The original Game Boy was introduced to North America in August of 1982. It was manufactured by Nintendo and was created by Gunpei Yokoi, along with the Nintendo Research and Development 1. They are the same staff who designed the Game & Watch series. The Game Boy was a 8-bit handheld system, that played games in black and white.

There were other handheld consoles out at the same time as the Game Boy. However, the Game Boy was a tremendous success. Between the Game Boy and next generation Game Boy Color, they have sold 118.69 million units combined worldwide. When released in the United States , the entire one million units that was shipped was sold within weeks.

The Game Boy system was like holding the controller from the Nintendo Entertainment System. With a simple button set up. It had a directional pad for movement, A and B buttons for actions, and a select and start button. It has a sliding on/off switch and ran on wither four AA batteries, or a external rechargeable battery pack. There is also a AC adapter. You could either use headphones or the system’s speakers to listen to the audio. There was also a feature that allowed you to use a link cable to hook up with another Game Boy for head-to-head two player action.

Game Boy had five launch titles. Alleyway, Baseball, Super Mario Land, Tennis, and Tetris, which was bundled with the Game Boy. There has been many different versions of the Game Boy. They also had Game Boy as a character in the cartoon Captain N: The Game Master. In 2009 Game Boy was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.

Jeremy’s Take: Oh man I remember the Game Boy!  I didn’t have one until I was older, but I sure wanted one!  Me and my brother were hardcore Sega fans (or maybe it was just because we could afford only one system at a time!) so we had a Game Gear.  When I DID finally get one, it was given to my brother from a friend who lost one of our Genesis games.  The problem was that the guy who gave it to us didn’t have the battery cover because he used a rechargeable one that was all but dead by the time we got it.  I ended up cutting out a piece of cardboard and using some tape to hold the batteries in!  I believe the first game (Other than Tetris) I owned was Final Fantasy Legends I.