Nintendo Game Boy is today known as the most popular and the first handheld device for playing games. However, it was either of these things. Nintendo Game Boy is actually a second handheld device developed by Nintendo. The first one is Game & Watch which offered different design and smaller display. Nintendo Game Boy was released in Japan in April 1989 and a few months later in the United States. During the first week, it was sold in 1 million units. Usually, packaging included the device only without any games. However, it was possible to purchase it in a bundle, which included several games.
Nintendo Game Boy is an 8-bit handheld device which combines characteristics of NES and Game & Watch. It uses cartridges to store media and to load games. Back in a day, the biggest rivals were Sega Game Gear and NEC Turbo Express. Game Boy had more powerful components inside and was considered as inferior compared to its rivals. Nevertheless, the main reasons why it became so popular were the battery life and the construction, which allowed gamers to play for months or even years without a single damage. The next version of the handheld device was known as Game Boy Color and it was sold in 118 million copies.
Nintendo Game Boy truly has an iconic design. It has a dot-matrix display which is small by today's standard but was one of the largest back in 1989. It has built-in speakers and 5 buttons, including A, B, select, pause and directional controls.
If we take a closer look at the development we will see that Game Boy was designed and developed by several key people. They are Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada who were known for previous work with the NES games. The special department of Nintendo, known as Nintendo Research & Development 1 was responsible as well. After the device was released, they revealed Super Mario Land and Tetris, which became the two most popular games for this device of all times.
If you want to play classic games without the device, you need to download an emulator. Some of the best ones are My OldBoy!, BGB and OpenEmu. They can be installed on a device running Windows, Android or Mac and they require from you to load a ROM file. Just load the Game Boy ROMs in one of the Game Boy emulator and the game is ready to be played.
With our help you have the ability to play Tetris, Adventure Island, Killer Instinct, Amazing Spider-Man among other GB ROMs available.