The History of the Nintendo Game Boy

I owned a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) when I was a kid. I got it in 1987 and that day was the happiest day of my life. Prior to that, the only other video game system I owned was the Magnavox Odyssey, which played Atari game cartridges. When that system died, my friend, Dave, who had an actual Atari would bring his to my house after school nearly daily. We would play games until dinner time. My favorite game was Food Fight and his was Xevious, which I was never any good at (Dave had a great story about a bird - I think it was a relatives, maybe? - who would emulate the 'beep' and 'boop' sounds from the game. There was another story about goldfish and carrots that doesn't have anything to do with video games, but was pretty funny, as well. I don't think Dave wants me to tell that story, though...).

A couple of years after I got my NES, Nintendo introduced the Game Boy, which I really wanted, but never got. My friend, Ray, got the Game Boy and I'd play his. The games were pretty impressive, but to me, the Atari Lynx seemed the better system. I was torn and subsequently passed up on both. Instead, I went the route of the TurboGrafx 16 (Bonk's Adventure and JJ and Jeff were two of the very best games on that system. I wish I still had that system because it was a lot of fun. Instead, I sold that system and all of my games to my friend, Scott, for $50) and Sega Genesis.

It wasn't until the Game Boy Advance (GBA) came out in 2001 that I finally entered the world of portable games systems. The GBA was a phenominal system. The graphics were great (for a handheld system), and the games were engaging. I think one of the reasons I never bought a Game Boy was because the screen only displayed four colors, which seemed rather primitive. In the mid 90's, Nintendo came out with the Game Boy Color to fix that propblem, but by that time, I felt like I was far too removed from Nintendo in general for me to buy it because I was too caught up with the Sony Playstation.

In fact, my only real problem with the GBA was that the screen was not backlit and was very hard to see if you weren't playing in the sun or next to a lamp. The second generation GBA took care of that and I traded in my original GBA for the new one. The second generation GBA became a fixture with me. Heck, I even played it at work when we were slow.

Then Nintendo came out with the DS, their dual screen system which just kicks holy heck out of any other handheld game system I've ever played and/or seen. My DS is one of my favorite possessions. My daughter's friend, Aidan, has a DS, too, and now my daughter, Kenzie, wants one. Nintendo just came out with the DSi earlier this year, so I have been thinking about upgrading to that system and giving Kenzie my DS. We'll see.

What I've given you here is but a small, personal history of the Game Boy and the DS. If you're a fan of handheld video games, then for a more detailed (and much more awesome) history of Nintendo's handheld gaming systems, check out this article over at IGN.com.

Check out the pictures below for a little trip through time.

Enjoy!