Game Boy
The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-game handhelds, Nintendo developed the Game Boy to be a portable console, with interchangeable cartridges. The concept proved highly successful, and the Game Boy line became a cultural icon of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Game Boy was designed by the Nintendo Research & Development 1 team, led by Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada. The device features a dot-matrix display, a D-pad, four game buttons, a single speaker, and uses Game Pak cartridges. Its two-toned gray design included black, blue, and magenta accents, with softly rounded corners and a distinctive curved bottom-right edge. At launch in Japan it was sold as a standalone console, but in North America and Europe it came bundled with the wildly popular Tetris which fueled sales.
Despite mixed reviews criticizing its monochrome display compared to full-color competitors like the Game Gear, Lynx, and TurboExpress, the Game Boy's affordability, battery life, and extensive game library propelled it to market dominance. An estimated 118.69 million units of the Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color, released in 1998, have been sold worldwide, making them the fourth-best-selling system of all time. The Game Boy received several redesigns during its lifespan, including the smaller Game Boy Pocket, released in 1996, and the backlit Game Boy Light, released in 1998.
History and development
Background
The Game Boy was designed by Nintendo Research & Development 1, the team behind the Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong arcade games and the successful Game & Watch series of handhelds, which had helped stabilize Nintendo financially. By 1983, while Game & Watch remained popular internationally, sales in Japan had begun to decline, pressuring R&D1 to innovate. At the same time, they faced competition from Nintendo Research & Development 2, an in-house rival created by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. That same year, R&D2 had launched the Family Computer, intensifying the pressure on R&D1. Looking to improve Game & Watch, R&D1 researched new screens from supplier Sharp, including dot-matrix displays that could support multiple games—unlike Game & Watch, which used pre-printed segmented LCDs, limiting each device to a single game.Start of development
On June 10, 1987, division director Gunpei Yokoi informed R&D1 that Yamauchi wanted a successor to Game & Watch priced under. From the very first meeting, the team knew they wanted to use a dot-matrix display and codenamed the project Dot Matrix Game, a name later reflected in the Game Boy's official model number: DMG-01.Within R&D1, Yokoi championed a design philosophy which eschewed cutting-edge technology in favor of finding innovative uses of mature technologies, which tended to be more affordable and reliable. This led to early clashes between Yokoi and his assistant director Satoru Okada. Yokoi envisioned a simple toy, akin to an advanced Game & Watch, while Okada pushed for a more powerful system with interchangeable cartridges—essentially a portable NES. Some within R&D1 believed Yokoi resisted the idea simply to avoid links to the NES, developed by their rivals at R&D2. Eventually, in a heated meeting, Yokoi relented, approving Okada's vision and giving him full responsibility for the project.
Choosing the hardware
Initially, R&D1 considered using a Ricoh CPU, similar to the NES, for potential compatibility. However, R&D2—then building the Super Nintendo Entertainment System —blocked this, claiming it would strain Ricoh's resources. R&D1 suspected this was simply an attempt to hinder their project. Ultimately, they opted for a Sharp CPU. A key side effect of this choice was the CPU's built-in communication feature. In the early 1980s, Okada had worked on an earlier Nintendo project called Computer Mah-jong Yakuman that featured multiplayer gaming over a cable connection between two devices. He saw an opportunity to implement a similar feature. Despite skepticism from his team that the feature would be too difficult to use, he personally developed the Game Link Cable technology, which later enabled Pokémon's "battle" and "trade" game mechanics. The Game Boy also retained a key innovation from Game & Watch: the D-pad. Yokoi had designed it as a compact alternative to joysticks, making it ideal for handheld devices. Its use on the NES controller also helped ease the transition for players.Early in development, R&D1 evaluated dot-matrix displays from Sharp but found them unsuitable due to severe ghosting. Seeking alternatives, they approached Citizen, Epson, Hosiden, Matsushita, and Seiko. Most declined, but Citizen, already producing LCDs for portable TVs, was eager to collaborate. The team was impressed by Citizen's chip-on-glass technology, which integrated the screen controller into the display, reducing cost and production time. They offered Nintendo a monochrome screen for or a color version for. However, following Yokoi's philosophy, the team rejected color due to higher power consumption and cost, opting for a simple grayscale screen without a backlight. This decision proved wise, as competing color handhelds would suffer from poor battery life, giving the Game Boy a significant advantage.
