURES:

A neat feature of the GameBoy is the ability to link up your GameBoy with someone else using an accessory called a link cable. You can then play with multiple players on certain games. This neat feature was probably best used in the game Pokemon. In this game you could battle your team of monster's against another person and trade rare Pokemon between the different versions of the Game. Another nice item was the Super GameBoy adapter, which allowed you to play GameBoy games on your TV using a Super NES.

FINAL EVALUATION
(as it would have been when it was released)

GRAPHICS: 7/10
SOUND: 5/10
CONTROLS: 8.5/10
SYSTEM DESIGN:
GameBoy 7.5/10
GameBoy Pocket 8.5/10
GAMES: 7/10

Overall 7/10 for GameBoy, 7.2/10 for GameBoy Pocket
Rounded to 7 for GameFaqs

A GameBoy is not a bad buy since you have a fairly good library of games and can probably get it very cheap, but if you want a really good portable experience buy a GameBoy Advance instead. You will be able to play all the old GameBoy and GameBoy Color games on it thanks to backwards compatibility and have a wide selection of new games to choose from as well.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/27/01, Updated 08/04/02