History of video games/Platforms/Game Boy

Development
Nintendo had previously made dedicated handheld consoles such as the Game & Watch series consoles as well as the Nintendo Computer Mah-Jong Yakuman, however the Game Boy would be their first handheld to play interchangeable cartridges

Launch
The GameBoy was released in 1989 on April 21st in Japan and July 31st in the United States of America.

Project Atlantis
Project Atlantis was a canceled Game Boy successor that used a 32 bit ARM 7 CPU that was in development by 1995. The system was canceled due to it's enormous size, high expense, and poor performance.

GameBoy Color
The GameBoy Color was released on November 18th, 1998.

A touch screen adapter for the GameBoy Color was developed, but never released.

Third party support for the system was large, with even a sewing machine supporting control over Game Boy link cable.

In 2001 the Mobile System GB released in Japan for 5800 yen. Though it allowed a Game Boy to connect to cell phones to access the internet on the go, it had a number of fees associated with using it, and sold under 100,000 units.

Legacy
In 2003 the original GameBoy was discontinued, having been succeeded by the Game Boy Advance line of consoles. The GameBoy and the GameBoy Color sold 118.69 million units collectively.

GameBoy emulation has proven to be a fairly common topic in programming education. In 2020 researchers made the Engage an unofficial ultra low power GameBoy hardware clone which required no battery power to operate, instead being powered by solar energy and energy captured from button presses.

The Game Boy became would later become a popular musical instrument for Chiptune music creation.

Technology
In terms of technical capabilities, the Game Boy is often thought of as a portable Nintendo Entertainment System, though the internal architectures of these systems are radically different.

Compute
The GameBoy uses a 8 bit Z80 CPU clocked at 4.194304 megahertz.

The GameBoy has eight kilobytes of RAM and eight kilobytes of VRAM.

Display
The GameBoy has a 160 by 144 resolution LCD. The dot matrix display could display four shades from green to grey, making it monochrome.

Audio
The GameBoy has four channels of stereo sound. The system only had a single built in speaker, restricting the system to monophonic audio by default and requiring headphones for full stereo audio output.

Networking
The GameBoy has a link cable port.

Power
The original GameBoy uses four AA batteries and draws 70 to 80 mAh an hour, lasting about 30 hours.

GameBoy Color
The GameBoy color possessed significantly increased specs compared to the original monochrome models.

Compute
An 8-bit Z80 based CPU clocked at 8.388 megahertz powers the GameBoy Color.

The GameBoy color has 32 Kilobytes of RAM.

Display
The GameBoy color uses a color TFT LCD, with a resolution of 160 by 144 pixels, 32,000 colors displayable, and 56 simultaneous colors.

Networking
A link cable port and inferred port are present.

Power
The GameBoy color takes two AA batteries, and draws 70 to 80 mAh an hour, lasting for about 10 hours of runtime.

Accessories
Some Suzuki and Aprillia motorcycles are designed to hook up to a Game Boy Color through a special cable and cartridge combination for diagnostics access.

A work oriented accessory, the WorkBoy keyboard and cartridge combo was planned but not released.

1989

 * Super Mario Land
 * Revenge of the 'Gator

Tetris
The rights to Tetris proved to be a contentious issue between those who claimed rights and the Soviet government.

Read more about Tetris on Wikipedia.

1991

 * Metroid II: Return of Samus

1992

 * Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
 * Kirby's Dream Land - The first Kirby game
 * X - Early 3D Game on the GameBoy

1993

 * The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

1994

 * Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

Pokemon Red and Blue
The first Pokemon games were inspired by series creator Satoshi Tajiri's experience catching bugs as a youth in Machida, Japan.

At the last minute an additional Pokemon was added by the development team to make the total number of monsters catchable 151. This addition caused a number of urban legends and myths regarding an in game truck.

The spooky ambiance of the in game location Lavender Town sparked a number of urban legends and myths.

1997

 * Harvest Moon GB

1998

 * Pokémon Yellow

Mario Golf
Mario Golf for the GBA mixed golf mechanics with a simple RPG, sparking a small genre of golf RPGs.

Read more about Mario Golf on Wikipedia.

Pokémon Gold and Silver
Then HAL Laboratory President Satoru Iwata was brought on to help with making compression tools for game graphics.

Read more about Pokémon Gold and Silver on Wikipedia.

2000

 * Pokémon Crystal

Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel
The track "Ascent" is a particularly impressive piece of chiptune. Read more about Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel on Wikipedia.

2001

 * The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages

2002

 * Shantae

Special edition GameBoys

 * Yellow Tommy Hilfiger Game Boy Color.

Archived web materials

 * Game Boy website
 * Game Boy hardware website