The History of the most successful handheld console ever!
Spring of 1989.
This is the spring when it all started, The Game Boy
was launched in Japan after many years hard work from Gunpei
Yokoi and his R&D 1 team. Gunpei wanted to combine Nintendo´s 2
biggest successes ever the NES and the Game and Watch games into one console
and there you´ve got it the Game Boy! When Yokoi in 1987 presented a prototype
of the GB for Hiroshi Yamauchi he was very pleased and predicted that it would
sell in 25 million copies it´s first 3 years on the market! The Nintendo
of America president Minoru Arakawa had even more faith in the console and thought
that it´s could sell 100 million copies if only the right games were being
produced! Of course they would release new games in the mighty popular Mario,
Zelda and Metroid series but they needed something more than that. A simple
but at the same time genius game. And they found one! You know which? If i say
that it involved falling bricks and that it was made by an Russian mathematician
named Alexey Pajitnov.....Yes Tetris!
Minoru Arakawa saw the Russian game first at an arcade
exhibition in July 1988. Then the game had spread to all sorts of consoles and
existed on both the PCs, Arcade machines and Sega´s and Atari´s consoles,
but noone had any rights for a handheld version of the game so that same summer
Nintendo developed their own version of the game without asking Alexey if they
could! They soon realised that this was the game that would sell their Game
Boy and just months before the launch of the console after a lot of negotiating
with Alexey they had finally an game boy version of the game.
1992 (3 years later).
Nintendo has sold 32 million Game Boys, 4 million more
than Hiroshi had estimated. The future looks bright for Nintendo and their Game
Boy!
1993-1997.
The Game Boy has now sold a stunning 50 million copies.
However, sales were dropping and Hiroshi Yamauchi realised that something had
to be done. He told Gunpei, who just had finished his big project, the Virtual
Boy, to develop a new smaller and improved version of the Game Boy. Gunpei started
working and the result came in 1996 under the name Game Boy Pocket. The Game
Boy Pocket was a smaller, lighter version (only half of the weight of a regular
GB!) of the Game Boy. The Game Boy Pocket´s most welcome change was a new
improved LCD screen (All of those who own a Game Boy know what I´m talking
about!).
The release of the GB Pocket lead to a new Game Boy
Boom and all the game companies started making Game Boy games again. By the
end of 1997, after the launch of Pocket Monsters (released sometime between
96 and 97), the Game Boy had sold a total of 60 million copies!
The Pocket Camera system:
The Pocket Camera system: Nintendo´s newest and
oddest Game Boy Pocket addon ever is the Pocket Camera system. It consists of
a little eye-like camera that you attach to your GB Pocket. Then you run around
and take pictures of everybody and everything. Afterwards, you can manipulate
the pictures in the gameboy (for example, adding big ears and a mohawk). You
can then use them in different predefined games! If you want to save your pictures
you´ll have to buy a Pocket Printer, a little printer that prints the pictures
on small rolls of special paper. This paper works like a sticker, which means
that you can put them anywhere you like. This way, you can take pictures of
your friend, manipulate them and then put up them in a public spot where anybody
can see them! Okay the pictures you take are only in 4 greyscale tones and low
resolution but i suppose it´s quite funny anyway. The system is selling
really really good in Japan as we speak. Add the Pocket Camera system to Nintendo´s
long list of successes!
Color Game Boy
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Even if these things alone would had given the Game Boy a secure future at least another year Nintendo had yet another surprise up their sleeves, the Color Game Boy! The Color Game Boy which was showed off at the E.C.T.S. in 1998, is a new Game Boy that can handle games with 32 000 colors even though only 56 can be showed at once on the screen. Of course the Color Game Boy can also run ALL old Game Boy games. Right now only Nintendo themselves, Rare (Nintendo´s closest companions in gamemaking) and come other companies such as Acclaim, Infogrames Activision and Midway are developing games for the console but eventually other companies will also start making games for the console. Even now the new console already
has some strong games e.g. an enhanced version of Zelda IV, Wario Land
2 and a new colorful Tetris just to mention some. |
Go West Pocket Monsters!
At the same time as the Color Game Boy is released worldwide the great Pocket
Monsters 1 will be released over here in the west. However if the game will
have as much sucess here as in Japan is yet to see. The game has been released
in the US not many weeks ago and it has been very appreciated. Just look at
how it has climbed at our Charts section!
The next big thing to keep the GB in selling Japan is
the sequel to Pocket Monsters due to release soon (in Japan). There is no doubt
that this game will be an as big success as Pocket Monsters 1 when it came in
96/97.
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