50 Fun Facts About Game Boy

In which country did the Game Boy go on sale first?

It launched there on April 21, 1989, three months before North America.

In which year did the Game Boy first go on sale?

Japan got it on April 21 and North America on July 31 of the same year.

Which puzzle game was bundled with the Game Boy outside Japan?

Henk Rogers argued it would appeal to everyone, while Mario mainly appealed to young boys.

Which Nintendo engineer led the division that designed the Game Boy?

His assistant Satoru Okada pushed for cartridges and took day-to-day charge of the project.

Which handheld line did Nintendo's 1989 console succeed?

Each of those earlier devices was locked to a single game on a pre-printed segmented LCD.

Which Sega handheld competed with Nintendo's 1989 console?

Atari's Lynx and NEC's TurboExpress were the other colour rivals, all hurt by poor battery life.

What design philosophy did Yokoi champion at Nintendo R&D1?

Mature, cheap parts were more reliable and gave the handheld its battery-life edge.

What did the project codename DMG stand for?

The name survives in the original model number, DMG-01.

Which company supplied the Game Boy's CPU?

R&D2, busy building the SNES, had blocked the use of a Ricoh chip like the NES's.

Which company's screen deal did Nintendo cancel in 1987 the same day it was signed?

Yamauchi gave the contract to Sharp instead; Citizen later made colour screens for Sega's Game Gear.

What mocking nickname did sceptical Nintendo staff give the prototype?

Dame means hopeless in Japanese; early twisted-nematic screens were barely readable.

Why did Nintendo president Yamauchi cancel the project in summer 1988?

Yokoi kept working anyway and found Sharp's secret super-twisted nematic display, which saved it.

What type of display did the finished Game Boy use?

The STN panel had a green tint but a far better viewing angle than the earlier prototypes.

What was the Game Boy's screen resolution?

The 10:9 panel showed four shades of grey-green.

How many shades could the original Game Boy screen display?

Nintendo rejected a colour screen from Citizen because of power draw and cost.

How many AA batteries powered the original Game Boy?

Yamauchi threw four batteries and headphones in the box to make the price feel like a better deal.

What was the Game Boy's US launch price?

It was backed by a $20 million marketing campaign aimed at making it the must-have holiday toy.

What was the Game Boy's Japanese launch price in yen?

Yamauchi had wanted it under ¥10,000, but the STN screen pushed the cost up.

How large was the Game Boy's initial Japanese production run, which sold out in two weeks?

By August 1989 sales had reached 720,000 consoles and 1.9 million games across four titles.

Which R&D1 game was developed as the Game Boy's flagship launch title?

It was meant to be the pack-in until Tetris caught Okada and Yokoi's attention.

Which Japanese launch title was a mahjong game that never saw wide international release?

Alleyway, Baseball and Super Mario Land were the other three Japanese launch games.

Alleyway, a Japanese launch title, was a clone of which arcade classic?

Tennis and Tetris were added as launch titles when the console reached North America.

Who persuaded Nintendo of America to change the pack-in game away from Mario?

He had acquired the handheld rights and made his case to NOA president Minoru Arakawa.

Which princess made her debut in Mario's first handheld outing?

Mario rescues her from the alien Tatanga across 12 levels in Sarasaland.

Which accessory, developed by Okada, later enabled Pokémon trading?

He borrowed the idea from an early Nintendo project, Computer Mah-jong Yakuman.

What was the codename of Okada's early-1990s colour prototype with a 32-bit chip?

It was shelved, then revived with an 8-bit chip to become the Game Boy Color.

What was the Game Boy's 1995 range of coloured cases called in the West?

Japan called the same cosmetic revision Game Boy Bros.

The 1996 Game Boy Pocket ran on how many AAA batteries?

The trade-off was about 10 hours of play, and early units dropped the power LED.

Which 1998 model added a backlight and was sold only in Japan?

Its electroluminescent glow was blue-green, like a digital wristwatch of the era.

Roughly how many Game Boy and Game Boy Color units were sold combined?

That made it the best-selling console ever at its 2003 discontinuation; it now ranks fourth.

Which three systems later passed the Game Boy line in lifetime sales?

As of 2025 the Game Boy family sits fourth on the all-time list.

Which Pokémon games were the Game Boy's top-selling franchise entries?

Together they sold more than 46 million copies; Tetris was the best single seller at 35 million.

What did Nintendo call its cartridges for the handheld?

A Memory Bank Controller chip let games exceed the CPU's 32 KB limit, up to a megabyte.

What chip inside cartridges let Game Boy games exceed 32 KB of ROM?

It sits between the processor and the ROM and swaps between 32 KB banks.

In 1995, what share of Game Boy players did Nintendo of America say were female?

That compared with 29% for the NES and 14% for the SNES.

In which year was the Game Boy inducted into the US National Toy Hall of Fame?

An original 1989 unit is also on show at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Which two homebrew trackers made the Game Boy a chiptune staple?

GB Studio, meanwhile, lets hobbyists build brand-new cartridges without writing code.

Which toy company released a Game Boy building set with Nintendo in October 2025?

It joined the real console in the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto as a piece of design history.

In which year did the Game Boy Color launch?

Japan got it on October 21, with international markets the following month.

The Game Boy Color logo spells COLOR in which five case colours?

Atomic Purple, a translucent plastic, launched alongside them.

How many colours could a Game Boy Color game show at once, from a palette of 32,768?

A high-colour trick of rapid palette switching pushed a few games past 2,000.

Which wireless feature did the Game Boy Color include that the Advance dropped?

Few games supported it, so Nintendo left it off the next handheld.

Which Game Boy Color games were its best sellers?

Crystal was the best-selling title exclusive to the Color.

Which rival handheld did Yokoi design for Bandai after leaving Nintendo?

He left after the Virtual Boy flopped and died in a road accident in 1997 before its release.

Which Nintendo failure preceded Yokoi's 1996 departure from the company?

His exit rattled investors enough to halt Nintendo trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The Game Boy Advance ran on which processor family?

It kept a Sharp SM83 on the same chip for backward compatibility with older games.

Which French designer gave the Game Boy Advance its landscape layout?

His Tokyo studio Curiosity Inc. moved the buttons beside the screen instead of below it.

Which 2003 GameCube add-on played handheld cartridges on a TV?

It succeeded the Super Game Boy peripheral for the SNES.

Under what name was Nintendo's 1998 handheld photo accessory sold in Japan?

Its swivelling lens let players shoot grayscale selfies and print them on the Game Boy Printer.

What did the Game Boy Printer print images onto?

The camera cartridge also hid minigames based on Space Fever and the Game & Watch title Ball.