History
The Nintendo Game Boy, which made its North American debut in late July of 1989, was a watershed moment in the history of videogames. It was not, however, the first handheld with interchangeable cartridges. In fact, it was “obsolete” shortly after it was released. Compared to an Atari Lynx or Sega Game Gear, released two and nine months later, respectively, it was a dinosaur: a tyrannosaurus, to be precise.
Despite its cheap, underpowered hardware, the Game Boy did enjoy several key advantages over the Lynx and its predecessors. The first and most obvious was the significant brand recognition Nintendo had achieved in the wake of its Nintendo Entertainment System (see Chapter 2.1). By 1989, there wasn’t ...
Get Vintage Game Consoles now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
