Items tagged with Game Boy
The original Nintendo Game Boy and its follow-up Game Boy Color weren't the first portable video games. However, they were incredibly successful and spawned many successful franchises, like Pokemon and Super Mario Land. For millions of Gen X and Millennial gamers, it was their first exposure to the wonders of video games. Soon, if rumors pan out to be true, many of those titles will make their way to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. The total number of titles hasn't been confirmed yet, but if it's anything like the NES and Super NES collections, the number of available games will grow over time. The NES collection launched in September of 2018 with just 20 games, but that number has...
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If you are of a certain age, the Nintendo Game Boy was likely a constant companion during childhood. The original was powered by four AA batteries, could easily be slipped into a pocket, carried along for long car rides (if it wasn't too dark outside), and generally provided hours of gaming fun. As its name implies, the Game Boy was a relatively small device for its time, but one Nintendo fan made a supersized version of the console. Witness the Game Man, which skipped straight over adolescence into adulthood, and is the brainchild of a gamer named Grumpy Modeler. While the original Game Boy stood 5.8 inches tall with a monochrome display that measured 2.6 inches across, the Game Man's off-the-shelf...
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There has been a lot of interest in the Analogue Pocket, an intriguing retro gaming console that was first announced back in late 2019. The console was supposed to launch in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the date out to May 2021. Now, as we approach May, Analogue has announced another delay. According to the company, the Pocket will now ship in October 2021 due to "sudden and severe electrical component shortages as well as logistical issues leading to a domino effect of challenges for nearly everyone in the industry." While it's only a five-month delay, it's likely disappointing to the lucky few that were able to preorder the handheld. According to Analogue, when preorders went live...
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Most people would never consider trying to mine Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) on an original Game Boy, a handheld console released by Nintendo over three decades ago. But would it be a feasible mod if someone paired a Game Boy with Raspberry Pi Pico, which is less than a year old? The answer is still no, but someone did it anyway. For the most part, Bitcoin miners have turned their attention to specialized ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) hardware these days. These devices are capable of mining north of 100 terahashes per second (100TH/s). Remember that figure, because we are going to circle back to it in a moment. But first, let's talk about the Game Boy mod. YouTube user "stacksmashing"...
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If you are like me and are a child of the 80s and 90s, then you probably have fond memories of the Nintendo Game Boy. As one of the first truly portable gaming consoles on the market, the Game Boy allowed us to toss in 4 AA batteries and have a few hours’ worth of escapism in games like Tetris and Super Mario Land without being tied to the TV. Nintendo's Game Boy lived on for quite a few generations, and its legacy still resides somewhat in the current generation Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite. But for those that want to call back to the earlier, simpler times of the original Game Boy, there's a new device that's coming to the market from Analogue. Analogue is already a familiar...
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There is something strangely cathartic about seeing an old piece of hardware that has suffered the fate of time and neglect, get restored to its original glory (or close to it). Maybe on a psychological level, this plays to our recognition of our own mortality. Or maybe it's just the nostalgia. Whatever the case might be, there is a video making the rounds of an old, beat up Nintendo Game Boy being lovingly restored, and it's worth taking a coffee break to watch. First released in 1989, the original Game Boy is an 8-bit handheld console that predates the Nintendo Switch by nearly three decades. It was a hugely popular system for its time, selling over 1 million units in the US alone during the...
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Long before anyone played Angry Birds and Temple Run on a tablet or smartphone, and way before the Switch dazzled us with Breath of the Wild, there was an 8-bit handheld console called the Game Boy. Perhaps you remember playing it when you were a kid. If so, welcome to middle age. Time sure does fly, and though it's hard to fathom, your memories of sticking cartridges into the original Game Boy are now up to three decades old. The original Game Boy debuted in Japan on April 21, 1989, meaning the handheld just celebrated its 30th anniversary. Its birth in North America came shortly after, on July 31 of the same year, while a European launch did not happen until a year later, on September 28, 1990....
