On April 21st, 1989, Nintendo dropped a pocket-sized bomb on the gaming industry with the original grey and purple Game Boy. To honor this glorious date in gaming history, we’re going to take a little trip through the history of handheld gaming.

Oh, and before anybody says anything — yes, I catch the irony of having a two-part “brief history”.

It seems that every video game device that is announced promises to “forever change the way you play games”. Sure, more often than not they’re blowing smoke up your backside, but every once in a while a game system comes along that actually does change the way you play.

On April 21st, 1989, the Nintendo Game Boy did just that.

Nintendo first explored the idea of handheld gaming in 1980 with their Game & Watch series. Much like the handheld games that were popularized by Tiger Electronics in the early-and-mid 1990s, the Game & Watch series were games (oftentimes based on NES games) that played on an LCD screen. You can still see the influence of the Game & Watch with Nintendo products today — the Nintendo DS is almost identical in design to the Game & Watch Multi Screen model.

The Game & Watch creator, Gunpei Yokoi, wanted to expand on the Game & Watch. He envisioned a gaming system you could hold in your hand. Yokoi also wanted a system that would use interchangable cartridges. No handheld had done this since Milton Bradley’s failed Microvision.

But most importantly, Yokoi felt that the key to success for any handheld gaming device was that it be affordable. It was a concept that Yokoi would never waver on, and would lead to the decision to use a monochromatic four-colored (Green, Green, Light Green and Dark Green) LCD display.

This decision worried Nintendo’s top brass, who feared that gamers would overlook their system in favor of the full-colored graphics of their competitors:

The Atari Lynx, NEC TurboExpress and SEGA Game Gear.

The Game Boy got the early advantage by launching six months before the Atari Lynx and a full eighteen months before SEGA’s Game Gear. It’s hard to determine if this six month head start really helped Nintendo all that much, since the Game Boy ultimately crushed all launch day competition by twenty million-plus units.

The Lynx was doomed from the beginning. When it was released, it carried a pricetag of $190 — a full $100 more than the $90 Game Boy. Nintendo had a large library of franchises from which the Game Boy could tap. The Lynx had almost zero name recognition. Nintendo could freely and easily supply retailers with however many Game Boy units they needed. The Lynx ran in limited numbers to save production costs.

Ultimately the Lynx would sell less than half a million units and fade from the public spotlight.

The TurboExpress, which was a handheld version of the TurboGrafx-16, faired slightly better as far as sales figures are concerned. However, the TurboExpress suffered from widespread hardware failure. Cheaply made capacitors would often fail, killing all sound output, and while the LCD display was groundbreaking technology for its day, it was still new. It was often difficult to read text on the screen, and the dead-pixel rate was alarmingly high. Not that you’d be playing long: the system’s battery life was only about three hours on 6 AA batteries.

All of these issues on top of the $399 launch price, led to the quick demise of the TurboExpress.

The Game Boy’s first viable competitor came from their chief rival of the day, SEGA. While the Game Gear sported a $150 pricetag and significantly shorter battery life (five hours on 6 AA batteries), SEGA was able to take a portion of the handheld market (Atari’s) with a strong marketing campaign and a larger library of games.

Under the hood, the SEGA Game Gear was essentially a low-res Master System. In fact, the system eventually got a peripheral from SEGA that allowed for Master System games to be played on the Game Gear.

SEGA would enter a second handheld into the market in 1995. Taking a page from the Game Gear book, the SEGA Nomad was a SEGA Genesis. The SEGA Nomad was loosely based on the SEGA Mega Jet, a portable Genesis that was used on many Japanese commercial airlines. The Nomad was given it’s own screen as well as a rechargeable battery pack.

The Nomad was, technically, also compatible with all the Genesis add-ons — the 32X and SEGA CD. Unfortunately you needed third-party peripherals to get said add-ons to actually fit on the Nomad. The Nomad also allowed for multiplayer games by incorporating a secondary Genesis controller port on the bottom of the device.

Unfortunately the Nomad was doomed by it’s own timing. When the Nomad was released the Genesis was in it’s final days, the SEGA Saturn and Sony PlayStation were already on the market and a $180 price tag was simply too much for many. It sold a paltry one million units.

Nintendo also began their “Play It Loud” campaign in 1995:

The “Play It Loud” Campaign was a series of advertisements that highlighted Nintendo’s new “colored” Game Boys. Not to be confused with the Game Boy Color, these Game Boys retained the same internal technology while changing the outer shell color. It was a resounding success, but paled in comparison to Nintendo’s next advancement for their handheld.

In 1996, the Game Boy underwent it’s first true redesign. The Game Boy Pocket was smaller, thinner, lighter and only required two AAA batteries to run. The screen color also changed from the four shades of Green to true Black and White. The Game Boy Pocket continued the Game Boy’s “Play It Loud” trend of releasing in several shell colors, as well as several limited edition colors.

A version of the Game Boy Pocket that was exclusive to Japan was released in 1997. Called the Game Boy Light, this model included a back light and ran on 2 AA batteries which provided roughly 12 hours of play.

1997 also saw the release of game.com (pronounced “game com”). The game.com was truly ahead of it’s time. It had a touch screen and supported internet access. Unfortunately for Tiger Electronics, the touch screen was almost impossible to use and to use the internet you still had to use a modem and phone line. The connection would also drop.