Game Boy

The Game Boy line (Japanese: ゲームボーイ Gēmu Bōi) is a line of battery-powered handheld game consoles sold by Nintendo. It is one of the best-selling game system lines selling over 120 million units world wide to date, and has spawned many successful spin-offs. The original Game Boy's design set the standard for handheld gaming consoles.

History
Nintendo's Game Boy handheld was first released in 1989. The gaming device was the brainchild of long-time Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi, who was the person behind the Ultra Hand, an expanding arm toy created and produced by Nintendo in 1970, long before Nintendo would enter the video game market. Yokoi was also responsible for the Game & Watch series of handhelds when Nintendo made the move from toys to video games.

When Gunpei designed the original Game Boy, he knew that, to be successful, the system needed to be small, light, inexpensive, and durable, as well as have a varied, recognizable library of games upon its release. By following this simple mantra, the Game Boy line managed to gain a vast following despite technically superior alternatives.

The original Game Boy was released on April 21, 1989 in Japan and in August 1989 in the United States. Based around a Zilog Z80 processor, it had a black and green reflective LCD screen, an eight-way directional pad, and two action buttons. It played games from ROM-based media contained in small plastic detachable units called cartridges (sometimes abbreviated as carts).

The game that really pushed it into the upper reaches of success was Tetris. Tetris was widely popular, and on the handheld format could be played anywhere. It came packaged with the Game Boy, and broadened its reach; adults and kids alike were buying Game Boys in order to play Tetris anywhere. It is considered to be a killer game for the Game Boy that made it hugely popular. Releasing Tetris on the Game Boy was selected as #4: Tetris Makes Game Boy a Must-Have on GameSpy's 25 Smartest Moments in Gaming.

The original Game Boy was the first cartridge-based system that supported more than four players at one time (via the link port). In fact, it has been shown that the system could support 16 simultaneous players at once. However, this feature was only supported in Faceball 2000.


 * CPU: Custom 8-bit Sharp Z80 at 4.194304 MHz (has a slightly different instruction set than a standard Z80, and integrated sound generation)
 * RAM: 8 kByte internal S-RAM
 * Video RAM: 8 kByte internal
 * ROM: 256 kbit, 512 kbit, 1 Mbit, 2 Mbit and 4 Mbit and 8 Mbit cartridges
 * Sound: 4 channel stereo sound. The unit only has one speaker, but headphones provide stereo sound
 * Display: Reflective LCD 160 &times; 144 pixels
 * Screen Size: 66 mm (2.6 in) diagonal
 * Color Palette: 4 shades of "gray" (green to black)
 * Communication: Up to 16 Game Boys can be linked together via serial ports
 * Power: 6 V, 0.7 W (4 AA batteries provide ~35 hours)
 * Dimensions: 90mm(W) &times; 148mm(H) &times; 32mm(D)/3.5 &times; 5.8 &times; 1.3 (inch)