Epic Win: The Original Gameboy
Submitted by Ann C
“The outrageous new game, Tetris!” -First Game Boy Commercial
Remember how awesome it was when the Game Boy first came out? You could ignore your parents or siblings on long drives for 1 hour increments (multiplied by how many sets of batteries you had). You could even play Nintendo in your room (since most kids didn’t have TVs in their rooms yet).
The original Game Boy was also so much more substantial than the newer, thinner and lighter handheld gaming devices. It could withstand being dropped more often or even thrown and it had the density of a brick.
i loves teh gameboyz
Oh Gameboy….I used to beg my brother for one hour with it…he had it for the rest of the day lol
I still have my original Gameboy. Far as I know it still works too, just haven’t tried it in years.
I, too, still have my original Gameboy, and mine still works. In fact, I was just playing Tetris on it yesterday.
ditto saint. i foudn it today and broght it to school. my teachers love it ^_^ but the sound blew out T-T
It’s amazing how the simple classics never go away. When I went to the Origins Game Fair last year, there were three different booths selling NES, Game Boy, & SNES cartridges and peripherals, as well as original Gameboys and NES clone decks (which are technically legal now that many of the patents for the NES’ tech have expired).
I still have mine and it still works. I love Tetris. BEST GAME EVAH!!!! Except for Pin-Bot. Pin-Bot is my personal GOD!!!!!
“Now. I. See. You.”
What is that beast on the left?!
donkey kong..
I still have my original grey brick! That thing went with me everywhere when I was a kid.
I ‘borrowed’ my brother-in-law’s after I found it in a box. I also have tetrice, Pac-man, The adventures of Link II, and Super Mario. I play it almost as my beaten up SP. That thing’s been dropped, sat on, rolled over, BURNT, scratched and so on but it works like a charm.
Why dosn’t the Game Boy Advance SP get any respect? I have one too and it’s my favorite along with my DSi.
I have mine too, and i still play with it! super mario for the win!
I never had one, but I still have my Gameboy Colour.
Thing still works too, even after dropping it numerous times.
Oh yeah, best Christmas present ever! I still have mine, and all my games, though I lost the carrying case that looked like a big GameBoy.
I still have that carrying case! It’s beat up, cracked, covered in stickers on the inside while missing stickers on the outside, missing the foam padding on the top of it, and otherwise just dirty, but I still have it! That case is awesome.
Pics for those unfortunate enough not to know about the big GameBoy case:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/mjc0961/gbcase1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/mjc0961/gbcase2.jpg
Haha, I still have that big GameBoy case. That thing is awesome.
Pics for people who haven’t seen one:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/mjc0961/gbcase1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/mjc0961/gbcase2.jpg
If it doesn’t post this time I give up…
I had one of those cases too. It was awesome. I still have it, but it’s pretty beaten up now.
Fsck yeah, Game Boy. Got mine when I was 5, and it came with Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which pretty much cemented my future as a gamer. The 8-bit BLEEN sound of the Nintendo logo scrolling to center still makes me grin.
Unfortunately somewhere along the line it borked; however, just recently I rediscovered the wonderful world of emulators =D
BLEEN!
That is the sound of Joy.
I refuse to play Tetris on any other system. I’m glad my old grey brick’s still what it used to be.
wow… got mine when i was 5 too… AND with link’s awakening…. too bad i could never understand it… stuck with super mario land 2 when my parents got that for us
Hell, I didn’t ignore my parents and siblings…I ignored my husband and children well into the wee hours of the night. I had visions of Tetris as I closed my eyes to sleep. Haaaaaaaaaa!!
Amen, sister! and I can blame hubby for my fixation! He bought me an SNES with Zelda, Link to the past! and Super Mario Bros. I introduced my kids to pokemon! and I still play ^_^
that happens so much it’s an actual desise!
tetris is probably the only game to have a desise named after it!
What’s the thing on the left in that picture?
Well it says it’s a “bath game” but you could play with it anywhere. It’s one of those games where the buttons make air shoot up and blow balls up to try to catch them in the little cups. The idea was to catch all of the balls without getting so frustrated that you either gave up or threw the thing and made the water leak out.
Also it had bath bubbles inside, that’s why they called it a bath game. I remember there being one of those in our bathroom for years
@above
Guessing it was a “kids meal” toy of some sort.
I was too young for the Original, but I had the Pocket and the Color.
I skipped right to the DS lite, thanks to an over-zealous boyfriend, but I still have the fondest memories of Silver Version on my Gameboy Color.
That thing was a TANK! Mine went through the wash twice, was left out in the sun and snow, got dropped an ungodly amount of times and it still works to this day. Let’s see any other portable device stand up to that kind of punishment.
