The Game Boy. Still the best (Picture: NIntendo)

The Nintendo Game Boy changed everything.

When your parents knocked loudly on the bathroom door and asked, ‘What ARE you doing in there?’, you finally had a different answer for them.

Although it altered the video game industry and our toilet habits, the Game Boy doesn’t always get the immense credit it deserves. Next time you jump on Clash of Clans on your smartphone to kill time on the train, remember it was the Game Boy that put you there.

We live in a video game age of graphics so realistic you forget you’re not watching a film, and yet the latest titles cannot capture the black and white (or green and white) magic bottled by the Game Boy.




Launched in Japan and North America in 1989, Nintendo’s handheld console didn’t reach Europe until September 1990, making this year it’s 25th anniversary in the UK.

In the last quarter of a century, no other console (home or handheld) has managed to usurp the place it has in our hearts. Here’s why the original non-colour Game Boy is the best console ever.

1. The Game Boy is so beautiful

Today’s consoles are black boxes, high-spec coffins where games go for their funeral. But the Game Boy was something else. It’s so gorgeous you could be forgiven for forgetting to switch the thing on. You just want to stare at it all day instead.

2. The games cartridges were so sweet

They were more like little grey tokens of promise. And they even had their own little plastic carrying case! Cute!

Picture: Etsy

3. The packaging

We haven’t even switched the Game Boy on yet and we’re still drooling. That thick branded stripe down the left hand side of those dinky shiny cardboard game boxes gives us chills. In a good way.

Picture: Nintendo

4. The big switch

Okay, let’s get this thing up and running. And it is worth the wait. The slide of the Nintendo logo followed by that delicious ping takes us back to a more innocent age.

5. The buttons

Video gaming isn’t rocket science, but there is something extremely comforting about the simple set-up of D-pad/buttons on the Game Boy. You just want to press them all day.

6. The long wait for The Long One in Tetris

You’d have to be a real blockhead to dislike Tetris, the game that defined the Game Boy. And there was nothing like that moment when you cleared four lines in a row thanks to the ‘I tetromino’ (yes, that’s what it was called!).

7. The underwater level in Super Mario Land

Mario takes to the ocean in his own submarine. Look out for those seahorses.

8. Feeling better after a visit to Dr Mario

If you found Tetris a bit too Mario-less (Nintendo’s head plumber popped up in lots of Game Boy titles, even when he wasn’t a playable character), then Dr Mario was the game for you, as falling drug capsules were used to neutralise nasty viruses. Many pharmacists went into their chosen industry because of this game.



9. The theme from Robocop

We could listen to this all day. The wonderful main theme from Robocop, composed by Jonathan Dunn, transcended its game (which was actually pretty good, difficult but good) and took on a life of its own, ending up in a famous advert for home applicances brand Ariston (and on… and on… and on… and Ariston).

10. The Joker was way taller than Batman

Take that, superherealism. Michael Keaton was 1cm bigger than Jack Nicholson in the 1989 Batman movie, but in Batman: The Video Game on the Game Boy, the Clown Prince of Crime towered all over the Dark Knight in this fantastic platformer, which still holds up against today’s Batman: Arkham series.

11. Bart Simpson had a Game Boy, so it must have been cool

There was a period when the brains behind The Simpsons weren’t sure of the identity of their best character (it turned out to be Homer, obviously). In that time, Bart Simpson was forced down the throat of a generation – he was in everything. But kids loved it, even if most of The Simpsons video games were fairly mediocre. The Game Boy entry, Bart Simpson’s Escape From Camp Deadly, isn’t the best game ever, but it is fun.

12. Swinging a backhand in front of a very familiar umpire

In the Game Boy’s tennis game – imaginatively called, um, Tennis – the matches were overseen by Mario himself, who was in the umpire’s chair.

Picture: Nintendo

13. The magic cable

The only problem with the original Game Boy is that it was quite a solitary pursuit, offering little in the way of two-player action. Unless, of course, you had the Game Link Cable, which allowed you to connect your Game Boy to someone else’s, and then you could play tennis together in two-player bliss.


14. Gotta catch ’em all

Before the trading cards, before the movies, before the cartoons, Pokémon started life in 1996 on the Game Boy, in the shape of two games, Pokémon Red and Blue, games that changed the world.

15. Gargoyle’s (never-ending) Quest

If you had the dexterity and patience to complete the magnificent yet magnificently challenging Gargoyle’s Quest, we salute you. There are athletes with Olympic medals who put in less work than you did. Take a bow.

16. Mario turned into a rabbit

In Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, generally considered to be one of the best platform games on the original Game Boy, Mario could eat a magic carrot and grow bunny ears, helping him to fly. You see, carrots really are good for you.

17. It wasn’t a Game Gear

The Game Boy’s Sega rival was slicker in every department except one…. the flipping games. The Game Gear was fast and it had colour (hence the short battery life) – but it had no heart. People remember the Game Gear, but no one loves it like gamers love the Game Boy.

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