Gameboy is the first handheld console game and today is the 35th anniversary of the Japanese launch, it was released on 21 April 1989.
Gameboy was an incredible success, as December 2023 a total of 118 million units were sold, an astonishing result only overpassed by Nintendo DS and now Switch (even if the latter is a hybrid system).
With the launch of an handheld system a new method of designing video games was created: Super Famicom was already announced and with Megadrive and PC Engine already on the market there was a trend to improve graphics, use more colours and higher resolutions, larger cartridges.
Gameboy presented a 8 bit CPU and a monochrome screen that clearly was different from this trend; but the concept of being able to play videogames everywhere and with different games (a big difference from Game & Watch that can be considered a precursor of Gameboy) was the key of the success of Nintendo’s first handheld system.
The display is 2.45″ dot matrix monochrome liquid crystal with a resolution of 160×144 pixel but this solution was done for power saving reasons: the 4 AA alkaline batteries guarantee 35 hours of play, a duration that no other portable console has ever managed to achieve, a feature that became essential even when portable consoles with color screens (Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear, Bandai Wonderswan and SNK Neo Geo Pocket) were introduced on the market but which actually had a significantly shorter battery lifespan compared to that of the Gameboy.
During its lifetime different revisions were released, from Gameboy Pocket with small dimensions and lighter weight (only 2 AA alkaline batteries are needed) to Gameboy Light with a retro illuminated screen (but this model was available only in Japan) to Gameboy Color that finally introduces some colours to the handheld screen, even if this release can be considered as a new version due to a more performing hardware (all GB games can be played on GBC but some GBC games are not compatible with GB).
Through the 12 years on the market (the longest running system in Japan) over than a thousand games were released and among them probably the most famous are: Super Mario Land, which was released on launch day in 1989, Tetris, released a couple of month later (while it was bundled with the console in the West) and of course Pokemon Red, Blue and Green, released in 1996.