So your father didn’t drive accidently over your bag containing it. Only thing survived was the original Tetris cartridge. Got a (zhat time) brand-new GBA for compensation.
My original GB died a long ago. I had it as a gift when I turned 12, and I dropped it a ton of times, until a piece of the printed circuit board eventually broke. I tried to fix it but it was useless.
I’ve neved had another portable game console until the DS Lite on Christmas ‘07. Oh God I can’t believe how much Nintendo still rocks!
Other than a couple of light scratches on the screen, mine’s still fine.
I still have it too and it works!!
thousands of hours spent playing with tetris
EPIC WIN.
I still remember cursing the world when my battery was dying. Jesus, batteries were so expensive to me back then haha.
Found mine the other day, sadly it’s died a death now, but the games still live on through my game boy colour! Have many modern consoles, but there was just something special about that one…
We ended up with two, because I REFUSED point blank to let go of it long enough for mum to play tetris she ended up getting her own!
Hmm, wonder if her’s is still about and working!
Still got mine, still works. Lent it to a mate who was in hospital for weeks with a badly broken leg and think it’s the only reason he kept his sanity.
hee hee… we had one up till recently… i remember it only worked if you held it at a certain angle…
and the ds looks totally the same. i have a harvest moon game, the most retarded game ever invented and yet i am sooooo addicted. that´s right, instead of studying for my big test tomorrow, i spent the entire weekend being a virtual farmer… how sad.
I still have my gray beast too. I took it on a flight two weeks ago, still entertains my young nephews, and I still haven’t beaten the ant level on Super Mario.
I still have my brick. (red one too!)
Love that thing even if it wasn’t in colour.
I remember playing it and having to move around and adjust the darkness and lightness levels depending on the lighting.
Good times…good times.
Ahh, what I wouldnt do for my old gameboy.. my favorite was always donkey kong! Then the day came when I upgraded to the super nintendo, I HAD to buy the adapter that played your gameboy games on the tv screen.. ahh, the good ole’ days. I still have my original NES and Super Nintendo System.. but the game boy, that was love.
There was one that was in a bombing in the Gulf War and it still works (though mangled). It’s on display at Nintendo World in New York.
More recently, I took a Nintendo DS outside and it cracked cause it got too cold. What happened to sturdiness?
Awwww yeah, original gameboy FTW! I never had one – my mom didn’t believe in video games – but my friend Kim had an NES I could play with (she even had the power glove) and my friend Anna had the gameboy. Not that I ever got to play it, because she had a little brother who always wanted it, but it was SO cool.
Totally have to applaud Anon and Stick for remembering the BLEEN! sound. I’ve lost some hearing since then, so I don’t think I could hear it now (maybe turned up all the way), but I can hear it in my head like it was yesterday instead of 20 years ago.
Ah, the beloved Gameboy. So many hours spent sucking at Link’s Awakening. We eventually got the magnifier with a light, which was great on long car trips. It made it so you could see the screen better and play at night.
The only thing that eventually damaged the console was rechargeable batteries being left in for too long. The explosion was epic.
it seems like my hands don’t fit any other type of portable consoles… seriously!
i still have mine, not sure if it works or not it did not so long ago. i SO remember going to the store and getting mario 2. my mom wouldn’t stop playing dr mario… me, her and my sister would fight all the time to play…
ah, good times.
My old Gameboy still works, too. Of course it’s role was replaced by a GBA and later a DS, but I still have the old gray brick as a reminder of days of yore.
i only had a pink gameboy color…i sucked. i just couldnt play anything. i think i eventually sold it and like the 5 games i had on ebay for like 20 bucks
I have: original gameboy, gameboy pocket and gomeboy color special pichachu edition(expensive)…all were gifts
I still own the gameboy I purchased in ‘89, and it still works. Yeah, it’s beat-up, but I still can play “Zelda: Link’s Awakening”without getting bored.
i used to love gameboy, until we got a sega game gear, the game gear was the ultimate. dragon crystal ftw lol.
I worked TRU when these came out. Kids lined up to play with the demo. It really was something special.
Bought one at a yard sale last year. Still had Tetris in it, and I found two similar games, including Dr. Mario. $3. total, and they all work like new. Not much of a gamer, but this thing is all hella fun. It’s amazing how easy it is to still find games for it.
And I’m not at all interested in upgrading to color or tiny, or whatever. I like this brick !
Oh, and as for the thing on the left – it’s kid soap or shampoo. The bottle’s designed to look like our beloved Game Boy, and it has a Waterfuls-type game you can play in the tub. Nintendo does great licensing and cross-marketing. They were sold in drugstores or wherever you might find bubble bath type stuff.
