Game Boy Color

"Get into it."

- The Game Boy Color's slogan.

The Game Boy Color is the successor of the Game Boy Pocket. Slightly larger than the Pocket, but significantly smaller than the original Game Boy.

Capabilities
The most defining feature was allowing to play games in full colour with a maximum of fifty six colours showing on the screen simultaneously, unlike the Game Boy only allowing greyscale colours. In addition, it possessed more powerful hardware than the Pocket, with a processor of twice the speed and quadruple the memory. A large number of new games were released to exploit the capabilities of this new console, which was also backwards compatible with every previous Game Boy game with only a handful of exceptions.

A unique feature of the Game Boy Color was its infrared wireless link-up port. Seldom used by any software, it was consequently dropped for future Game Boy iterations and the Nintendo DS line of handhelds. It was however reintroduced with the Nintendo 3DS.

Some were surprised that Nintendo released such an apparently underpowered system, as the Game Boy Color was not even as powerful as the Game Gear, which was released way back in 1990. However, the Color, as with its predecessors, was notably more portable, more affordable and had a greater library of games than any of its competitors, as well as many years of carefully-built brand recognition behind it. As such it dominated the market, and destroyed all competition.

Hardware Specifications

 * Main processor: Zilog Z80
 * Processor speed: 4 or 8 MHz
 * Resolution: 160x144 pixels
 * Colour palettes avalible: 32,786
 * Colours on screen: 10, 32 or 56
 * Maximum sprites: 40 total, 10 on a line and 4 colours maximum
 * Size of sprite: 8x8 or 8x16 pixels
 * Tiles on screen: 512
 * Audio: 2 square wave channels, 1 wave channel, 1 noise channel, mono speaker and stereo jack headphone
 * Maximum ROM size: 8 Megabytes
 * RAM: 32 kilobytes
 * VRAM: 16 kilobytes
 * Cartridge RAM: 128px
 * Power:
 * Internal: Two AA Batteries allowing thirty hours of play.
 * External: 3V DC
 * Indicator: Red LED
 * Input:
 * 8-way D-pad
 * 4 buttons (A, B, START, SELECT)
 * Volume Potentiometer
 * Power switch
 * Serial I/O
 * Infrared I/O
 * Cartridge I/O
 * Dimensions:
 * Metric: 75 mm x 27 mm x 133 mm
 * Imperial: 2.95 in x 1.06 in x 5.24 in

Top Ten best selling

 * Pokémon Gold and Silver
 * The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX
 * The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
 * The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
 * Pokémon Crystal
 * Pokémon Trading Card Game
 * Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories
 * Pokémon Pinball

Launch titles

 * Centipede
 * Game & Watch Gallery 2
 * Tetris DX
 * Pocket Bomberman

Trivia

 * Despite Europe and Australia having the word spelt as colour, the system was still called the Game Boy "Color" in their region.