Nintendo Game Boy Game Boy

1989

The Game Boy is an 8-bit handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-game handhelds, Nintendo developed the Game Boy to be a portable console, with interchangeable cartridges. The concept proved highly successful, and the Game Boy line became a cultural icon of the 1990s and early 2000s.

The Game Boy was designed by the Nintendo Research & Development 1 team, led by Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada. The device features a dot-matrix display, a D-pad, four game buttons, a single speaker, and uses Game Pak cartridges. Its two-toned gray design included black, blue, and magenta accents, with softly rounded corners and a distinctive curved bottom-right edge. At launch in Japan it was sold as a standalone console, but in North America and Europe it came bundled with the very popular Tetris which fueled sales.

Despite mixed reviews criticizing its monochrome display compared to full-color competitors like the Game Gear, Lynx, and TurboExpress, the Game Boy's affordability, battery life, and extensive game library propelled it to market dominance. An estimated 118.69 million units of the Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color, released in 1998, have been sold worldwide, making them the fourth-best-selling system of all time. The Game Boy received several redesigns during its lifespan, including the smaller Game Boy Pocket, released in Japan and North America in 1996, and the backlit Game Boy Light, released exclusive to Japan in 1998.