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Nintendo is riding a wave of nostalgic gaming right now, and that wave is bringing in the money. The Nintendo Switch continues to sell well, and Nintendo's small, retro consoles like the NES Classic and SNES Classic are very popular with gamers. However, the company is underrepresented in the smartphone arena. While there are a few Nintendo games on the Android and iOS platforms, it looks like more may be coming. Nintendo has filed a patent application for a Game Boy Casing for touchscreen devices, and what use is a Game Boy case without Game Boy games? The case appears to be sized for a smartphone, and when closed, it has a vertical style window for the screen, a D-pad, and buttons on the outside...
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Almost everything that was cool or hip a long time ago eventually comes back in style. So it goes with retro gaming, and no company knows that better than Nintendo, which has been rebooting classic games with miniaturized versions of legacy consoles, including its original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES Classic Edition) and Super NES (SNES Classic Edition). So what's next? Perhaps a reborn version of its Game Boy, one of the industry's first handheld gaming system. Fun fact: Milton Bradley's Microvision released in 1979 is actually the first the handheld game console to use interchangeable cartridges (and it was also featured in the movie Friday the 13th: Part II). But while Nintendo does...
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Do you find yourself yearning for the video game devices of yesteryear? Does the NES Classic Edition hit you right in the nostalgic feels? A company called Retro-Bit is resurrecting the Game Boy, a device which in its heyday sold roughly 119 million copies worldwide. The Super Retro Boy on the surface is a carbon copy of Nintendo’s classic Game Boy. Gamers, however, can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Gameboy Advance cartridges. The device also incorporates an extra pair of buttons on the face in order to support Game Boy Advance titles that rely upon shoulder buttons. Super Retro Boy includes a 2,500 mAh rechargeable battery that lasts up to ten hours, so your device will not die in...
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Not long ago, Amazon showed us how to build an Amazon Echo Smart AI-assisted speaker system with the versatile Raspberry Pi but this beauty of a modding project is a bit of old school goodness that just warms our geek hearts. What do you get when you cross a classic portable gaming system like the original Game Boy with more modern internals from one of the most popular DIY single board computer systems around? Thanks to one rather inventive modder, we now have what is probably the coolest Game Boy on the planet — one that is capable of playing Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES, SNES and Sega Genesis titles in full color. The modder, who goes by the name of Wermy, started with a circa 1989...
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While playing my favorite MMORPG a couple of nights ago with a friend, the subject of emulation came up - one that I'm always happy to indulge in. This friend told me that while mobile, she uses a Game Boy emulator on her phone to help pass the time. That led to me say, as I have many times in the past, that it'd be a smart move for Nintendo to release its games on mobile platforms. But alas, that's something that's been talked-about for a while, and Nintendo is infamously stubborn when it comes to games being made available on non-Nintendo platforms. Well, little did I realize, a patent was made public mere days earlier that described the exact thing I figured would never happen: Nintendo has...
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By today's standards, Nintendo's original Game Boy is an ancient, outdated piece of technology. It had a simple D-pad with A and B buttons, along with Start and Select, a tiny dot matrix display, and a fugly color scheme. However, the 25-year-old handheld deserves mad respect from gamers and fans of technology in general. Nintendo launched its Game Boy to retail on April 21, 1989, and back then, all those traits we listed above were pretty cutting edge for a mobile device. For its time, it offered gaming-on-the-go that didn't suck, unlike those faux handhelds at Toys R Us that were little more than one-trick ponies. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, The Guardian put together a list of...
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George Harrison, a marketing executive at Nintendo, stated that the Game Boy name might be put to sleep after a glorious 18-year life. He points out the fact that the DS has been very successful, which means the company doesn’t need to rely on the Game Boy franchise anymore. Harrison said, "It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark." While it is still too early to be certain, the announcement may have already evoked a few tears. Rest assured Game Boy fans, with all the success he brought to Nintendo, they’re sure to give him a peaceful passing. Whether he likes it or not....
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