I loved my old Gameboy and still have it. It’s in great shape and a nice reminder of yesteryear. They really are tough as nails.
Oh man, this is a huge Nostalgic win for me…-flashback while rambling like a grandparent about childhood-
I loved the Game Boy. I still had and played with my Game Boy up until last year or so, when the thing was lost for a few months and then found in the garage, all rotted, rusty and unusable…getting rid of it was hard for me…my brother kept the control pad and I kept the A and B Buttons. We still have them somewhere.
I still play my Game Boy games on my old Pink Game Boy Color, and boy if I wasn’t pissed when I learned you couldn’t play the old Game Boy Classic/Color games on the DS. I have to carry my Game Boy Color with me when I go on trips, what a hassle.
Even though I no longer have my Game Boy, I still have my brother’s old Game Boy carrier bag from the 80’s-but it carries my DS now. I ended up using it because all the cool holders at the stores were all for the DS Lite and I didn’t have the Lite, but it doesn’t matter because this bag is way cooler than the other ones.
I remember being the only kid in my class without a gameboy. I had to bum it off friends. But about the “Substansial” comment- That’s only the superthin versions of the DS. My clunky, superthick DS has survived multiple throwings against the wall.
…Are you kidding? I drop my DS at least once every time I use it, and that’s like everyday. Hell, I dropped a PS2 down a flight of stairs (I’m the hugest klutz ever) and it worked for another three years.
I remember an old issue of Nintendo Power where someone wrote in with pics of their Gameboy that had been in a fire… and still worked! Sorta. Those things were tough as nails.
man, game boy was awesome. i used to have one but the screen broke… but i got a gameboy advance about a year after it broke, and i kept tetris and metroid
and i have the super nes. been kicked 8 or 9 times by my friends and it looks like its gonna break but it works
never had this hardware personally, but used an emulator on my ds. now, how to cure my tetris addiction? (btw i bought the carts on ebay so its legal)
Gameboy! Woo! These were a lot better than DS’s in the sense that they wouldn’t break into 20 pieces when you dropped them. Video game systems now are so fragile.
it advertises stereo. I was so mad when they removed the headphone port on the GBA SP
the commercial is enough to be an epic win!
It could withstand drops and throws, but it could not stand up to my brother’s forehead when he got so mad he smashed the thing against his head and shattered the screen…I’m still mad at him for that after almost 15 years
I still have mine. Along with more games than any other system I own lol.
Batteries lasting an hour?! Someone’s getting senile.
The original crappy Japanese pack-in batteries lasted thirty hours in mine. When the red power indicator LED went dark, you still had hours left. When the sound started to get distorted, you still had enough time to reach a save point or find your AC adapter.
I swear that system’s battery life would have been about double were it not for the power LED.
I dropped twenty bucks on two sets of NiCd AAs and a survival charger with a solar panel and dynamo in addition to the usual car adapter and home wallwart. I was eleven and ready for anything except insufficient light.
I had the original Gameboy Pocket (was that the official name?). It was clear neon green and I had three games: Miss Pac-man, Super Mario something-or-other, and Hercules. I never got past the first stretch of the first level of Hercules, though. I just couldn’t jump over the cliff gap no matter how hard I pushed the buttons or manuevered my elbows. Then my parents surprised me with a GameBoy Advance. My favorite games on that were Shrek and Super Mario Brothers. *sigh*
I Got a yellow one for my birthday and my first game wasn’t Tetris, it was The Simpsons XD
still have mine. still play super mario.
and i’m 24.
I still have my old Game Boy Color along with most of its games. Even though it managed to survive being dropped, heavily slammed against things, thrown against walls from frustration, and placed in extreme heat/cold, the console couldn’t stand up to a stupid battery leak. Luckily I still have a GBA.
My sister and I went through three or four Game Boys as kids. Not from dropping or breakage, but sheer playing. No joke, I wore out the D-pad on one, the buttons stopped working on another, and I think the other two lived, but stopped being played when I purchased a Game Boy Pocket (red, and I found it last month with my original Pokemon Red!!), and then THAT one went into storage when I purchased a Game Boy Color (haven’t seen it in ages, it’s with my Pokemon Gold cart somewhere) and then a GBA. I went retro, though, as I went and found the GBA that was skinned to look like the old Famicom/NES console and controller. I still use it to this day!
I also own two DSs: a pearl-pink original, and a white lite. These things aren’t quite as sturdy as the old gray brick, but that’s ’cause they’re more complex, and thus are more prone to breakage. Still, these things last a LOOOOONG time!