On April 21, 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan. What an incredible machine it is! I love it to bits and feel like I’ve spent half my working life talking about, writing about and even developing games for the Game Boy and its follow up systems. So…I’m going to ramble on about the damn thing again 🙂

It’s no secret that the Nintendo Entertainment System was considered the loser kids system around my way, and while you can read about my efforts to overcome my lack of NES experience here, it was the Game Boy that first exposed me to many of the classic Nintendo-based franchises. The Game Boy opened my eyes to Metroid, Castlevania, Bomberman, Duck Tales and many more games that just got better on the big screen.

It’s also no secret that I spent a lot of time in my teenage years (…and, er, beyond) by myself, so the Game Boy was an essential part of my life. I’d spend many nights walking aimlessly around the local neighbourhood, drinking chocolate milk, listening to music on my portable CD player, and finding random well-lit places to play Tetris Attack until I knew everyone would be asleep and it was safe to go back home. Needless to say I carried around a LOT of Double-A batteries.

I always felt like the Game Boy was mostly ignored by the gaming press before Pokemon came along, which is part of why I started the world’s first Game Boy fan website, Game Boy HeadQuarters. I drew all the graphics using crayons on paper, scanning them in on an incredibly slow scanner that was considered magical super future technology at the time.

I’ll talk more about GBHQ later, but the short version is that it opened up a lot of doors for me and I quickly became known as “The Game Boy Guy” in the games journalism world. So much so I ended up writing a book about the system, but I’ll talk about THAT later too 🙂 I owe the Game Boy a lot.

Of course after Pokemon hit it was all anyone wanted to talk about with this machine, but I always had a soft spot for the games that didn’t involve trading and battling hundreds of creatures.

The system evolved with the Game Boy Color and Super Game Boy models, and I spent a small fortune buying games for them all as a companion to the mighty Super Nintendo. Even games I already owned on console I would get the Game Boy version of too so I would have a portable version to enjoy on the bus or the local petrol station at two in the morning.

The Game Boy meant a lot to me and continued to be a main part of my gaming diet when the Advance model came out. It was like a portable Super Nintendo! Games like F-Zero and Wario Land 4 were fantastic and still hold up really well today.

I feel like everything came full circle towards the end of the Game Boy Advance’s life when the first game I worked on was released on the system. Just something about seeing my game on the shelf with the Game Boy logo and that all-important “Nintendo Seal of Quality” was a huge deal to me, not to mention it was a platform game that was very much inspired by the games I played on the original Game Boy so long ago like Metroid, Castlevania and Super Mario Land 2.

Bless you Game Boy, you really are something special.

Some Donkey Kong games are better than others…and some will sadly never be made.

And now for my Favourite Game Boy / Game Boy Color games:

Tetris: This is still the best version of the game in my eyes. Something about its minimalism makes for a more addictive experience, and I still fondly remember the thrill of clearing 200 lines for the first time. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the granny I had to shove out of the way after I got 200 lines and realised I had almost missed my train stop. The multiplayer mode was something special too and I got a lot of use out of that overpriced Game Boy Link Cable.

Donkey Kong ‘94: Oh man, this was just about the best platform game you could possibly cram into that tiny grey Game Boy cartridge. After the original Donkey Kong arcade game levels are cleared you’re treated to a skill-testing Mario game that mixed up the formula every level in fun new ways. On the Super Game Boy it looks and sounds absolutely amazing and it’s crazy that more people don’t go on about how good this is. Play this game!

Mario Golf: This is my favourite Mario sports game and for some reason I just love how it mixes RPG elements with a simple-yet-deep Golf simulation. I’ll still never forgive my cartridge battery for crapping out on the very last level, but it’s the only video game addictive enough to keep me going for an entire 14 hour plane flight and I’m kind of hoping I get to fly to Los Angeles again so I have an excuse to bust it out again.

Tetris Attack: I am a sucker for Panel De Pon, and a sucker for Yoshi characters, so what’s not to love? It’s maddeningly addictive and just writing about it makes me want to crack the cartridge out for one more go! I played this long before I played the Super Nintendo version so I didn’t miss the two player mode and the view of the CPU screen. All I knew was that when you rescued your friends they said I’M FREE and for some reason that made me giggle and to be honest it still does. Maybe I watched too much Are You Being Served?

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening: Good lord this is such a beautiful game. It contains the line “Don’t ask me what that means, I’m just a kid” which I think I snuck into some game I made years later. Anyway Link’s Awakening is the best handheld Zelda until Link Between Worlds came along like 15 years later. There were also those Oracle of Seasons / Oracle of Ages games on Game Boy Color but I never really got into them like I got into this. Stop reading this and play it already sheesh.

Tetris Blast: Not a lot of people say good things about this Tetris spin off but I am a sucker for the mix of Tetris and explosions. I like how you can set up massive chain combos which is something I could never get the hang of in most other puzzle games. This was a good “zone out and forget about that girl who’s not treating you right” game which came in quite handy a lot.

Super Mario DX: I wrote about this in length in my review of this for GameSpot, but I also have a soft spot for it because when I was reviewing it a girl came over to my apartment for the first time, spotted the cartridge, and told me how she knew where all the hidden warp zones were and how much she loves video games. I ended up marrying her, so everything worked out all right in the end! I also almost got kidnapped while buying this game but that’s a story for another day.

Wario Land 2: Just an absolute rock solid platformer that looks great on the regular monochrome Game Boy, and fan-freaking-tastic on the Game Boy Color. Wario’s invincibility is a great hook to base the game around as you feel free to explore the game’s massive levels in new and interesting ways. Squash him! Set him on fire! Make him watch Speed 2! Secrets abound and I think I even made a map somewhere and if that’s not true love I don’t know what is.

Wild Snake: Hardly anyone knows about this game, and maybe it’s not actually any good, but it really just clicked with me in a seriously hard way. It’s like Tetris but with snakes, I guess? I liked how it almost played itself if luck is on your side. Maybe I was lazy when I first started playing it. Try it out!

Pokemon Pinball: Damn it I thought I could make it through this list without mentioning Pokemon but I can’t deny how great a pinball game this is. I wish there was a new edition of this for the 3DS emulator!

OK enough of my rambling for tonight. What about you – what are your favourite Game Boy moments?