This month (July) is the 30th anniversary of the North American release of the Game Boy, (which was released in Japan in April). This past April there were a lot of editorial articles on the anniversary of this classic console. As my research interests are in video game nostalgia, I took time to read many of these articles and found them to be enjoyable to learn more about the history of the release of this console, as well as random insights about its library of games.
As I was born in the same year as the Game Boy, I didn’t have much experience with it. But I did have a neighbor who introduced me to most of my video game experiences, and he had an Original Game Boy that I played from time to time. The only game I remember playing on it was the Looney Tunes game, and how I would attempt to get past the falling boulders and never really get that far into the game, no matter how many times I tried.
My first gaming experiences though did come in the transition phase, in between the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Color. I was caught up in the Pokemon craze in 1997, and played a lot of Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow Version. I honestly can’t remember if I owned my own copy, I think that I just played my brothers’ cartridges. I do know that in my Pokemon obsession, I was later introduced to a Japanese ROM of Gold/Silver at that same neighbor’s house. We had somehow found a preliminary strategy guide of some sorts (in my memory it was very short, very terse, and didn’t mention much about the actual game play), and were trying to compare our notes about what the English primer said and what we were experiencing in this totally Japanese game. I think we even found fan-translations of the ROM that partially inserted some English into the game. We were incredibly hyped and eager to play the game that summer, and couldn’t wait until it’s release in North America.
Which then led to my owning of Pokemon Gold Version. That was my game, and I poured my soul into it on our family Game Boy Color (the common purple edition). On the Game Boy Color I also played War Locked, but really Pokemon was my favorite and main game. And to me, while I later would continue to play video games on handheld consoles (with a later GBA and DS Lite), my memories of the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color are inextricably tied and enmeshed with Pokemon. I really only played the later on the former, so to me this console was the vehicle and medium that I played Pokemon on.
So for me, I wanted to take some time to reflect on what this console meant to me, and why it matters. I mean, there is a movement and subculture of fans who are still obsessed with this console. There are developers who are working together to continue to code for the Game Boy, including the recent release of an easy tool to make simple Game Boy ROMs that can also be played on original hardware (which is a source of inspiration for me, I’m learning to use GB Studio to start my hobby of game development). As a console, it’s relevance and influence is obviously still around, with a growing list of homebrew games developed for it long after the end of its lifetime.
Thanks Game Boy, you inspired my love of video games and Pokemon.
Hyrule University 