Nintendo Gameboy Games

The Nintendo Game Boy is an 8-bit handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. The first handheld in the Nintendo Game Boy family, it was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, then North America, three months later, and lastly in Europe, nearly a year after. It was designed by the same team that developed the Game & Watch and several Nintendo Entertainment System games: Satoru Okada, Gunpei Yokoi, and Nintendo Research & Development 1.

Nintendo's second handheld game console, the Nintendo Game Boy combines features from both the Nintendo NES home system and Game & Watch hardware. The console features a dull green dot-matrix screen with adjustable contrast dial, five control buttons (a directional pad, two game buttons, as well as start and select buttons), a single speaker with an adjustable volume dial, and, like its rivals, uses cartridges as physical media for games. The color scheme is made from two tones of grey with accents of black, blue, and dark magenta. All the corners of the portrait-oriented rectangular unit are softly rounded, save for the bottom right, which is curved. At launch, it was sold either as a standalone unit or bundled with one of several games: Super Mario Land or Tetris among them. Several accessories were also developed, including a carrying pouch and printer.

Despite being technologically inferior to its fourth-generation competitors (Sega's Game Gear, Atari's Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress), the Nintendo Game Boy received praise for its battery life and durability in its construction. It quickly outsold the competition, selling one million units in the United States within a few weeks. The Nintendo Game Boy and its successor, the Nintendo Game Boy Color, have sold an estimated 118 million units worldwide. It is one of the most recognizable devices from the 1990s, becoming a cultural icon in the years following its release. Several redesigns were released during the console's lifetime, including the Nintendo Game Boy Pocket (1996) and the Nintendo Game Boy Light (1998; Japan only). Production of the Nintendo Game Boy continued into the early 2000s, even after the release of its successor, the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, in 2001. Production ceased in 2003.