"The beginning of a great line of products."

Now, we all know about the Game Boy, the handheld system. When most of us think about it, we think of some awesome powerful system with great, colorful graphics, realistic sound, sleek and easy to carry, and lots of things. And it's true. But not many people think of the original Game Boy.

Game Boy was pretty much the first handheld system that played more then 1 game. Not like those Tiger Electronic things. That's one of the reasons it was so popular. But there are a lot of other good reasons.

Now, the system itself wasn't that great. It was big and bulky. (Not much better then anything else you could get, though). It used 4 batteries, which increased the cost. But there's still more to factor in

Now, the sound was pretty good, I think. It's obviously not as good as what we have today, but for its time, it was advanced.

The graphics weren't that great. However, it had the potential. Its processors were advanced; perhaps more advanced then the NES's. But since it had no color, it pretty much was a failure here.

One thing that's really good about it is that it's easy to control. The "Controller" is just like the one on the NES. There's the obligatory A and B buttons. Then there's Start and Select (The latter being cut out from consoles later - Or replaced with Z, if you want). There's the D pad, which are the 4 arrow buttons, as you should know.

As it's not like some extremely complex PC games that uses the keyboard, and most of it, which is over 30 buttons, this system is easy and simple. You don't have to memorize so many different buttons to fully enjoy the game.

And speaking of the games....

OH. MY. GOD. The Game Boy has the biggest library EVER. If I had the time to count, I'm sure there'd be over 400 games. (Most systems now don't have that many games. I'm sure this one does because it was the first (successful) handheld console.) However, a lot of them, quite frankly, suck. But when I say "a lot", if you cut them out, you still have a lot left. If you cut out all the crap, like most of the driving games (They were mostly flops), and get right to the great games, like Pokemon (All of them - Especially Yellow), Tetris, and I'm sure they made a Pac Man for Game Boy, you have lots of fun there. There are some Mario games too. Like Mario Land. In My Opinion, that game wasn't as good as Super Mario Bros., but it's still a good game to take in the car with you. Unless it's a car ride in the dark.

But wait, even if it is in the dark, you can use some of the Accessories that will later come out, like the worm light! It provides light, obviously. You can plug it into the cable slot.

And speaking of the cable slot, you can use it for its intended purpose, which was to use a cable and play against other people. This is one of the first, if not the first, handheld system to have multiplayer at the same time. Tired of playing against those boring old pokemon trainers who do the same thing every time? Well then, play against your friend!

Overall, it's great. I'd recommend it, but, you know, I'd be about 15 years too late.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/09/05