However, Sharp was still an important partner, so Nintendo asked if they could match Citizen on technology and price. Sharp responded with vague answers on their screen technologies and quoted a price of to per screen. In response, Citizen lowered its price to ¥1,000. With Yamauchi's approval, R&D1 finalized a deal with Citizen on September 1, 1987. However, as Citizen's representatives left Nintendo's offices, they saw Sharp's team arriving for a meeting with Yamauchi. Without explanation, Yamauchi canceled the Citizen deal and awarded the contract to Sharp. To soften the blow, R&D1 fabricated a story, telling Citizen they were interested in buying color screens the next year, even drafting fake project documents. Citizen later supplied color screens for Sega's Game Gear, which had a design closely resembling Nintendo's fake project. Citizen never admitted to sharing the design.
Near cancellation
The R&D1 team soon discovered that Sharp was unprepared to make the screens they needed, leading to months of delays. Early prototypes with low-quality twisted nematic screens sparked internal skepticism, with some employees mockingly referring to the project as DameGame. In the summer of 1988, R&D1 presented a prototype to Yamauchi, who immediately canceled the project, citing the poor visibility of the display. Team members argued that minor screen adjustments or a slightly higher budget could resolve the issue, but Yamauchi refused, leading them to suspect other teams had already convinced him the device would be a commercial failure. Furthermore, with the NES still thriving and the SNES on the horizon, a Game & Watch successor was no longer seen as essential.Most of R&D1, including Okada, was reassigned. However, Yokoi remained committed to the project. Defying Yamauchi's decision, he continued refining the display. During discussions with a Sharp director involved in Game & Watch, the team learned of a super-twisted nematic display secretly in development. While it had a green tint and slightly lower contrast, it dramatically improved the viewing angle. Yokoi devised a plan. In a meeting with a Sharp board member, he pressed them about new technologies, leading them to reveal the STN display. R&D1 secured a prototype and installed it in a Game Boy.
Three months after canceling the project, Yamauchi was shown the STN prototype. Though still unimpressed by the screen, he approved the console for sale, perhaps influenced by delays in SNES development, which was now two years away from launch.
Using the STN display significantly increased production costs. To mitigate expenses, the team reduced the screen's size, though it was too late in development to shrink the console's overall dimensions. The target price of ¥10,000 was ultimately not met due to the cost of the display, and the Game Boy would retail for. To enhance the perceived value of the product, Yamauchi decided to include headphones and four AA batteries in the box, which cost Nintendo very little but made the Game Boy appear like a better deal.
Launch and success
On January 17, 1989, Nintendo officially announced the Game Boy. It launched in Japan on April 21, selling out its initial production run of 300,000 units within the first two weeks. By August, sales had reached 720,000 consoles and 1.9 million games across just four launch titles. The Game Boy debuted in North America on July 31, 1989, at a retail price of, and backed by a marketing campaign aimed at making it the must-have, hard-to-find holiday toy. On its release day, 40,000 units were sold, and within just a few weeks, sales reached one million.Learning from one of the NES launch's shortcomings, Okada pushed to offer third-party developers a development manual and development kit, built by Intelligent Systems, to encourage software creation for the Game Boy. Meanwhile, R&D1 developed Super Mario Land as the console's flagship title, but another game captured the attention of Okada and Yokoi—Tetris. While a team within R&D1 was porting the Soviet-made puzzle game to the NES, they recognized its potential for a handheld platform. Although the Game Boy version of Tetris would not be ready for the console's Japanese debut, it was completed in time for its North American launch in July 1989. Henk Rogers, who had acquired the rights to Tetris, convinced Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa to make it the pack-in game with the Game Boy instead of Super Mario Land, arguing that while Mario primarily appealed to young boys, Tetris would appeal to everyone. As a result, Tetris was bundled with the Game Boy in every region except Japan.