Though handheld gaming had existed before its arrival, Nintendo’s Game Boy heralded a revolution in what was possible in portable games when it arrived 30 years ago, on April 21, 1989. The original grey brick with the green screen hit store shelves in Japan that spring before arriving in the U.S. the following summer, and helped establish Nintendo as the go-to company for quality handheld gaming.
The Game Boy, upon its original launch, was actually one of the more technically inferior handheld gaming consoles available on the market – the Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear both featured full-color screens and more sophisticated hardware, and were already available by the time the Game Boy arrived. However, a few key aspects worked big time in Nintendo’s favor: the price point (just $90 compared to the $150 of the Game Gear or the $170 of the Lynx), the superior battery life, and the overall durability of the system itself.
Upon launch, the Game Boy only had a handful of titles: Alleyway, Baseball, Super Mario Land and Yakuman in Japan, and Alleyway, Baseball, Super Mario Land, Tetris and Tennis in the U.S. In the U.S., Tetris was bundled with the game upon release, and the popularity of the classic puzzle title helped push sales worldwide.
Nintendo was also helped in terms of their hardware sales due to some key franchises being exclusive to the company, or even to the Game Boy itself. These included the Super Mario Land series, The Legend of Zelda, and perhaps most importantly, Pokémon. Though Pokémon wouldn’t release until the tail end of the original Game Boy’s life cycle, the original games in the franchise sold more than 31 million copies worldwide.
Though modest in terms of its hardware, the Game Boy turned into the little handheld that could, and helped launch the entire lineup of Game Boy systems for Nintendo that would later include the Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color together sold more than 118 million units worldwide, making them some of the best-selling consoles ever.
